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Brief of appellant
Case no: 24AP32
Case name: State v. M.P.
Court of Appeals District: II
Panel: Shelley Grogan
Opinion author: Shelley Grogan
Filing attorney: Megan Sanders
Law firm / agency: Wisconsin Defense Initiative
Circuit Court: Calumet County
Judge: Jeffrey Froehlich
Introduction
At a hearing on a petition to waive juvenile court jurisdiction, the juvenile court must determine whether the case has “prosecutive merit.” . If it does, the court must then consider the factors enumerated at § 938.18(5) — things like the child’s “prior record” and his “potential for responding to future treatment.” Finally, the court must decide, based on the evidence presented on the sub. (5) criteria, whether the State has proven by clear and convincing evidence “that it is contrary to the best interests of the juvenile or of the public to hear the case” in juvenile court. If it concludes that the State has met its burden, it “shall” waive jurisdiction.
The plain language of the waiver-hearing statute thus appears to establish a straightforward process: the State has a burden, and if it meets it, the juvenile court must order waiver. But case law sees things differently, consistently treating waiver decisions as discretionary. This treatment is in tension with the statutory text and significantly constrains appellate review ...
Outside the waiver hearing context, meanwhile, circuit courts are often required to rule a certain way based on whether a party has met its burden of proof. A court in a termination of parental rights case, for example, “shall find the parent unfit” if the petitioner proves grounds for termination by clear and convincing evidence. It has no discretion to do otherwise. A court hearing a motion to suppress evidence and considering whether there was probable cause for arrest similarly lacks discretion: if the State’s evidence establishes probable cause, it must deny suppression. Finally, in these contexts and countless others, an appellate court will uphold the circuit court’s findings of fact unless clearly erroneous but will grant no deference to its legal conclusions regarding what those facts do or don’t establish.
What makes the juvenile waiver-hearing statute so different? Here, the court of appeals afforded deference to the circuit court’s decision—which it deemed discretionary — waiving M.P. into adult court. It affirmed that decision despite an underdeveloped record and even though, by the circuit court’s own admission, almost all the (statutory) criteria weighed against waiver.
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Criteria for review
As noted above, § 938.18 establishes the State’s clear-and-convincing burden of proof, delineates the factual issues the State’s proof must address, and requires the circuit court to grant waiver if the State meets its burden. It is unclear, in this statutory scheme, where discretion comes in — and yet the case law uniformly treats waiver decisions as discretionary.
The Court can tackle this tension here. By granting review, the Court can address what may be a longstanding wrong turn in the interpretation of a critical juvenile statute — one that puts dozens of children into Wisconsin’s adult criminal legal system each year. More specifically, it can clarify the plain meaning of § 938.18, ensure courts adhere to it moving forward, and, if it agrees the statute grants no discretion as to waiver petitions, make appellate review of waiver decisions more meaningful.
Brief of appellant
Case no: 23AP1273
Case name: State v. Daniel Robinson
Court of Appeals District: IV
Filing attorney: Leo Draws Title: Assistant state public defender
Law firm / agency: Office of the State Public Defender
Circuit Court: Rock County
Judge: Karl Hanson
This appeal presents several issues, but I'm focusing on the two that involve bail-jumping charges.
Bail jumping is a charge that can be issued any time someone out on bond violates a condition of that bond, even if that violation is itself not a crime. Thus, an adult who is under an absolute sobriety order as a bond condition can be charged with a crime for having a single beer. And the bail-jumping charge will be a felony if the underlying crime is a felony and a misdemeanor if the underlying crime is a misdemeanor. It is a charge that some prosecutors use to coerce defendants into accepting plea deals they might otherwise reject.
On to the brief.
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From November 26, 2018 through April 6, 2021, the state charged Daniel Robinson with a total of 12 criminal cases in Rock County. Robinson was convicted and sentenced in seven of these 12 cases. For this Court’s convenience, details regarding those seven cases are set forth in the table below:
On March 15-17, 2021, Robinson faced another jury trial in Rock County... (where there were an additional three cases.)
Finally, Robinson entered a plea agreement as to all remaining cases on June 11, 2021.
The circuit court sentenced Robinson to 43 years of imprisonment, consisting of 22 years of initial confinement and 21 years of extended supervision.
The circuit court denied all claims in Robinson’s postconviction motion.
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Argument
This Court should reverse the convictions for the bail jumping charges in Counts 5-7 of 20CF602.
In order to prove Robinson’s guilt of the bail jumping charges as outlined in Counts 5-7 of 20CF602, the state needed to prove the underlying disorderly conduct charge in Count 1. The charges in Counts 5-7 were predicated on Robinson having committed the disorderly conduct as alleged on July 4, 2020. Ultimately, the jury acquitted Robinson of that charge.
Given that Robinson was acquitted of that underlying offense, the associated bail jumping convictions should be reversed for lack of sufficient evidence. ...
When a bail jumping charge is based upon an individual committing a new offense and that individual is not convicted of that new underlying offense, the conviction for that bail jumping cannot stand. ...
Before the circuit court, Robinson argued that the reversal of those three felony charges would be a new factor warranting such modification. The circuit court, while admitting that it was unclear about whether those convictions should be reversed, held that the convictions would stand. Somehow, the court then held that even if the convictions were reversed (lowering the number of felony convictions in these cases), such reversal would not impact the sentence imposed. ...
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Given that these convictions still have yet to be reversed, this is clearly new information that was not in existence or known at the time of Robinson’s sentencing.
The reversal of these convictions is also highly relevant to the imposition of Robinson’s sentence. Despite the circuit court’s ruling, it defies all logic to determine that the number of convictions is not highly relevant to the sentence they receive.
The sentencing structure imposed by the court in these cases is fairly difficult to comprehend, with a total sentence of 22 years of initial confinement and 21 years of extended supervision. In the case relevant to these bail jumping convictions (20CF602), Robinson was sentenced to four years of initial confinement and three years of extended supervision, running consecutively to all other cases. That sentence was predicated on Robinson’s convictions in that case — eight bail-jumping charges and two domestic misdemeanors. Given that Robinson should not have been convicted of three of the most serious charges in this case because he was acquitted of one of the misdemeanors, Robinson’s overall sentence should have been adjusted downward.
Thus, the circuit court erred when it concluded that Robinson had not established that sentence modification was justified.
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