JUSTIN SHARP v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Appeals, Watts, Filed March 25, 2016,
Sentencing – Impermissible Consideration – It is not indicia of improper consideration where a sentencing court after trial explains to a defendant why it is not imposing the pre-trial plea offer so long as the defendant’s decision not to plead guilty was not a motivating factor in the imposed sentence.
More notable here is the Court’s commentary that “we advise trial courts to … refrain from directly making plea offers to defendants in criminal cases.” “The trial court’s role is to approve or reject a plea agreement that the parties submit to it, not to come up with its own plea offer— i.e., a ‘court’s offer.'”
(Concur – Battaglia – Joining in judgment only)
It is well established that a defendant after trial is not entitled to his/her pre-trial plea offer (the entire point of the plea offer is to avoid putting the victim/witnesses through a trial coupled with the risk to the state of losing — none of which apply post-trial).
More interesting is that the Court of Appeals spends a few paragraphs asking trial courts to stay out of plea negotiations. It’s a “best-practices” commentary only, as they were squarely presented with the issue here and declined to reverse on it.
The Court breathes questionable life into Barnes v. State, 70 Md. App. 694, 711 (1987), where an Alford plea was held involuntary where “by making a plea offer and encouraging the defendant to accept it, the trial court improperly interjected [it]self into the plea bargaining process as an active negotiator, infringing upon the function reserved to counsel in the adversary process.”
The Court noted that “[n]either this Court nor the Court of Special Appeals has overruled or in any way abrogated the holding of the Court of Special Appeals in Barnes.” However, neither has the Court gone around vacating pleas wherever the court involves itself.
That being said, the CoA recommends that judges stay out of plea negotiations, as:
– “Rule 4-243 does not authorize a trial court to make a plea offer”
– “It is the role of the State, not a trial court, to make a plea offer”
– It “protects the constitutional presumption of innocence”
– It “avoids placing judicial pressure on the defendant to compromise his or her rights”
– And it avoids any appearance of said impropriety
Sentencing – a trial court may not consider during sentencing a defendant’s decision not to plead guilty. However, a defendant who proceeds to trial is not entitled to the same lenient sentence that was part of a plea offer.
Quoting Moylan in
- Sweetwine v. State
, 42 Md. App. 1, 10 (1979):
The norm is what an appropriate sentence would be following a full-blown trial and conviction. The departure from the norm is the abnormally lenient sentence [that] is exchanged, in a flat-out [q]uid pro quo deal, for the abnormal foregoing of all chance of acquittal and the abnormal foregoing of “[a] day in court” to which a defendant would be otherwise entitled. . . . It is one thing to punish; it is quite another to deny a reward [that] has no longer been earned
Sentencing – Appellate Review – Where a sentence is challenged on the basis of impermissible considerations, the appellate court is to read the trial court’s statements “in the context of the entire sentencing proceeding” to determine whether they “could lead a reasonable person to infer that the [trial] court might have been motivated by an impermissible consideration.”