Opinion
A24-0305
09-17-2024
Eugene Francis Cuypers, petitioner, Appellant, v. State of Minnesota, Respondent.
Washington County District Court File No. 82-K1-00-004784
Considered and decided by Worke, Presiding Judge; Bjorkman, Judge; and Smith, John, Judge. [*]
ORDER OPINION
John Smith, Judge
BASED ON THE FILE, RECORD, AND PROCEEDINGS, AND BECAUSE:
1. Appellant Eugene Francis Cuypers challenges a district court order denying his petition for postconviction relief. Cuypers argues that he is entitled to relief because in 2001 he entered an unintelligent guilty plea for second degree murder, and because, at the time he entered his plea, he received ineffective assistance of counsel. Because the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining that Cuypers's petition was untimely, we affirm.
2. In 1990, the state indicted Cuypers for first-degree premeditated murder. See State v. Cuypers, 481 N.W.2d 553, 555 (Minn. 1992). After a jury found him guilty, the district court sentenced him "to a mandatory term of life imprisonment." See id. at 555-57 (affirming Cuypers's judgment of conviction). At the time, "[a]n inmate serving a mandatory life sentence for conviction of murder in the first degree . . . [was not to] be given supervised release . . . without having served a minimum term of 30 years." Minn. § 244.05, subd. 3 (Supp. 1989).
Cuypers shot and killed a man after he learned the man sexually molested his fiance when she was a child. See Cuypers, 481 N.W.2d at 554-55.
We note that in 2005, the legislature amended Minn. Stat. § 244.05, subd. 4(b) (2004) to remove first-degree premeditated murder under Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a)(1) (2004) as a crime for which an inmate serving a mandatory life sentence can receive supervised release. See 2005 Minn. Laws ch. 136, art. 2, § 3, at 921 (applying only "to crimes committed on or after" August 1, 2005). That change remains in effect today. See Minn. Stat. § 244.05, subd. 4(b) (Supp. 2023) (excluding first degree premeditated murder under Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a)(1) (Supp. 2023)).
3. In August 2000, the state again indicted Cuypers for first-degree murder, alleging that, two months earlier, he acted with an accomplice to kill another inmate at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater where he was serving his earlier sentence for first-degree murder. In June 2001, Cuypers pleaded guilty to an amended charge of second-degree murder.
4. The district court accepted Cuypers's guilty plea and imposed a 130-month sentence, with at least two thirds of that time in custody and running consecutive to his earlier first-degree murder sentence. At the plea hearing, the parties expressed some confusion about how Cuypers's second-degree murder sentence would impact his eligibility for supervised release on his earlier first-degree murder sentence. When the district court asked the state for Cuypers's supervised release date on his first-degree murder sentence, the state responded: "I can't remember if it's 2088 or 2091?" The district court then asked Cuypers whether he could remember his supervised-release date. Cuypers responded: "2089, ma'am."
5. In March 2020, Cuypers filed a motion to correct sentence, arguing that his consecutive sentence for second-degree murder violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because his accomplice received a concurrent sentence. In December 2020, the district court denied his motion as an untimely postconviction petition.
6. Cuypers then appealed to this court. On appeal, we affirmed the district court's order, concluding that Cuypers's motion was properly treated as a postconviction petition and was untimely under Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4(a) (2020). See Cuypers v. State, A21-0171, 2021 WL 5047501, at *4-5 (Minn.App. Nov. 1, 2021), rev. denied (Minn. Jan. 26, 2022). In his appellate brief from April 2021, Cuypers stated that "[a]t the time of his plea, the state erroneously thought that his supervised release date on his 1990 murder conviction was either 2088, 2089, or 2091," rather than after 30 years. Cuypers also stated that "if [he] was granted [release] on his 1990 murder conviction today . . . he would need to serve two-thirds of his 130 months . . . [on his second-degree murder sentence] before his supervised release period began."
7. In May 2023, Cuypers filed a second petition for postconviction relief. In his petition, Cuypers focused on the confusion about his supervised-release eligibility at the 2001 plea hearing. Specifically, he argued that his 2001 plea was unintelligent and that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because he did not understand that a second-degree murder sentence would delay his release on his first degree-murder sentence. To support his theory, Cuypers relies on Minn. Sent'g Guidelines II.F (2000). Under comment II.F.02, "[t]he service of the consecutive sentence begins at the end of any incarceration arising from the first sentence." Cuypers argued that if his attorney had correctly advised him about the timing of his eligibility for supervised release, he would not have pleaded guilty. Finally, Cuypers argued that his petition was timely because he satisfied the interests-of-justice exception to the general two-year limitation for filing a petition. See Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4(a), (b)(5) (2022).
8. In January 2024, without a hearing, the postconviction court denied Cuypers's petition for relief, concluding in part that his reliance on the interests-of-justice exception was itself untimely under Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4(c) (2022). The district court noted that in Cuypers's appellate brief from April 2021 (for his first postconviction appeal), he mentioned the same issues with supervised release upon which he based his present petition. Therefore, it concluded, his claim under the interests-of-justice exception arose "more than two years before he filed the current petition," rendering it untimely. Cuypers now appeals.
9. "[A] person convicted of a crime, who claims that . . . the conviction obtained or the sentence or other disposition . . . violated the person's [legal] rights . . . may commence a proceeding to secure relief by filing a petition." Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 1 (2022). A postconviction court must hold a hearing on a petition "[u]nless the petition and the files and records of the proceeding conclusively show that the petitioner is entitled to no relief." Minn. Stat. § 590.04, subd. 1 (2022).
10. We review a "summary denial of a petition for postconviction relief for an abuse of discretion." El Shabazz v. State, 984 N.W.2d. 569, 573 (Minn. 2023). "A postconviction court abuses its discretion when it has exercised its discretion in an arbitrary or capricious manner, based its rulings on an erroneous view of the law, or made clearly erroneous factual findings." Pearson v. State, 891 N.W.2d 590, 596 (Minn. 2017) (quotation omitted).
11. Generally, a petitioner cannot request postconviction relief "more than two years after the later of . . . the entry of judgment of conviction or sentence." Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4(a) (2022). Nevertheless, even if a petitioner fails to meet the two-year limitation, they may still request relief if, among other exceptions, they establish "that the petition is not frivolous and is in the interests of justice." Id., subd. 4(b)(5) (2022). The interests-of-justice exception "focuses on why the petition was filed after the [two]-year time limit" and the petitioner "must allege an injustice that caused a delay in filing the petition." Hannon v. State, 957 N.W.2d 425, 435-36 (Minn. 2021) (quotation omitted).
12. However, even when a petitioner relies on an exception to the two-year limitation, the petitioner must still file their petition "within two years of the date the claim [under the exception] arises." Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4(c) (2022). A court should evaluate whether a petitioner complied with subdivision 4(c) before "determining whether the petitioner has qualified for an exception." Bolstad v. State, 878 N.W.2d 493, 496 (Minn. 2016) (citing Carlton v. State, 816 N.W.2d 590, 600 (Minn. 2012)).
13. "A claim arises under an exception when the petitioner knew or should have known that [they] had a claim." Nissalke v. State, 920 N.W.2d 187, 192 (Minn. 2018). Whether a petitioner "knew or should have known" is an "objective standard" that does not depend on "the subjective, actual knowledge" of the petitioner. Sanchez v. State, 816 N.W.2d 550, 558-59 (Minn. 2012). For the purposes of subdivision 4(c), we review for clear error a postconviction court's determination about whether a petitioner "knew or should have known about [their] claim." Bolstad, 878 N.W.2d at 497.
14. Here, Cuypers does not identify an injustice that caused him to delay filing his petition that is separate from his substantive claim for relief. He simply argues that the interests-of-justice exception applies because, in 2001, his confusion regarding supervised release rendered his plea unintelligent and his counsel ineffective.
15. The supreme court addressed a similar situation in Bolstad. There, Bolstad requested relief under the interests-of-justice exception, arguing that "the district court gave an erroneous jury instruction" at trial. Id. But by invoking the interests-of-justice exception, Bolstad did "not identify some distinct event that should cause [a court] to review his substantive claim" about the jury instructions. Id. at 497 n.3. Rather, Bolstad's "substantive claim . . . and his interests-justice-claim" were "one and the same," and therefore, the two-year limitation under subdivision 4(c) "began to run as soon as [the petitioner] became aware of his underlying substantive claim." Id. Accordingly, the postconviction court determined that the petitioner "knew or should have known of [his] interest of justice claim at the time of trial." Id. at 497.
16. On appeal, the supreme court affirmed, determining that the postconviction court's finding was not clearly erroneous because, at trial, Bolstad's counsel objected to the jury instruction. Id. And because Bolstad's claim arose at trial, and he "filed his petition more than 11 years [later], his claim [was] untimely even if the interests-of-justice exception applied." Id. at 497-98 & n.3.
17. Here, the postconviction court concluded that Cuypers's claim arose in April 2021 when he filed the brief for his first postconviction appeal, reasoning that Cuypers "specifically mentioned" the same issues with supervised release upon which he based his present petition. We conclude that the postconviction court's finding was not clearly erroneous. In that brief, Cuypers mentioned that "[a]t the time of his plea, the state erroneously thought that his supervised release date . . . was either 2088, 2089, or 2091." Cuypers also mentioned that "if [he] was granted relief on his 1990 murder conviction today . . . he would need to serve two-thirds of his 130 months . . . [on his second-degree murder sentence] before his supervised release period began." More than two years later, in May 2023, Cuypers filed a second petition for postconviction relief-now the subject of this appeal-arguing that his 2001 plea was unintelligent and that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because of the same miscommunication about supervised release that he described in his earlier appellate brief.
18. Because the district court properly determined that Cuypers's interests-of-justice claim arose more than two years before he filed his second petition, it did not abuse its discretion by denying the petition as untimely.
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:
1. The postconviction court's order is affirmed.
2. Pursuant to Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c), this order opinion is nonprecedential, except as law of the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel.
[*] Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.