Opinion
Court of Appeals No. A-11858 No. 6732
11-21-2018
STEVEN KNIGHTS, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee.
Appearances: Douglas O. Moody, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. June Stein, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee.
NOTICE Memorandum decisions of this Court do not create legal precedent. See Alaska Appellate Rule 214(d) and Paragraph 7 of the Guidelines for Publication of Court of Appeals Decisions (Court of Appeals Order No. 3). Accordingly, this memorandum decision may not be cited as binding authority for any proposition of law. Trial Court No. 3PA-10-2351 CI
MEMORANDUM OPINION
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Palmer, Gregory L. Heath, Judge. Appearances: Douglas O. Moody, Assistant Public Defender, and Quinlan Steiner, Public Defender, Anchorage, for the Appellant. June Stein, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Craig W. Richards, Attorney General, Juneau, for the Appellee. Before: Mannheimer, Chief Judge, Allard, Judge, and Suddock, Superior Court Judge. Judge MANNHEIMER.
Sitting by assignment made pursuant to Article IV, Section 16 of the Alaska Constitution and Administrative Rule 24(d). --------
Steven Knights negotiated plea agreements with both state and federal prosecutors to resolve charges that he sexually abused a minor and exploited her to create and distribute child pornography.
Knights's federal plea agreement (negotiated by a federal defender) required him to serve 15 years in federal prison. Knights's state plea agreement (negotiated by a different attorney) required him to serve 8 years, but the agreement specified that half of this sentence — 4 years — would be concurrent with Knights's 15-year federal sentence.
Knights began serving his state sentence first. After serving approximately 4 years in state prison, and just before Knights was to be transferred to federal prison to begin serving his federal sentence, he filed an application for post-conviction relief. In this application (as ultimately amended), Knights claimed that he had entered his guilty pleas under the impression that, when he served the 4 non-concurrent years of his state sentence, he would receive a one-third good time credit against these 4 years (i.e., a credit of 16 months). Thus, according to Knights, he should not have spent the entire 4 years in state prison. Rather, he should have been transferred to federal prison after serving only 32 months in state prison.
Based on these assertions, Knights asked the superior court to allow him to withdraw his plea to the state charges on the ground that he did not receive what he had bargained for.
The superior court dismissed Knights's petition for post-conviction relief because the court concluded that, as a matter of law, Knights had received all of the good time credit to which he was due. Knights now appeals the dismissal of his petition.
The superior court's ruling misses the point of Knights's petition. The question is not whether Knights received all the good time credit to which he was entitled. Rather, the question is whether Knights pleaded guilty to the state charges under the reasonable but mistaken belief that his time to serve in state custody would be 32 months rather than 4 years — and, if so, whether Knights would have declined to accept the plea agreement had he known that he would serve a full 4 years in state custody.
In other words, the superior court needs to resolve the following issues:
• Precisely what was Knights's understanding of the plea agreement?
• If Knights understood the plea agreement to mean that he would serve only 32 months in state custody before he began serving his federal sentence, was Knights's understanding of the plea agreement reasonable? What did Knights's attorney tell him about the agreement? And what (if anything) did the prosecutor tell Knights about the agreement?
• Assuming that Knights reasonably believed that he would serve only 32 months in state custody before he began serving his federal sentence, would Knights have rejected the plea agreement had he known that he would serve 4 full years in state custody before he began serving his federal sentence?
Because the superior court did not resolve these issues, we vacate the superior court's dismissal of Knights's petition for post-conviction relief, and we direct the superior court to hold further proceedings to resolve the issues we have described here.
We do not retain jurisdiction of this case.