Crawley v. State

ANTHONY ALLEN CRAWLEY v. STATE OF MARYLAND

No. 0467

COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND

September Term, 2013

August 8, 2016

UNREPORTED

Woodward, Nazarian, Reed, JJ.

Opinion by Reed, J.

Dissenting Opinion by Woodward, J.

*This is an unreported opinion, and it may not be cited in any paper, brief, motion, or other document filed in this Court or any other Maryland Court as either precedent within the rule of stare decisis or as persuasive authority. Md. Rule 1-104.

This is an appeal from a corrected sentence issued by the Circuit Court for Prince George's County after it determined that the original suspended life sentence that Anthony Allen Crawley ("appellant") received for pleading guilty to felony murder was illegal because it lacked a probationary term. The court added a term of four years supervised probation and imposed various conditions. The appellant noted a single issue¹ on appeal, which we rephrase:

Is the new sentence imposed by the circuit court invalid because it violates the terms of the plea agreement by adding four years of probation?

We answer this question in the affirmative. Therefore, we vacate the modified sentence imposed by the circuit court and remand the case for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The following facts regarding the appellant's involvement in the 1997 murder of an off duty D.C. police officer are not in dispute.

In the early morning of February 26, 1997, two men by the names of Antwan Brown and Donovan Strickland asked the appellant if he wanted to assist them in a robbery. The appellant agreed. Thereafter, the appellant, Brown, and Strickland observed their soon-to-be victim putting gas in his car at a Mobil gas station. The victim was Oliver Smith, Jr., anoff-duty D.C. police officer. The three men followed the victim back to his house, where they ordered him to the ground at gunpoint after he parked his car. Strickland continued to hold the gun out while he and the appellant searched the victim. They removed from the victim's pocket both a wallet and a gun. Strickland, who was now holding the victim's gun as well as his own, opened up the wallet and observed a police badge inside. He then informed the appellant and Brown that their victim was a police officer, and upon hearing this, Brown took the victim's gun from Strickland, pressed it up against the victim's head, and shot him there three times.

In return for his testimony against Brown and Strickland, the State offered the appellant a plea deal of a life sentence with all but thirty-five years suspended. The plea agreement, which was an ABA binding plea agreement, read in pertinent part:

The State, the Court, and the Defendant agree that the Defendant shall be sentenced after the conclusion of the trials of codefendants Anthony² Brown and Donovan Strickland, to life suspend all but 35 years for the aforesaid felony murder charge. The underlying charge of robbery with a deadly weapon will merge, by operation of law, with the felony murder charge at sentencing.

Neither the terms of the plea agreement nor the record of the plea hearing include any specific mention of probation following the life sentence suspend all but thirty-five years of imprisonment. The Court, however, did engage in the following colloquy with the appellant to determine whether he sufficiently understood the consequences of his plea:

THE COURT: Now, do you understand that the remaining sentence that was not, that was suspended, that could be heldover your head, so-to-speak, whether it is eight months or whether it is a year or three years, whatever the amount of time is, in light of your plea of guilty today that could be reinstated?

Do you understand that?

[The appellant]: Yes, sir, I understand.

THE COURT: That is the important reason I'm asking these questions, to make sure you know all the consequences where you plead guilty.

Do you understand that?

[The appellant]: Yes, sir.

THE COURT: And that is separate and apart from the plea agreement that you entered into. And that means to say myself, [defense counsel] Mr. Trainor or [the State's Attorney] Mr. Manico have no control over what the Parole Board may do. They may reinstate with just an administrative hearing. They don't have to bring you into a courtroom to reinstate your original sentence.

Do you understand that?

[The appellant]: Yes, sir.

. . . .

THE COURT: . . . Mr. Crawley, for the record, I believe [defense counsel] Mr. Trainor has at your request not only talked to you, obviously in great detail about this, but he's also communicated with members of your family to discuss this matter.

Is that correct, Mr. Trainor?

MR. TRAINOR: Yes. Actually, we talked to his sister today. . . . . And she is a parole officer in the District of Columbia who Mr. Crawley relies on a great deal for advice.

THE COURT: Is that correct, Mr. Crawley?

[The appellant]: Yes, sir, Your Honor.

THE COURT: All right. Okay. Let the record reflect again that the Court is satisfied Mr. Crawley has knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily signed this plea agreement and I will accept the same.

The court held a sentencing hearing on October 16, 1998, and sentenced the appellant to that which was agreed upon in the plea agreement, which was articulated by the court as follows:

The sentence of this Court is, as to Count One, first degree felony murder, that you be sentenced to life in prison. Pursuant to the plea agreement, all but 35 years is suspended, and that sentence is to commence as of February 27th, 1997.

As to Count Two, robbery with a deadly weapon, the sentence is that the Court rules that no sentence can be imposed because under felony murder robbery with a deadly weapon merges with Count Number One.

Fourteen years later, due to changes in the state of the law, the State adopted the appellant's motion to correct an illegal sentence because the Department of Corrections brought to their attention the fact that the appellant's suspended life sentence did not include probation as required³ for felony murder convictions. The circuit court held a hearing on the motion on February 8, 2013, and determined that a new sentence wasnecessary to correct the illegality.⁴ Therefore, a resentencing hearing took place on April 26, 2013, at the conclusion of which the court gave the appellant a new sentence, with the only material change being the addition of four years of probation to follow the life sentence of imprisonment with all but thirty-five years suspended.⁵ Furthermore, the court placed conditions on the appellant's probation that he undergo random urinalysis testing, as well as any drug or alcohol treatment suggested by the supervising agent⁶, and that he cannot contact certain members of Officer Smith's family.⁷ The appellant filed an appeal challenging the validity of the new sentence in light of the fact that a probationary term was not part of the 1997 plea agreement.

DISCUSSION

A. Parties' Contentions

The appellant submits that we should first determine the terms of his sentence based on what a reasonable person in his position would have understood his sentence to be at the time of its imposition, citing Cuffley v. State, 416 Md. 568, 582 (2010), and then determine whether the circuit court "[failed] to fulfill the terms of that agreement" by adding the four years of probation. Solorzano v. State, 397 Md. 661, 669-70 (2007). The appellant asserts that if the probationary term is in fact outside the scope of what a reasonable person in his position would have understood his sentence to be, then the new sentence is "illegal" under Md. Rule 4-345(a) pursuant to Matthews v. State, 424 Md. 503, 506 (2012) (holding that "Rule 4-345(a) is an appropriate vehicle for challenging a sentence that is imposed in violation of a plea agreement to which the sentencing court bound itself . . . [and] that the sentence Petitioner is serving is illegal because it exceeds the sentencing 'cap' to which the Circuit Court agreed to be bound."). Because his new sentence, like the sentence in Matthews, exceeds the sentence term specified in his plea agreement, the appellant believes that we have an obligation to, as Rule 4-345(a) states, "correct an illegal sentence at any time." The appellant asserts that this obligation is amplified by the Court of Appeals' reiteration in Dotson v. State, 321 Md. 515, 523 (1991), that the Maryland Rules have the force of law.

The appellant also raises concerns that allowing his sentence to be amended with the addition of a probationary term will upset the overall goals of the plea bargaining process in the future. He submits that defendants who plead guilty are not the only oneswho benefit from plea agreements. Rather, the appellant highlights that plea agreements also benefit the State as well as society on the whole by promoting justice through the elicitation of testimony that would otherwise be unavailable against other wrongdoers. The appellant believes that amending his sentence with terms that were mentioned neither in the plea agreement itself nor during his plea hearing will make future defendants wary of pleading guilty, which will thus deprive everyone of the aforementioned benefits. Furthermore, the appellant asserts that probation was clearly not intended to be a part of his plea; however, if we believe that his plea was ambiguous regarding probation, then he urges us to resolve such ambiguity in his favor in accordance with the articulated result in Baines v. State, 416 Md. 604, 615 (2010).

Additionally, the appellant acknowledges the Court of Appeals' holding in Greco v. State, 427 Md. 477, 513 (2012), that a sentence for first-degree murder is illegal without a period of probation; he believes, however, that his case can be distinguished from Greco because the defendant in Greco did not plead guilty, but rather, was sentenced by way of a jury verdict. Id. at 482. But in the alternative, i.e., if we believe that Greco applies in the instant case, the appellant ...