State v. Mattatall

219 A.3d 1288

STATE

v.Stephen MATTATALL

No. 2018-263-C.A. (K1/83-12A)

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

November 22, 2019

Lauren S. Zurier, Department of Attorney General, For State.

Camille A. McKenna, Office of the Public Defender, For Defendant.

Present: Suttell, C.J., Goldberg, Flaherty, Robinson, and Indeglia, JJ.

Justice Goldberg, for the Court.

This case came before the Supreme Court on October 2, 2019, on appeal by the defendant, Stephen Mattatall (defendant or Mattatall), from the denial of his motion to reduce or correct an illegal sentence.¹ Before this Court, the defendant argues that the trial justice erred in denying his motion to correct an illegal sentence pursuant to Rule 35(a) of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure. The defendant argues that his sentence is illegal and must be vacated because the judgment of conviction did not conform to the oral sentence and because the sentence imposed was an unauthorized form of punishment. For the reasons set forth herein, we affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.

Facts and Travel

The defendant is no stranger to this Court or the Superior Court. On the morning of September 24, 1982, John Scanlon was found dead in defendant's home. On January 7, 1983, defendant was indicted and held without bail on murder and weapons charges. The defendant subsequently was found guilty of second-degree murder after the first of three trials, and was sentenced to a term of forty years' imprisonment, with thirty years to serve, and ten years suspended, with probation. The trial justice also imposed an additional ten years to serve, because defendant was deemed to be a habitual criminal offender.

The defendant appealed his conviction to this Court, and we vacated the judgment and remanded the case for a new trial. State v. Mattatall , 510 A.2d 947, 953 (R.I. 1986). The state petitioned for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court subsequently directed this Court to reconsider our decision in light of its opinion in Kuhlmann v. Wilson , 477 U.S. 436, 106 S.Ct. 2616, 91 L.Ed.2d 364 (1986).² Rhode Island v. Mattatall , 479 U.S. 879, 879, 107 S.Ct. 265, 93 L.Ed.2d 243 (1986) (mem.). Upon reconsideration, we re-affirmed our initial holding, again vacated the conviction, and remanded the case for a new trial. State v. Mattatall , 525 A.2d 49, 53 (R.I. 1987).³

The defendant's second trial began in September 1987. However, he was twice held in contempt of court because of persistent misconduct in the courtroom, and a mistrial was declared. The defendant's new (and last) trial was held in 1988, and he was found guilty again of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to sixty years' imprisonment, with fifty years to serve and ten years suspended, with probation. The defendant also received an additional sentence of twenty years to serve as a habitual offender, which, importantly and as expected, was ordered to be served consecutively to the sentence for second-degree murder. The habitual offender sentence was to be nonparolable for the first eighteen years of the sentence. This Court affirmed defendant's conviction in 1992. State v. Mattatall , 603 A.2d 1098, 1119 (R.I. 1992). The record before us establishes that the judgment of conviction for the crime of murder, which was designated in the judgment as "count 1," was incorrect because the sentence was ordered to be served consecutively to the sentence imposed as a habitual offender.

Although defendant has challenged his conviction and imprisonment regularly, appearing before the Superior Court and this Court on numerous occasions since 1992, the erroneous judgment of conviction was not discovered until almost three decades after it was entered.⁴ Significantly, Mattatall's first appearance before the parole board was originally scheduled in 2001—after he served precisely eighteen years' imprisonment, but the hearing actually occurred in 2002.⁵ In 2002, parole was denied for multiple reasons, including defendant's disciplinary record at the Adult Correctional Institutions. He also appeared before the parole board on four more occasions, in 2007, 2010, 2012, and 2014. After each hearing, parole was denied for reasons other than defendant's behavior at the ACI, including the serious nature of the crime, his past criminal history, and the length of his sentence.

On July 13, 2015, defendant appeared before the parole board for the fifth time, and parole was granted. At that point, defendant had been incarcerated for more than thirty-two years. However, the minutes from that parole board hearing reflect uncertainty concerning whether defendant was eligible for release or whether he was to be paroled to begin serving the nonparolable eighteen-year habitual offender sentence. The parole board concluded that, if defendant's eligibility had not been calculated in the aggregate, then defendant would be paroled to his consecutive sentence as a habitual offender in August 2015. However, the parole board also decided that, if it was determined that his eligibility had been calculated in the aggregate and he therefore no longer had consecutive time to serve, then he would be paroled in January 2016 to a residential substance-abuse treatment program.

In October 2015, the parole board chairperson, by letter to defendant, informed him that the parole decision would be applied to the sentence for the murder conviction and that he was paroled to the consecutive nonparolable sentence as a habitual offender, a sentence over which the parole board did not have jurisdiction. Therefore, after serving thirty-two years of a fifty-year sentence for second-degree murder, defendant was paroled to the habitual offender sentence, and will serve a total of at least fifty years in prison.

In 2016, defendant filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence under Rule 35 of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure, as well as an application for postconviction relief. On July 25, 2018, a hearing was held in the Superior Court on the Rule 35 motion and the application for postconviction relief. Both the application and the Rule 35 motion were denied.⁶

In the Superior Court, Mattatall conceded that the sentence imposed in 1988 was not an illegal sentence under Rule 35(a), but that the error arose from the manner in which the sentence was executed. The defendant contended that the oral pronouncement of the sentence reflected that the habitual offender sentence was ordered to be served consecutively to the sentence for the murder conviction. Thus, under the law in effect at the time, G.L. 1956 § 13-8-13, he was eligible to appear before the parole board in 1993, after ten years' imprisonment. But it was not until 2001 that he was first deemed eligible to appear before the parole board—after the precise length of the nonparolable sentence, which was eighteen years.

Unquestionably, in 1988, the trial justice sentenced defendant to sixty years at the ACI for second-degree murder, with fifty years to serve. He also sentenced defendant to a consecutive term of twenty years' imprisonment and ordered that eighteen years of that sentence was nonparolable. There is no dispute that the trial justice orally ordered that the habitual offender sentence be served consecutively to the sentence for the murder conviction. However, the written judgment for the murder conviction directs that the sentence is "to run consecutive to habitual offender sentence[,]" and the judgment for the habitual offender sentence mandates that sentence "[t]o run consecutive with count 1."

Although defendant conceded before the trial justice that the sentence was not an illegal sentence under Rule 35, he argued that its execution was illegal and constituted a violation of his due-process rights because it deprived him of his right to appear before the parole board for eighteen years, which was eight years longer than § 13-8-13 provided.⁷ The defendant correctly argues that the judgment of conviction contains an error because it specifically recites that the sentence for murder shall "run consecutive to the habitual offender sentence."

The state argued that the trial justice did not have the authority to adjust defendant's parole eligibility because, even if the Department of Corrections improperly calculated his parole eligibility, this error did not render the sentence illegal for Rule 35 purposes.⁸ The state also argued that there was no prejudice from defendant seeing the parole board after eighteen years rather than ten years, because the reasons for the board ultimately denying parole were not related to defendant's conduct at the ACI.

Despite the quandary created by the error in the judgment and the erroneous calculation of defendant's parole-eligibility date, the trial justice was careful not to "play Super Parole Board" in making his decision. He found that the sentence being served by defendant—as a habitual offender—was a nonparolable term that could not be altered unless the trial justice first found that it was an illegal sentence. Because, as the parties agreed, defendant's sentence was not an illegal sentence under Rule 35, the trial justice concluded that it was not subject to correction. However, the trial justice was "nonetheless troubled by the circumstances" presented by defendant's situation. The trial justice denied defendant's application for postconviction relief and his Rule 35 motion, ruling in favor of the state. Before this Court in this appeal, defendant argues that the trial justice erred in denying his Rule 35 motion.

Standard of Review

This Court follows a "strong policy against interfering with a trial justice's discretion in sentencing matters." State v. Barkmeyer , 32 A.3d 950, 952 (R.I. 2011) (quoting State v. Chase , 9 A.3d 1248, 1254 (R.I. 2010) ). Therefore, this Court's "review of a trial justice's decision on a Rule 35 motion is extremely limited." Id. (quoting Chase , 9 A.3d at 1254 ). "When faced with the interpretation of statutes and court...