State v. Shepard – 2010 MT 20

In 2003, Shepard was charged with multiple offenses including deliberate homicide, burglary, and aggravated kidnapping. She entered into a plea agreement and pled guilty to deliberate homicide and burglary in exchange for the State’s motion to dismiss the remaining charges. The agreement provided that the State was free to recommend any sentence permitted by law, excluding death and the State agreed to recommend that any sentence imposed for the burglary offense would be served concurrently with the sentence imposed for deliberate homicide. The State honored its commitments.

At sentencing, the District Court made Shepard ineligible for parole, which resulted in Shepard petitioning to the Sentence Review Division. At the sentence review hearing, the State appeared, contradicted the factual background given by Shepard and opposed her request that the parole restriction be removed from her sentence.

Over a year later, Shepard filed a motion to withdraw her guilty pleas, asserting that the State’s statements at the sentence review constituted breach of the plea agreement. The District Court denied the motion and Shepard appealed.

On appeal, the Montana Supreme Court initially addressed the issue of the proper standard of review, deciding that because a plea agreement is a contract and subject to contract law standards, State v. Hill, 2009 MT 137, ¶ 49, it is a question of law and reviewed de novo.

As to the merits of the appeal, SCOMONT ruled that although a plea agreement could be negotiated in such a way to restrict the State’s actions before the Sentence Review Division or otherwise impose continuing obligations on the State, the agreement at issue here did not. The Court ruled that “the plea agreement was drafted to unambiguously apply to the sentencing process before the District Court and that court’s disposition of the case. It did not contemplate later proceedings, and thus, the State did not violate an express provision of the plea agreement.” ¶ 14.

SCOMONT also noted that the State could have undermined, and therefore violated, the plea agreement by arguing for a different or harsher sentence before the Sentence Review Division. However, the Court believed that this was not the case here and affirmed the District Court.