Stachowski v. State

KEHOE, J. Kenneth Martin Stachowski, Jr. appeals his conviction by the Circuit Court for Somerset County for violating Maryland’s bad check law, Md.Code (2002, 2012 Repl-Vol., § 8-103 of the Criminal Law Article (“CL”)), and raises one issue: Where a conviction is entered by a guilty plea and the sentence is imposed and suspended in favor of a probation, may a trial judge, as one of the conditions of the probation, ⁵ order that the defendant pay restitution arising from an unrelated case? We answer this question in the negative and vacate the portion of the sentence requiring Stachowski to pay restitution. Background Between 2003 and 2005, Stachowski committed a variety of criminal offenses in Somerset and Wicomico counties in Maryland as well as in Delaware. We are concerned with two strands of this larger web.

The first involves Stachowski’s violations of Maryland’s Home Improvement Law, Md.Code (1992, 1998 RepLVol.), § 8-101 et seq. of the Business Regulations Article (“BR”); and the second relates to his passing a bad check. In 2003 and 2004, Stachowski entered into separate written home improvement contracts with three Somerset County residents, Darlene Wright, Ruth Daniels, and Emma Daniels. He failed to perform the agreed-upon work and the aggrieved individuals filed complaints with the Maryland Home Improvement Commission. As a result, Stachowski was charged in three separate proceedings in the District Court of Maryland, sitting in Somerset County, with failing to perform home improvement contracts in violation of BR § 8-605, 1 and with acting as a contractor without a license in violation of BR § 8-601. 2 All three of these cases were resolved on March 4, 2005 in the district court. ⁶ In the Darlene Wright case, Stachowski pleaded guilty to failing to perform a home improvement contract and the State nolle prossed the charge for acting as a contractor without a license.

Stachowski received a six month suspended sentence, a $1,000 suspended fine, three years supervised probation, and was ordered to pay restitution of $2,142.85, in $250 monthly installments. In the Ruth Daniels case, Stachowski pleaded guilty to failing to perform a home improvement contract and the State nolle prossed the charge for acting as a contractor without a license. He received a six month suspended sentence, a $1,000 suspended fine, three years supervised probation, and was ordered to pay restitution of $8,997 in monthly payments of $250. In the Emma Daniels case, Stachowski pleaded guilty to acting as a contractor without a license and the State nolle prossed the charge for failing to perform a home improvement contract.

Stachowski received a 30-day suspended sentence, a $1,000 suspended fine, three years supervised probation, and was ordered to pay restitution of $4,140 in monthly installments of $250. Stachowski did not make the required restitution payments and, eventually, the State filed petitions to revoke his probations. After a hearing, the district court found Stachowski to be in violation of probation in all three cases and ordered Stachowski to serve the previously suspended sentences in each case and to pay fines of $1,000 in each case, to be served off at a rate of $10 per day of confinement. The sentences were to run consecutively to one another.

Stachowski timely ⁷ appealed the disposition of the three violation of probation cases to the circuit court. 3 We turn now to the second strand. In June, 2005, Stachowski gave a bad check in the amount of $182.86 to a company known as Somerset Well Drilling. Stachowski was charged in the Somerset County district court with obtaining property or services by bad check in violation of CL § 8-103. 4 Upon Stachowski’s request for a jury trial, the case was transferred to the circuit court. Prior to the scheduled trial date in the circuit court, Stachowski’s wife made full restitution to Somerset Well Drilling.

The two strands came together on October 11, 2006, when all four cases were called for trial in the circuit court. At the beginning of the proceeding, the State represented that the parties had reached an agreement as to the disposition of all four cases (emphasis added): [THE STATE]: Your Honor, I believe we’ve worked out a plea agreement although I had not stated that on the record. My understanding of the plea agreement, your Honor, three of these are an appeal for violation of probation from District Court. I think that we’re in agreement and the State would consent to the fact that Judge Hayman had imposed all of the backup time for the cases.

And in addition to that he had imposed a thousand dollar fine per case and ordered that the defendant serve that off at ten dollars a day. [W]e’re in agreement that the thousand dollar fine that he would serve off at ten dollars a day was an illegal sentence. ⁸ My understanding as part of the plea agreement the Defendant will agree to serve the suspended portion of the sentence which was six months, six months and thirty days---- [T]he Defendant has agreed to plead guilty in [the Somerset Well Drilling case] to [a] ... single count of bad check. Your Honor, the State would recommend an active portion of five months incarceration which would be consecutive to the three other sentences as well. In this case the suspended portion, your Honor, we would leave up to you, but we would recommend some sort of a split sentence with an active period of incarceration. As well, your Honor, restitution has already been paid in this case.

His wife provided documentation this morning— Your Honor, as well, the State is not opposed to work release for those active incarcerations as well as local time contingent on the fact that if he is granted work release that he would pay restitution to the victims in the violation of probation cases. Your Honor, he will agree to pay three hundred dollars a month that would be a hundred dollars per victim. Your Honor, that’s not going to be enough to cover all of the restitution but at least they’ll be able to recover some portion of it. And then either sue him civilly or you know— [THE COURT]: Central Collection. [THE STATE]: Central collection or put a lien on his house or something of that nature. [THE STATE]: And, your Honor, I believe that that would be the nature of the plea agreement.

(Emphasis added.) As part of this agreement, the State entered a nolle prosequi on the theft charge in the Somerset Well Drilling case, and Stachowski both waived a jury trial, and pleaded guilty to the bad check offense. After the prosecuting attorney recounted ⁹ the factual basis for the guilty plea, the circuit court found Stachowski guilty of violating CL § 8-103. As to his violation of probation appeals, Stachowski conceded that he had not made the required restitution payments but testified that he was struggling to support his family. The circuit court found by a preponderance of the evidence that Stachowski was in violation of his probation because he had failed to make the required $750 monthly restitution payments ordered by the district court.

The circuit court imposed sentences as follows: THE COURT: All right. In [the Somerset Well case,] the sentence of the Court is the Defendant shall serve eighteen months in the Somerset County Detention Center. The Court is going to suspend all but five months of that sentence.... He’s placed on supervised probation for a period of five years.

And I’ll come back to probation in just a minute. And the sentence in ... [the Somerset Well case] is consecutive to the last sentence to expire of all outstanding and unserved sentences. The court then proceeded to revoke the probations in the home improvement cases and to impose consecutive sentences of six months each for the Ruth Daniels and Darlene Wright cases and thirty days for the Emma Daniels case. The court also entered orders requiring Stachowski to pay $8,152 in restitution to Ruth Daniels, $4,150 to Emma Daniels, and $2,142 to Darlene Wright.

As a condition of probation in the Somerset Well case, the court ordered Stachowski “to make restitution to those three victims in the amount of three hundred dollars per month....” Neither Stachowski nor his lawyer objected to the requirement to pay restitution. 5 On November 9, 2006, Stachowski filed an application with this Court for leave to appeal in all four cases. By an order ¹⁰ dated December 14, 2006, we transferred the appeals in the three violation of probation cases to the Court of Appeals. On May 24, 2007, Staehowski filed a supplement to his application for leave to appeal with this Court, which was denied on May 29, 2007, in an unreported, per curiam opinion. See Stachowski v. State, No.2051, Sept. Term, 2006.

On June 1, 2007, Staehowski filed a motion for reconsideration. On August 22, 2007, the Court of Appeals issued a writ of certiorari to the Circuit Court for Somerset County in the appeals involving the three home improvement cases. Stachowski v. State, 400 Md. 647 , 929 A.2d 890 (2007). The Court subsequently dismissed the writ, holding that it could not address the legality of the circuit court’s order that Stachowski pay $300 per month in restitution for the three home improvement cases because the order was imposed in the “fourth, unrelated, theft case,” which was not before the Court in that proceeding.

Stachowski v. State, 403 Md. 1, 9-10 , 939 A.2d 158 (2008) (“Stachowski I ”). On January 11, 2008, Staehowski filed a supplement to his motion for reconsideration, which was still pending in this Court. By order dated May 28, 2008, we granted the application for leave to appeal, directing the parties to brief the following question: Where a conviction is entered by a guilty plea and the sentence is imposed and suspended in favor of a probation, may a trial judge, as one of the conditions of the probation, order that the defendant pay restitution arising from an unrelated case? Staehowski filed his initial brief in this Court on July 7, 2008.

On July 23, 2008, the Court of Appeals, on its own initiative, ordered that a writ of certiorari be issued to consider this case. Stachowski v. State, 405 Md. 348 , 952 A.2d 224 (2008). After argument on the merits, and rebriefing and reargument on a jurisdictional issue, the Court dismissed the ¹¹ writ on the basis that, pursuant to McLCode (1973, 2012 Repl.Vol.), § 12-202 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article (“CJP”), 6 it would have jurisdiction only after this Court “rendered a decision on the merits or the viability of the appeal or the status or rights of a party.” Stachowski v. State, 416 Md. 276, 298 , 6 A.3d 907 (2010) (“Stachowski II”). Thereafter, we scheduled this case to address the question presented on its merits so that the Court of Appeals might address the significant and novel issue raised by Stachowski’s appeal.

Analysis Stachowski argues that “where a conviction is entered by a guilty plea and the sentence is imposed and sentenced in favor of a probation, a trial judge may not, as one of the conditions of probation, order that the defendant pay restitution arising from an unrelated case.” The circuit court’s action in doing so in this case, Stachowski continues, rendered that condition of his probation illegal. Accordingly, he urges us to vacate the condition of probation requiring him to pay restitution. The State, and amicus curiae, the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Center, Inc., present several arguments as to why the court did not err. Additionally, they assert that Stachowski failed to preserve his contentions for appellate review.

Finally, the State contends that Stachowski’s request that we vacate the restitution order while leaving the rest of the plea agreement intact, is inopportune. We will address the parties’ contentions in the following order: In Part I, we evaluate Stachowski’s contention that the restitution order was not authorized by law. Resolving this ¹² question involves consideration of Md.Code, § 6-211 of the Criminal Procedure Article (“CP”) 7 which authorizes a sentencing court to impose conditions of probation, and CP § 11-603, 8 which specifically addresses a court’s authority to order restitution as part of a sentence, in the broader context of Maryland’s statutory scheme for sentencing, restitution, and probation in criminal cases. We conclude that, in addition to authorizing a sentencing court to order restitution, CP § 11-603 sets limits on the exercise of that power and that the restitution order at issue was beyond the scope of the court’s authority.

In Part II, we address the waiver and preservation arguments presented by the State and the Victims’ Resource Center. We agree with them that Stachowski did not preserve the issue of the illegality of the restitution order for appellate review, but conclude that he can raise the issue nonetheless because the order of probation was an illegal sentence. Finally, in Part III, we consider the State’s contention that the proper disposition of this case is to vacate Stachowski’s guilty plea and to remand the case for trial. ¹³ I. The Restitution Order A. Restitution, i.e., an order requiring a defendant to reimburse the victim of his or her crime as part of the disposition of criminal charges, serves at least three distinct purposes. First, it is a form of punishment for criminal conduct ...

Second, it is intended to rehabilitate the defendant. Lastly, it affords the aggrieved victim recompense for monetary loss. Pete v. State, 384 Md. 47, 55 , 862 A.2d 419 (2004) (quotation marks and citations omitted). Maryland’s current statutory scheme is set out in Title 11, Subtitle 6 of the Criminal Procedure Article.

See Grey v. Allstate Ins. Co., 363 Md. 445 , 450 n. 1, 769 A.2d 891 (2001). 9 A court can include an obligation to pay restitution as part of a sentence, CP § 11-603(a), or, as in the present case, as a condition of probation pursuant to CP § 2-221, which authorizes a court to “suspend the imposition or execution of sentence and place the defendant on probation on the conditions that the court considers proper.” Pete, 384 Md. at 55 , 862 A.2d 419 . Under either alternative, “[a]n order of restitution entered in a criminal case, even as a condition of probation, is a criminal sanction— part of the punishment for the crime.” Chaney v. State, 397 Md. 460, 470 , 918 A.2d 506 (2007); see also Carter v. State, 193 Md.App. 193, 209 , 996 A.2d 948 (2010) (“There is no question that an order to pay restitution as a condition of probation is part of the punishment for the crime.” (quotation marks and citations omitted)). Whether to order restitution lies with the trial court’s discretion and we review the trial court’s decision on the abuse of discretion standard.

Silver v. State, 420 Md. 415, 427 , 23 A.3d 867 (2011). While a sentencing court has broad ¹⁴ authority to impose conditions of probation, its discretion is bounded by statutory limitations upon its authority. See, e.g., Bailey v. State, 355 Md. 287, 299 , 734 A.2d 684 (1999) (holding that home detention as condition of probation under former Article 27 § 641 A was improper without explicit statutory authorization). 10 This principle is fully applicable when courts impose an obligation to make restitution as a condition of probation. See, e.g., Silver v. State, 420 Md. at 427 , 23 A.3d 867 ; Chaney v. State, 397 Md. 460, 470 , 918 A.2d 506 (2007).

As a result, when a sentencing court exceeds the limits of its statutory authority in ordering restitution as a condition of probation, we will vacate the order as an illegal sentence. Walczak v. State, 302 Md. 422, 427, 433 , 488 A.2d 949 (1985); see also, Carter v. State, 193 Md.App. at 209 , 996 A.2d 948 . With these observations in mind, we turn to the centerpiece of Stachowski’s appellate argument, namely that there was no statutory authority for the trial court to require him, as a condition of probation in the bad check case, to pay restitution to the victims in the three home improvement cases. Star chowski concedes that a court has the discretion to impose a requirement for restitution as a part of a sentence or as a condition of probation but asserts that any exercise of a court’s discretion in this area is limited by CP § 11-603.

We agree. We begin with the statute itself. CP § 11-603 reads in pertinent part (emphasis added): (a) A court may enter a judgment of restitution that orders a defendant or child respondent to make restitution in addition to any other penalty for the commission of a crime or delinquent act, if: (1) as a direct result of the crime or delinquent act, property of the victim was stolen, damaged, destroyed, ¹⁵ converted, or unlawfully obtained, or its value substantially decreased.... The term “victim” is statutorily defined as (emphasis added): (1) a person who suffers death, personal injury, or property damage or loss as a direct result of a crime or delinquent act; or (2) if the person is deceased, the personal representative of the estate of the person.

CP § 11—601(j). In the context of interpreting § 11-603, the Court of Appeals stated: The chief goal of statutory interpretation is to discover the actual intent of the legislature in enacting the statute, and the legion of cases that support this proposition need not be repeated here. In fact, all statutory interpretation begins, and usually ends, with the statutory text itself for the legislative intent of a statute primarily reveals itself through the statute’s very words. A court may neither add nor delete language so as to reflect an intent not evidenced in the plain and unambiguous language of the statute; nor may it construe the statute with forced or subtle interpretations that limit or extend its application.

In short, if the words of a statute clearly and unambiguously delineate the legislative intent, ours is an ephemeral enterprise. We need investigate no further but simply apply the statute as it reads. Pete v. State, 384 Md. at 57-59 , 862 A.2d 419 (quoting Price v. State, 378 Md. 378, 387-88 , 835 A.2d 1221 (2003) (citations omitted in Pete)). Although the term “direct result of the crime” is not defined in Subtitle 6, “when statutory definitions are not explicitly provided, ‘we determine the intended scope of the term by applying the language’s natural and ordinary meaning, by considering the express and implied purpose of the statute, and by employing basic principles of common sense, the meaning these words intend to convey.’ ” Goff v. State, 387 Md. 327, 344 , 875 A.2d 132 (2005) (quoting Schmerling v. Injured Workers’ Ins.

Fund, 368 Md. 434, 444 , 795 A.2d 715 (2002)). ¹⁶ Several decisions of the Court of Appeals have considered whether an injury or loss suffered by a specific victim is a “direct result of the crime.” The landmark decision in this area is Walczak v. State, 302 Md. at 429-30 , 488 A.2d 949 . Walczak was charged with robbing two victims at gunpoint, and agreed to plead guilty to one count of robbery with a deadly weapon if the State would nolle pros the remaining charges. At sentencing, the trial court ordered, without objection, that Walczak pay restitution to both robbery victims as a condition of probation. Id. at 424 , 488 A.2d 949 .

He failed to do so and his probation was revoked. On appeal, Walczak contended that the statutory predecessor to CP § 11-603 did not authorize a trial court to order restitution to the victim of a crime of which he was not convicted, whereas the State argued that the statutory scheme provided trial courts with broad authority to order restitution as a condition of probation. Id. at 427, 488 A.2d 949 . The Court identified former Article 27 § 640(b) as the critical statutory provision.

It read: Upon conviction for a crime where property of another has been stolen, converted, unlawfully obtained, or its value substantially decreased as a direct result of the crime, or where the victim suffered actual medical expenses, direct out of pocket losses, or loss of earning as a direct result of the crime, or if as a direct result of the crime, the victim incurred medical expenses that were paid by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene or any other governmental entity, the court may order the defendant to make restitution in addition to any other penalty provided for the commission of the crime. Payment of restitution to the victim under this subsection has priority over payment of restitution to the Department or any other governmental entity. 302 Md. at 428 , 488 A.2d 949 (emphasis added in Walczak). The Court of Appeals stated: Section 640(b) provides that restitution may be ordered upon conviction. The statute repeats three times that ¹⁷ restitution depends on damages incurred as a direct result of the crime.

It further states that restitution may be ordered “in addition to any other penalty provided for the commission of the crime.” Clearly, then, restitution is punishment for the crime of which the defendant has been convicted. Restitution depends on the existence of that crime, and the statute authorizes the court to order restitution only where the court is otherwise authorized to impose punishment. Id. at 429 , 488 A.2d 949 (emphasis in original). The Court of Appeals has adhered to the Walczak principle without significant deviation.

Two illustrative cases are Pete v. State, 384 Md. 47 , 862 A.2d 419 (2004), and Goff v. State, 387 Md. 327 , 875 A.2d 132 (2005). Pete was charged in the same charging document with, among other offenses, second degree assault and reckless driving. The reckless driving charge arose out of an accident in which a police vehicle was damaged. The accident took place about two hours after the assault.

Pete was convicted of both charges and, as a condition of probation for the second degree assault, was ordered to make restitution for the assault victim’s medical bills as well as the repair bills for the police vehicle. 384 Md. at 51-53 , 862 A.2d 419 . On appeal, Pete argued that the order requiring him to pay restitution for the police vehicle was an illegal sentence because the damage to the vehicle was not the direct result of the assault. The Court considered the State’s argument that, in a case where the defendant had caused injury to two different victims over the course of a crime spree lasting several hours, restitution would be proper for both victims: if [the State could] obtain a conviction for a crime where restitution may be had, but is not ordered, and another conviction of a related crime, then restitution may be ordered to the appropriate victims as an appropriate sentence under the related crime. Id. at 60 , 862 A.2d 419 .

As an alternative contention, the State argued that “any count for which a defendant is convicted under the same ¹⁸ charging document would be sufficient to satisfy the statutory ‘direct result’ test.” Id. The Court rejected these approaches as inconsistent with the plain meaning of § 11-603 (emphasis in original): The standards governing restitution as a direct penalty for the second degree assault conviction in this case require a particular type of crime, a victim, and damages as a direct result of the crime. We need not engage in a tort causal relationship analysis/ 1 nor weigh the persuasion quotient of an attenuated nexus between the damages to Patrolman Cheesman’s police cruiser and the assault on Ms. Raickle. The General Assembly has required a direct result between the qualifying crime committed and the damages inflicted before restitution may be ordered.

Any attempt by a court to craft a proximate causation, mere nexus, or single charging document substitute would be clearly contrary to the plainly-worded intent of § 11-603. In this case, the collision with, and resultant damage, to Patrolman Cheesman’s cruiser are a direct result of Pete’s reckless driving, not his assault on Ms. Raickle. Id. at 60-61, 862 A.2d 419 (footnote