State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A16-1066

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Dashondra Webster,
Appellant.

Filed April 24, 2017
Affirmed
Ross, Judge

Scott County District Court
File No. 70-CR-16-5716

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Ronald Hocevar, Scott County Attorney, Todd P. Zettler, Assistant County Attorney,
Shakopee, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, John Donovan, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Stauber, Judge; and Rodenberg,
Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
ROSS, Judge
Appellant Dashondra Webster pleaded guilty to domestic assault after he admitted
to grabbing his girlfriend by the wrists, yelling at her, and intending “to cause fear in her.”
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The district court accepted Webster’s plea and convicted him. On appeal, Webster argues
that the district court accepted an inaccurate plea because his admission failed to establish
that he intended to cause “fear of immediate bodily injury.” Because Webster’s admissions
necessarily imply the requisite intent, we affirm.
FACTS
Savage police responded to reports of a domestic disturbance at a motel in Savage
in March 2016. They met C.F., who said she and her boyfriend , Webster, had been in an
argument and that Webster grabbed her wrist and pinned it against her chest. She told police
that she was afraid that Webster would hit her. A witness accompanying C.F. said that
Webster opened the door to the car where C.F. was sitting and grabbed C.F.’s wrist, yelling
and swinging his hand. Webster told police that he went to the motel to confront C.F. for
infidelity. But he denied touching or threatening C.F. and claimed that C.F. and the witness
had fabricated their stories.
The state charged Webster with domestic assault with intent to cause fear of
immediate bodily harm within ten years of a previous qualifying offense. Webster appeared
for a plea hearing and acknowledged that he had reviewed the plea petition in its entirety,
“line by line and page by page,” and that he had enough time to discuss with his attorney
his decision to plead guilty. The petition included Webster’s statement that he “grabbed
[his] girlfriend by the wrist and yelled at her causing fear.”
The court examined Webster, in relevant part, as follows:
Q: All right. Mr. Webster, can you tell me what it is that you
did on Marc h 21st of 2016 that makes you guilty of
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domestic assault, fear, subsequent violation? Where were
you and what did you do?
A: Savage, Minnesota, at the hotel. Went to approach my
girlfriend, [C.F.], about some allegations about her cheating
on me. I gave he r the opportunity to tell me what she did
and what was going on. And I grabbed her wrists. And then
I proceeded to call her names and curse her out.

Q: Okay. When you grabbed her wrists and cursed her out, do
you think that she was fearful?
A: Yes, sir.

Q: And did you, in fact, intend to cause fear in her at that point?
A: Yes, sir.
. . . .
Q: As you stand here today, do you believe you’re, in fact,
guilty of this crime?
A: Yes, sir.

The district court accepted the guilty plea and entered a judgment of conviction.
Webster appeals.
D E C I S I O N
Webster argues that he should be allowed to withdraw his guilty plea . A defendant
may challenge his guilty plea on direct appeal from his judgment of conviction. State v.
Miller, 849 N .W.2d 94, 97 (Minn. App. 2014). H e can withdraw his guilty plea at “any
time” if withdrawal is necessary to correct a manifest injustice. Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.05,
subd. 1. A manifest injustice exists if the guilty plea is invalid. State v. Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d
90, 94 (Minn. 2010). And the plea is invalid if it was not accurate, voluntary, and
intelligent. Id. We review a challenged guilty plea de novo. Id.

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Webster argues that his guilty plea was inaccurate because he did not present an
adequate factual basis to support it. A guilty plea is inaccurate if it rests on an inadequate
factual basis. State v. Ecker , 524 N.W.2d 712, 716 (Minn. 1994). Th e adequate-factual-
basis requirement protects defendants from pleading guilty to more serious crimes than
they could have been convicted of at trial. See Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d at 94. An adequate
factual basis will establish all the elements of the crime. State v. Misquadace, 629 N.W.2d
487, 491–92 (Minn. App. 2001), aff’d, 644 N.W.2d 65 (Minn. 2002).
Webster argues that the factual basis for his guilty plea was inadequate because he
did not admit that he intended to cause “fear of immediate bodily harm.” We think he
admitted just that when he presented the factual basis for his plea. Whoever commits an
act against a family or household member “with intent to cause fear in another of immediate
bodily harm or death” is guilty of misdemeanor domestic assault. Minn. Stat. § 609.2242,
subd. 1(1) (2014). If that assault occurs “within ten years of a previous qualified domestic
violence-related offense conviction,” then the offender is guilty of a gross misdemeanor.
Id., subd. 2. “With intent to” means “that the actor either has a purpose to do the thing or
cause the result specified or believes that the act, if successful, will cause that result.” Minn.
Stat. § 609.02, subd. 9(4) (2014).
Webster’s admission that he intended to cause C.F. to be fearful, he argues, was
insufficient to establish his specific intent to cause her fear of immediate bodily harm. He
proffers a variety o f other things he might have intended by his admission that he
“intend[ed] to cause fear in her.” He says that maybe he meant that he intended C.F. to feel
fear that she was caught cheating, fear that Webster would break up with her, fear of what
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Webster might say about her to others, or fear of what he might do to the person she was
cheating with. Referencing the statutory definition of “with intent to,” Webster maintains
that the record fails to establish that he “either had the purpose to cause fear of i mmediate
bodily harm or believed that the act, if successful, would cause that result.”
With the clear perspective of hindsight, we can say that the district court might have
pressed further so that Webster could expressly say that the “fear” he intended to cause was
a “fear of immediate bodily harm.” See Ecker, 524 N.W.2d at 716 (stating that it is the
district court’s responsibility to ensure an adequate factual basis in the record). But the
district court can accept a guilty plea based not only on the admitted facts at the plea hearing
but also on reasonable inferences from those facts. See Nelson v. State , 880 N.W.2d 852,
861 (Minn. 2016). And “a defendant may not withdraw his plea simply because the court
failed to elicit proper responses if the record contains sufficient evidence to support the
conviction.” Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d at 94. And we may look to the criminal complaint to
determine whether a defendant’s plea was accurate because, by pleading guilty, a defendant
effectively admits to the allegations contained in the complaint. State v. Trott, 338 N.W.2d
248, 252 (Minn. 1983).
Webster’s admissions at the plea hearing, complemented by the facts alleged in the
complaint, defeat his argument. Webster admitted to “call[ing] [C.F.] names and curs[ing]
her out.” He admitted that he went to confront her about “allegations” that she had cheated
on him. And he admitted to grabbing her wrists. The complaint includes the additional
details that Webster pinned C.F.’s arm against her chest and swung his hand about while
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yelling at her. This adds temporal and substantive context for his admission that “in fact,
[he] intend[ed] to cause fear in her at that point.”
These circumstances canno t reasonably support Webster’s contention that his
admission to intending to cause “fear” in C.F. “at that point” refers to some hypothetical
future fear or fear of something other than fear of her immediate physical harm. In context,
the “fear” Webster admitted he intended to cause related to his actions, which were verbally
and physically aggressive toward C.F. exclusively. His grabbing, cursing, yelling, and
swinging his hand around in anger while confronting C.F. specifically about her supposed
infidelity informed the district court that the fear he intended was the fear that he might
harm C.F.—physically and immediate ly. The circumstances afford no other reasonable
conclusion.
Webster’s plea was accurate.
Affirmed.