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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A16-1312

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Jacob Lee Kivela-Sandnas,
Appellant.

Filed June 19, 2017
Affirmed
Randall, Judge*

St. Louis County District Court
File No. 69VI-CR-15-588

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

Mark S. Rubin, St. Louis County Attorney, Sharon N. Chadwick, Assistant County
Attorney, Virginia, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Michael McLaughlin, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Considered and decided by Connolly, Presiding Judge; Larkin, Judge; and Randall,
Judge.

* Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
RANDALL, Judge
Appellant challenges his conviction of second-degree possession of a controlled
substance, arguing that the 2016 Drug Sentencing Reform Act (DSRA) applies
retroactively to reduce his conviction to fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance.
We affirm.
FACTS
On March 12, 2015, appellant Jacob Lee Kivela-Sandnas sold 7.68 grams of
methamphetamine to a confidential informant (CI) of the police. Then, on March 24, 2015,
appellant sold 3.7 grams of methamphetamine to another CI.
The state charged appellant with first-degree sale of a controlled substance in
violation of Minn. Stat. § 152.021, subd. 1(1) (2014), and second-degree possession of a
controlled substance in violation of Minn. Stat. § 152.022, subd. 2(a)(1) (2014). Appellant
entered a guilty plea to second- degree possession of a controlled substance and
acknowledged that he was in possession of at least six grams of methamphetamine.
Appellant made the plea pursuant to an agreement that the charge for first-degree sale of a
controlled substance would be dismissed and that sentencing would be concurrent with his
sentence in a separate court file.
The district court entered judgment of conviction when appellant failed to appear at
the originally-scheduled sentencing hearing. At the second sentencing hearing, the district
court sentenced appellant to 75 months in prison, the presumptive sentence with his
criminal history. Near the conclusion of the hearing, appellant asked the district court if
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he would be entitled to relief if the new drug- offender sentencing grid became effective.
The district court told appellant that it would have to wait to see what the legislature does
in order to answer his question.
On May 22, 2016, the governor signed into law the DSRA. 2016 Minn. Laws ch.
160, § 22, at 592. One effect of the DSRA is that the possession of six grams of
methamphetamine, which appellant acknowledged, is now classified as a fifth-degree
controlled substance crime. 2016 Minn. Laws ch. 160, § 7, at 584; see also Minn.
Stat. § 152.025, subd. 2(1) (2016). Under the new drug -offender sentencing grid, the
presumptive sentence for a fifth-degree controlled substance crime based on a criminal
history score of four is a seventeen- month presumptive stayed sentence, and the district
court has the discretion to sentence an offender to “up to one year of confinement and other
non-jail sanctions . . . as conditions of probation.” Minn. Sent. Guidelines 4.C (2016). The
DSRA provision amending fifth-degree controlled substance crimes became “effective
August 1, 2016, and applies to crimes committed on or after that date.” 2016 Minn. Laws
ch. 160, § 7, at 585. The provision of the DSRA directing the Sentencing Guidelines
Commission (the commission) to modify the new drug-offender sentencing grid became
“effective the day following final enactment.” 2016 Minn. Laws ch. 160, § 18, at 591.
This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
Appellant argues that he should be resentenced in accordance with the DSRA
because his case was pending when the act took effect. A case is pending until the time
that direct appeals are exhausted or the time for filing a direct appeal has elapsed. State v.
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Losh, 721 N.W.2d 886, 893-94 (Minn. 2006). The interpretation of a sentencing statute is
a question of law, which this court reviews de novo. State v. Noggle, 881 N.W.2d 545, 547
(Minn. 2016). “The object of all interpretation and construction of laws is to ascertain and
effectuate the intention of the legislature.” Minn. Stat. § 645.16 (2016). When the
legislature’s intent is clear from the unambiguous statutory language, we apply the statute’s
plain meaning. State v. Hayes, 826 N.W.2d 799, 804 (Minn. 2013).
“No law shall be construed to be retroactive unless clearly and manifestly so
intended by the legislature.” Minn. Stat. § 645.21 (2016); see also State v. Traczyk, 421
N.W.2d 299, 300 (Minn. 1988), as amended (Minn. Mar. 4, 1988). “When a section or
part of a law is amended . . . the new provisions shall be construed as effective only from
the date when the amendment bec ame effective.” Minn. Stat. § 645.31, subd. 1 (2016).
However, appellant first asserts that he is entitled to have his offense reduced from second-
degree possession of a controlled substance to fifth-degree possession of a controlled
substance because “m itigating laws should apply to pending cases” and the DSRA does
not contain clear language that prevents application of the law’s mitigating effects to
pending cases. Appellant relies on the common law principle first announced in State v.
Coolidge that “a statute mitigating punishment is applied to acts committed before its
effective date, as long as no final judgment has been reached.” 282 N.W.2d 511, 514
(Minn. 1979) (citing People v. Rossi, 555 P.2d 1313, 1314 (Cal. 1976)).
In Coolidge, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that the 1977 repeal of the law
under which the defendant was convicted applied to reduce the defendant’s sentence. Id.
at 515. Subsequently, the supreme court applied the Coolidge principle to resentence an
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appellant where the statute under which the appellant was sentenced was repealed and
replaced with a new statute providing for a lower maximum punishment. See State v.
Hamilton, 289 N.W.2d 470, 474-75 (Minn. 1979); Ani v. State, 288 N.W.2d 719, 720
(Minn. 1980). However, in State v. Edstrom, the supreme court limited the Coolidge
principle and held that it did not apply where “the legislature ha[d] clearly indicated its
intent that the statutes have no effect on crimes committed before the effective date of the
act, August 1, 1975, ” and the petitioner committed the underlying crime before the
effective date. 326 N.W.2d 10, 10 (Minn. 1982). Together, Coolidge and Edstrom indicate
that newly-enacted laws reducing punishment for a criminal offense apply to all cases that
are not final when the law takes effect, except when the legislature states otherwise. Id.
Here, like in Edstrom , the legislature stated the effective date of the DSRA’s
amendments to the controlled-substance-crime statutes and that the amendments would
apply prospectively to crimes committed on or after August 1, 2016. In Edstrom, however,
the statute provided, “Except for section 8 of this act, crimes committed prior to the
effective date of this act are not affected by its provisions.” 1975 Minn. Laws ch. 374,
§ 12, at 1251. Appellant relies on this language in an attempt to distinguish Edstrom by
asserting that Edstrom expressly excluded retroactive application of its mitigating
provisions, while the DSRA does not contain language stating that the ameliorative
amendments apply only to crimes committed on or after the effective date. Appellant also
asserts that Edstrom is distinguishable because that decision occurred in the postconviction
context, while this case is on direct appeal.
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Neither Edstrom nor subsequent caselaw require a specific provision excluding
retroactive application for the effective-date language to apply only prospectively. After
Edstrom, this court has held that the Coolidge principle does not apply in two published
decisions. In State v. McDonnell, this court held that the Coolidge principle did not apply
where the 2003 amendment to the statute under which the appellants were charged stated
that the amendment “is effective August 1, 2003, and applies to violations committed on
or after that date.” 686 N.W.2d at 846 (quoting 2003 Minn. Laws 1st Spec. Sess. ch. 2, art.
9, § 1, at 1446). Similarly, in State v. Basal, this court declined to retroactively apply a
2007 amendment to crimes committed before the effective date where “the legislature
expressly provided that the [amendment] would become effective January 1, 2008.” 763
N.W.2d at 336 (citing 2007 Minn. Laws ch. 147, art. 2, § 64, at 1901). Further, both
McDonnell and Basal involved direct appeals and applied Edstrom without mention of its
postconviction context. Thus, appellant is not entitled to a reduced sentence because the
effective-date language of the DSRA indicates that the legislature did not intend for the
DSRA’s mitigating provisions to apply retroactively.
Next, appellant contends that he is entitled to a reduction in his offense level because
construing the DSRA to apply only to crimes committed on or after August 1, 2016, “would
undermine that statute’s broader goals” of mitigating punishment for low-level drug
offenders and decreasing incarceration costs to redirect funds toward treatment and
rehabilitation. The DSRA included provisions that both mitigate and aggravate
punishment for offenders of various controlled-substance crimes. For example, in addition
to reducing appellant’s crime of possessing at least six grams of methamphetamine to a
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fifth-degree controlled substance offense, the DSRA added a subdivision containing
factors that may be used to aggravate an offense. 2016 Minn. Laws ch. 160, §§ 2 , 7, at
576-77, 584. Accordingly, the goals of the DSRA are not only to mitigate punishment for
certain offenses, but to increase punishment for other offenses. As analyzed above, the
DSRA does not apply retroactively to crimes committed before August 1, 2016. Thus, the
goals of DSRA also do not apply retroactively to appellant’s crimes.
The legislature indicated that it did not intend for the amendments contained in the
DSRA to apply retroactively when it included language stating that the amendments would
become effective August 1, 2016, and would apply to crimes committed on or after that
date. Appellant is not entitled to an offense-level reduction. He committed his offense
prior to the effective date of the relevant DSRA provision.
Affirmed.