Lonnell Javey Powell, petitioner, Appellant,

This opinion will be unpublished and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
A16-2074

Lonnell Javey Powell, petitioner,
Appellant,

vs.

State of Minnesota,
Respondent.

Filed July 17, 2017
Affirmed
Reilly, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-11-27891

Lonnell J. Powell, Rush City, Minnesota (pro se appellant)

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

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Michael Richardson, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Cleary, Chief J udge; Johnson, Judge; and Reilly, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
REILLY, Judge
Pro se appellant asks us to reverse the denial of his motion to correct sentence, which
the district court treated as a postconviction petition. We conclude that Powell’s sentencing
challenge may not be treated as a postconviction petition but, because the challenge is
meritless, we affirm.

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FACTS
In September 2011, appellant Lonnell Javey Powell shot and killed a man. After a
bench trial, Powell was convicted of second-degree murder (intentional) and sentenced to
439 months in prison. We affirmed Powell ’s conviction and sentence in an unpublished
opinion. State v. Powell, No. A12-1593, 2013 WL 4504364, at *3–6 (Minn. App. Aug. 26,
2013), review denied (Minn. Nov. 12, 2013).
In May 2016, Powell filed a pro se mo tion to correct sentence. The motion
repeatedly invokes Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 9, and does not cite any statute regarding
postconviction relief. The motion requests a modification of Powell’s sentence to “at most
366 months,” arguing that the 439-month sentence was an upward durational departure that
required but lacked a jury finding or Powell’ s admission of aggrav ating factors. The
district court denied the motion as a petition for postconviction relie f that is untimely,
procedurally barred, and meritless. Powell appeals.
D E C I S I O N
“The court may at any time correct a sent ence not authorized by law.” Minn. R.
Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 9. Appellate courts apply an abuse-of-discretion standard to the
denial of a motion to correct sentence, revi ewing legal conclusions de novo and factual
findings for clear error. Townsend v. State, 834 N.W.2d 736, 738 (Minn. 2013).
A motion to correct sentence may be based on a claim that the sentence was imposed
in violation of the Sixth Amendment and Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296, 124 S. Ct.
2531 (2004), in that the sentence was imposed absent a required jury finding or admission
by the defendant. Reynolds v. State , 888 N.W.2d 125, 130 (Min n. 2016). A filing that

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raises such a claim and invokes Minn. R. Crim . P. 27.03, subd. 9, is a motion to correct
sentence and may not be treated as a petition for postconviction relief. See id. at 129 &
n.2, 130, 132 (concluding that the district court erred by tr eating respondent’s filing as a
postconviction petition where the filing invoked Minn. R. Crim . P. 27.03, subd. 9, and
raised a claim that respondent’s sentence included a ten-year co nditional-release term
absent the required jury finding or admission by respondent).
A motion to correct sentence is not subj ect to the two-year limitations period on
postconviction petitions. Id. at 128, 133. Neither are claims that are properly raised in a
motion to correct sentence subject to procedural bar under the Knaffla rule. See
Washington v. State, 845 N.W.2d 205, 211 (M inn. App. 2014) (stating that this court has
declined to apply the procedural bar under Knaffla to a motion to correct a sentence under
rule 27.03, subd. 9).
In this case, the district court treate d Powell’s motion to co rrect sentence as a
petition for postconviction relie f, even though the motion repe atedly invokes Minn. R.
Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 9, and is based on a Sixth Amendment/ Blakely claim that Powell’s
sentence was an upward durational departure th at required but lacked a jury finding or
Powell’s admission of aggravating fact ors. The court thereby erred. See Reynolds, 888
N.W.2d at 129 n.2 (declining the state’s invitation to adopt a definitive standard of review
when examining a district court’s decision to treat a rule 27.03, subd. 9, motion to correct
sentence as a petition for postconviction relief because, regardless of the standard applied,
the district court erred by treating responde nt’s motion as a petition for postconviction

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relief). Powell’s motion to correct sentence was neither untimely nor procedurally barred,
contrary to the court’s conclusions below.
But we nevertheless affirm on the alte rnative ground that Powell’s sentencing
challenge fails on its merits. Powell had a crim inal-history score of three at the time of
sentencing for second-degree mu rder (intentional). Any sentence between 312 and 439
months therefore was not a departure as to Powell. See Minn. Sent. Guidelines IV (2010)
(establishing that a district court judge may se ntence a defendant with a criminal-history
score of three and convicted of second-degree murder (intentional) to 312 to 439 months
in prison without departing fr om the sentencing guidelines). Because the district court
imposed a presumptive sentence, no jury finding or admission by Powell was required. See
State v. Rourke, 773 N.W.2d 913, 919 (Minn. 2009) (explaining that, under Blakely, any
facts that are “necessary to support a sentence exceeding the maximum authorized by the
facts established by a . . . guilty verdict must be admitted by the defendant or proved to a
jury beyond a reasonable doubt” and stating that “the maximum sentence authorized by a
. . . guilty verdict is the top of the presumptive sentencing range provided in the Minnesota
Sentencing Guidelines’ grid”).
Affirmed.