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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A18-0144

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Shawn Troy Carlson,
Appellant.

Filed September 17, 2018
Reversed
Reyes, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-08-31921

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

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin Coun ty Attorney, Brittany D. Lawon n, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

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

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Reyes, Judge; and Florey, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
REYES, Judge
In this appeal from an amended resentencing order, appellant argues that the district
court lacked jurisdiction in 2017 to reinstate a ten-year condi tional-release term to his

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sentence for failing to register as a predatory offender after the district court had previously
vacated the same ten-year conditional-release term in 2016. We reverse.
D E C I S I O N
In 1994, the district court convicted appellant Shawn Troy Carlson of second-degree
criminal sexual conduct, requiring him to register as a predato ry offender. On August 5,
2008, appellant pleaded guilty to and was convicted of failing to register as a predatory
offender under Minn. Stat. § 243.166, subd. 5a (2006). The dis trict court sentenced
appellant to 14 months’ imprisonment, stayed for a term of three years.
Over the next year, appellant twice violated the terms of his p robation during the
stay of imposition. At the hearing for his second probation vi olation in May 2009, the
district court executed appellant’s sentence, with credit for 1 51 days served, and imposed
a ten-year conditional-release term pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 2 43.166, subd. 5a (2006),
which requires that the district court impose a ten-year conditional-release term in addition
to any prison time for a predatory offender who is convicted of failing to register while
assigned a risk-level-III designation. The district court did so without an admission by
appellant or a jury finding that appellant was a risk-level-III predatory offender at the time
of the offense.
Aside from a previous conviction, “any fact that increases the penalty for a crime
beyond the prescribed statutory maximum must be submitted to a jury, and proved beyond
a reasonable doubt.” Blakely v. Washington , 542 U.S. 296, 301, 124 S. Ct. 2531, 2536
(2004) (quotation omitted). In State v. Her , 862 N.W.2d 692, 695-96 (Minn. 2015), the
supreme court held that a district court may not impose a ten-year conditional-release term

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unless the defendant admits to the elements constituting a risk-level-III designation under
Minn. Stat. § 244.052 (2008), or a jury makes that finding beyond a reasonable doubt at a
Blakely hearing. Following the Her decision, appellant moved the district court to amend
his sentence and vacate the ten-year conditional-release term p ursuant to Minn. R. Crim.
P. 27.03, subd. 9, because he had not admitted to the elements required for a risk-level-III
designation and a jury had not made that factual determination in 2009 when the district
court imposed that term.
In a November 2016 order, the district court vacated appellant’s conditional-release
term and ordered appellant to return to the district court for a Blakely sentencing trial. But
before appellant did so, the supreme court released State v. Meger, 901 N.W.2d 418 (Minn.
2017), which held that the rule announced in Her was not retroactive in application. Id. at
425. In light of Meger, the state then moved to reinstate the conditional-release term that
the district court had previously vacated. The district court vacated its previous order and
reinstated appellant’s conditional-release term in a November 2017 order.
Appellant challenges the district court’s reinstatement of his conditional-release
term, arguing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to re instate his term of conditional
release in November 2017 after vacating it in November 2016. The state argues Minn. R.
Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 9, provided the district court with the authority to reinstate appellant’s
statutorily required conditional -release term. “Questions conc erning the authority and
j u r i s d i c t i o n o f t h e l o w e r c o u r t s a r e l e g a l i s s u e s s u b j e c t t o d e novo review.” State v.
Pflepsen, 590 N.W.2d 759, 763 (Minn. 1999).

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Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 9 , states that “[t]he court may at any time correct a
sentence not authorized by law.” The district court generally may correct a sentence
without violating a defendant’s due-process rights so long as h e or she has been given
notice and has not developed a crystallized expectation as to t he finality of his or her
sentence. See State v. Calmes , 632 N.W.2d 641, 648 (Minn. 2001) (upholding
reinstatement of statutorily required conditional-release term after appellant’s prison
sentence had expired but while a ppellant remained on supervised release). However, a
defendant’s sentence may not be modified after a sentence has expired. State v. Hannam,
792 N.W.2d 862, 865 (Minn. App. 2011). This “operates as a dis charge that bars further
sanctions for a criminal conviction.” State v. Purdy, 589 N.W.2d 496, 498 (Minn. App.
1999). Thereafter, “the court no longer has jurisdiction to mo dify even what may be an
unauthorized sentence.” Martinek v. State, 678 N.W.2d 714, 718 (Minn. App. 2004).
Here, after appellant had completed his prison sentence, inclu ding the applicable
period of supervised release 1, the district court vacated appellant’s conditional-release
term, which was the last remaining condition of his sentence. See Her, 862 N.W.2d at 695
(conditional-release term is condition of sentence). Therefore , appellant’s sentence
expired. This resulted in the d istrict court divesting itself of jurisdiction over this matter
and losing its ability to reimpose the conditional-release term despite the supreme court’s
holding in Meger. A court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction when it does not h ave the

1 Under Minnesota law, appellant’s total “executed sentence” consists of two parts: “(1) a
specified minimum term of impris onment that is equal to two-thi rds of the executed
sentence; and (2) a specified max imum supervised release term t hat is equal to one-third
of the executed sentence.” Minn. Stat. §244.101, subd. 1 (2017).

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authority to decide a particular action or question but decides it nonetheless. Vang v. State,
788 N.W.2d 111, 117 (Minn. 2010). “When the court lacks subjec t-matter jurisdiction
over a proceeding at the time it imposes a sentence, the sentence is void.” Id. As a result,
the district court erred in reimposing the term of conditional release because it did not have
the jurisdictional authority to do so.
Reversed.