State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A18-1288

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Lewonda Jones,
Appellant.

Filed May 6, 2019
Affirmed
Cleary, Chief Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-17-22603

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Jonathan P. Schmidt, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Chang Y. Lau, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Cleary, Chief Judge; Hooten, Judge; and Stauber,
Judge.


 Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by ap pointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.

2
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
CLEARY, Chief Judge
Appellant Lewonda Jones challenges the denial of her presenten ce motion to
withdraw her guilty plea to malicious punishment of a child. On appeal, Jones argues that
her plea was involuntary because the state failed to fulfill it s promise that she be released
from custody on the day that she entered her plea. Because Jones’s release was not a term
of the plea agreement, we affirm.
FACTS
On September 6, 2017, the Brookl yn Center Police Department re ceived a report
that Jones, angry at her seven-year-old daughter for taking her earrings, struck her
daughter, resulting in visible injuries to her back, arms, and legs. Respondent State of
Minnesota charged Jones with malicious punishment of a child un der Minn. Stat.
§ 609.377, subd. 1 (2016).
Prior to the start of trial, the state offered Jones a plea ag reement, which involved a
stay of imposition of sentence for two years and no additional jail time in exchange for her
guilty plea. Jones rejected the state’s offer, and the case proceeded to trial.
During voir dire, the district court instructed Jones to have no contact with any of
the jurors. However, an issue arose during a break where multi ple jurors heard Jones
talking loudly on her cell phone about her case outside the cou rtroom. The district court
excused the jury panel and requested a new panel. After the second jury panel arrived and
voir dire resumed, the district court again instructed Jones to have no contact with the jurors
and to conduct any cell phone con versations on a different floo r. The following day, a

3
j u r o r a p p r o a c h e d J o n e s ’ s a t t o r n e y a n d t o l d h e r t h a t s h e o v e r h e ard Jones talking on her
phone about the trial in the women’s restroom.
The state requested that the district court revoke Jones’s con ditional release and take
her into custody, arguing that Jones committed constructive civ il contempt pursuant to
Minn. Stat. § 588.01, subd. 3(3) (2018), by violating the district court’s orders.1 The district
court granted the state’s request, reasoning that Jones violated its orders on two occasions
when she spoke on her cell phone in the presence of jurors after being instructed not to do
so by the district court. The district court ordered that Jones be taken into custody for the
remainder of the proceedings.
Rather than continue with trial, Jones entered a Norgaard plea,2 stating that she was
guilty of the offense and a jury would likely find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In
exchange for Jones’s guilty plea, the state agreed that her sentence would include a stay of
imposition of sentence for two years and no additional jail time, on the conditions that she
remain law-abiding and cooperate with the presentence investiga tion. The district court
found that Jones gave a knowing , intelligent, and voluntary waiver of her trial rights, but
stated that it would not accept Jones’s plea until sentencing. The district court also ordered
that Jones be released from custody on conditional release and issued a conditional-release

1 At the time of trial, Jones was subject to conditions of relea se, including the condition
that she remain law-abiding.
2 A Norgaard plea is one in which the defendant “claims a loss of memory, th rough
amnesia or intoxication, regarding the circumstances of the off ense,” but pleads guilty
because “the record establishes that the defendant is guilty or likely to be convicted of the
crime charged.” State v. Johnson , 867 N.W.2d 210, 215 (Minn. App. 2015) (quotations
omitted), review denied (Minn. Sept. 29, 2015).

4
order that same day. Despite the district court’s order, Jones was held until the following
morning.
Prior to sentencing, Jones move d to withdraw her guilty plea, arguing that it was
fair and just for her to withdraw her plea because she only agreed to enter a guilty plea for
the sole purpose of being released from custody on that day. T he district court denied
Jones’s motion, finding that Jones had multiple opportunities to discuss the case with her
attorney and the fact that she spent the night in jail after pleading guilty did not render her
plea invalid. The district court accepted Jones’s guilty plea, convicted her of malicious
punishment of a child, and sentenced her in accordance with the terms of the plea
agreement. This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
Jones contends that the district court erred in denying her pr esentence motion to
withdraw her Norgaard plea. “A defendant has no absolute right to withdraw a guilty plea
after entering it.” Taylor v. State, 887 N.W.2d 821, 823 (Minn. 2016) (quotation omitted).
Plea withdrawal may be permitted under two circumstances. State v. Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d
90, 93 (Minn. 2010). First, a district court must allow a defe ndant to withdraw a guilty
plea “[a]t any time” if “withdrawal is necessary to correct a manifest injustice.” Minn. R.
Crim. P. 15.05, subd. 1. Second, a district court may allow a defendant to “withdraw a plea
at any time before sentence if it is fair and just to do so.” Id., subd. 2.
Manifest-Injustice Standard
Under the manifest-injustice standard, Jones argues that her g uilty plea was not
voluntary because it was induced b y the state’s unfulfilled pro mise that she would be

5
released from custody on the day that she entered her plea.3 “A manifest injustice exists if
a guilty plea is not valid.” Barrow v. State, 862 N.W.2d 686, 691 (Minn. 2015). “To be
valid, a guilty plea must be ac curate, voluntary, and intellige nt.” Taylor, 887 N.W.2d at
823. The voluntariness requirement ensures that a defendant is not pleading guilty due to
improper pressure or coercion. State v. Trott , 338 N.W.2d 248, 251 (Minn. 1983). If a
plea is involuntary, the manifest-injustice standard requires its withdrawal. Minn. R. Crim.
P. 15.05, subd. 1; see also State v. Theis, 742 N.W.2d 643, 646 (Minn. 2007) (examining
manifest injustice as a threshold matter although the appellant only raised the fair-and-just
standard on appeal).
Plea agreements represent bargain ed-for understandings between the state and
defendants, where each party for egoes rights and assumes risks in exchange for certainty
regarding the outcome of criminal proceedings. State v. Meredyk, 754 N.W.2d 596, 603
( M i n n . A p p . 2 0 0 8 ) . C o n t r a c t l a w p r i n c i p l e s a r e r e l e v a n t t o t h e interpretation of plea
agreements. State v. Spaeth, 552 N.W.2d 187, 194 (Minn. 1996). In order to determine
whether the parties have honored a plea agreement, we first loo k to what the parties
“reasonably understood to be th e terms of the agreement.” State v. Brown , 606 N.W.2d
670, 674 (Minn. 2000) (quotation omitted). And when a guilty p lea rests on a promise or
agreement of the state, such promise must be fulfilled. Id. If a promise within a plea

3 The state asserts that Jones forfeited the argument that her g uilty plea was involuntary
under the manifest-injustice sta n d a r d b e c a u s e s h e d i d n o t p r e s ent this argument to the
district court. But a defendant may challenge her guilty plea on direct appeal from the
judgment of conviction. State v. Miller, 849 N.W.2d 94, 97 (Minn. App. 2014). Because
this is the direct appeal from Jones’s judgment of conviction, the state’s argument is
unpersuasive.

6
agreement is not fulfilled, the defendant cannot be said to have voluntarily entered into the
plea agreement. Id. Determining the terms of a plea agreement is a factual inquiry, but the
interpretation and enforcement of plea agreements are issues of law that we review de novo.
State v. Rhodes, 675 N.W.2d 323, 326 (Minn. 2004).
Here, in exchange for Jones’s guilty plea to malicious punishm ent of a child, the
plea agreement included
a stay of imposition of sentence, no additional jail time to
serve, on the conditions that she remains law abiding and
cooperates with the pre-sentence investigation pending
sentencing. The agreement contemplates that the defendant
will be released from custody today because there will be no
additional jail time unless she commits a new crime or won’t
cooperate with the pre-sentence investigation.

Jones affirmed her understanding of this agreement on the record after consulting with her
attorney. A plea petition, signed by Jones, also memorialized the terms of the agreement.
In arguing that the state failed to honor the plea agreement, Jones characterizes the
state’s language regarding her release from custody as a promis e. But in doing so, Jones
takes the state’s language out of context. Our review of the t ranscript, as quoted above,
reveals that the state “contemplate[d]” that Jones would be rel eased from custody on the
day that she entered her plea; the state did not expressly agree that Jones would be released
from custody on that day. As the district court found, the ter ms of this plea agreement
mirrored the terms of the state’s offer before trial. At trial, the prosecutor stated that it was
her understanding that Jones intended to plead guilty pursuant to the state’s previous offer,
which included a stay of imposition of sentence for two years a nd no additional jail time.
Additionally, the signed plea petition did not include the term that Jones would be released

7
from custody after entering her plea. And Jones’s change in ci rcumstances did not alter
the plea agreement because the term that she receive no additio nal jail time reasonably
relates to her sentence for malicious punishment of a child, rather than the contempt charge
that resulted from her conduct during voir dire. Moreover, the district court ordered that
Jones be released from custody and issued a conditional-release order on the day that she
entered her guilty plea. The plea agreement did not contain the express promise that Jones
would be released from custody a fter entering her plea. Consid ering all the relevant
surrounding circumstances, Jones’s Norgaard plea was voluntary and valid.
Fair-and-Just Standard
Jones presents the same argumen t under the fair-and-just standard, arguing that the
district court abused its discre tion by denying her request to withdraw her guilty plea
because the state reneged on its promise to release her on the day that she entered her plea.
But in the district court, Jones did not claim that the state failed to fulfill a term of the plea
agreement; instead, she asserted that she entered her guilty plea “with little thought” so that
she would be released from custody, and that she did not consid er the legal consequences
of entering a guilty plea to malicious punishment of a child. See Roby v. State, 547 N.W.2d
354, 357 (Minn. 1996) (noting that an appellate court “generall y will not decide issues
which were not raised before the district court.”).
The fair-and-just standard is “a less demanding standard than the manifest-injustice
standard, but it does not permit withdrawal of a guilty plea fo r simply any reason.” State
v. Townsend, 872 N.W.2d 758, 764 (Minn. App. 2015) (quotation omitted). The fair-and-
just standard “requires distric t courts to give ‘due considerat ion’ to two factors: (1) the

8
reasons a defendant advances to support withdrawal and (2) prejudice granting the motion
would cause the State given reliance on the plea.” Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d at 97 (quoting
Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.05, subd. 2). “Even when there is no prejudice to the state, a district
court may deny plea withdrawal . . . if the defendant fails to advance valid reasons why
withdrawal is fair and just.” State v. Cubas , 838 N.W.2d 220, 224 (Minn. App. 2013),
review denied (Minn. Dec. 31, 2013). The decision to withdraw a presentence guilty plea
is left to the sound discretion of the district court and will be reversed only in the “rare
case” that the district court abused that discretion. Kim v. State , 434 N.W.2d 263, 266
(Minn. 1989).
Here, the district court did not find the reasons advanced by Jones to be persuasive.
In denying Jones’s motion to wit hdraw her guilty plea, the dist rict court noted that Jones
met with her attorney on multiple occasions before she entered her plea and went through
both the regular plea petition and Norgaard addendum with her attorney. The district court
determined that the terms contained in Jones’s plea petition we re the same terms that the
prosecutor stated on the record before jury selection. The dis trict court further noted
Jones’s history with the crimina l justice system and familiarit y with “short periods of
incarceration,” reasoning that Jones’s criminal history “further negates any argument that
the fact that [Jones was] briefly in custody during jury selection and during the plea because
of [her] own actions . . . [her] stay in jail overnight post-pl ea . . . renders [her] plea
invalid.”
After Jones entered her guilty plea, the district court determ ined that her plea was
informed and voluntary after extensive questioning. Jones testified that she had reviewed

9
her plea petition and Norgaard addendum multiple times with her attorney in the days
preceding the trial. In response to the district court’s quest ion as to whether she wanted
more time to discuss the petition with her attorney, Jones answered that she did not. And
when Jones appeared to claim in nocence while attempting to ente r her guilty plea, the
district court ordered trial to continue. During a break, Jone s and her attorney discussed
the plea, and once the proceeding was recalled, Jones stated that she was prepared to enter
a guilty plea. The district cour t also ensured that all of Jon es’s questions about her plea
had been answered. The only question that Jones asked during the course of entering her
guilty plea was why the district court held her in constructive civil contempt during voir
dire. The record supports the district court’s conclusion that Jones was informed of and
understood the consequences of her plea.
Because Jones did not satisfy her burden of showing that it wa s fair and just to allow
her to withdraw her plea, the district court was not required t o consider whether the state
would be prejudiced by the plea withdrawal. Cubas, 838 N.W.2d at 224.
Affirmed.