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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A19-0950

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Victor Manuel Artola,
Appellant.

Filed June 22, 2020
Reversed and remanded
Florey, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-17-5346

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

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Brittany D. Lawonn, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Jennifer K.W. Jesness, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Bryan, Presiding Judge; Florey, Judge; and John Smith,
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
FLOREY, Judge
In this direct appeal from judgments of conviction for criminal sexual conduct,
appellant argues that the district court erred in imposing lifetime terms of conditional
release because the multiple adjudications were entered simultaneously in the same
proceeding, and appellant had no other cr iminal-sexual-conduct convictions. We reverse
and remand.
FACTS
Appellant Victor Manuel Artola was charged by complaint with two counts of first-
degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct.
On January 10, 2019, the parties agreed to a stipulated-evidence trial. On January 29, 2019,
the district court found Artola guilty of all four counts of criminal sexual conduct, stating,
“so having adjudicated you and found you guilty as to Counts 1, 2, 3, and 4, the judgment
of the Court is you are guilty and convicted of those offenses.” The district court sentenced
Artola to 144 months in prison on count one, 70 months in prison, concurrent, on count
two, and imposed a lifetime conditional-release term on each count. Artola appeals.
D E C I S I O N
Artola asserts that he was impermissibly sentenced to terms of lifetime conditional
release because his convictions occurred simultaneously, rather than sequentially. A court
“may at any time correct a sentence not authorized by law.” Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd.
9.

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Minn. Stat. § 609.3455, subd s. 3 -4, 7 (2018) , provides that an offender may be
sentenced to a lifetime conditional-release term if he has a prior sex-offense conviction. In
2016, the supreme court held that lifetime conditional release applies when convictions are
entered separately, even if they occur “in rapid succession.” State v. Nodes, 863 N.W.2d
77, 82 (Minn. 2015). The supreme court reasoned that
[a]s long as one conviction is entered before the sec ond it is a
“prior conviction” under the plain langua ge of the statute.
Therefore . . . the definition of “prior sex offense
conviction” . . . unambiguously includes a conviction for a
separate behavioral incident entered before a second
conviction, wheth er at different hearings or during the same
hearing.

Id. at 82. Applying the reasoning from Nodes, this court recently held that lifetime
conditional-release terms may not be imposed when convictions are entered
simultaneously. State v. Brown, 937 N.W.2d 146, 157 (Minn. App. 2019), review denied
(Minn. Feb. 18, 2020). In Brown, we stated that “convictions adjudicated simultaneously
cannot constitute both a prior conviction and a present offense ” under the statute because
“[w]ith no temporal gap whatsoever between a district court’s adjudication of offenses, no
conviction is entered ‘before’ the other, and no conviction can be prior to the other.” Id. at
156-57.
Here, Artola asserts that his convictions were entered simultaneously, and thus, the
imposition of a lifetime conditional -release term was not permissible. In Nodes, the
supreme court held that the following statement by the court was considered sequential:
I will now formally accept the pleas, and on count one
adjudicate him guilty of criminal sexual conduct in the first
degree, a felony, in violation of Minnesota Statute 609.342,

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subd. 1(a) and subd. 2(a), on or about February 26, 2013, and
also on count three, criminal sexual conduct in the second
degree, a felony, in violation of Min nesota Statute 609.343,
subd. 1(a) and subd. 2(a) on or about March 19, 2013.

863 N.W2d at 79. In contrast, we held in Brown that the following statement by the district
court was a simultaneous conviction:
You were convicted on June 22, 2018, of the crimes of criminal
sexual conduct in the first and second degree . And standing
convicted of those crimes, so you ’re going to be convicted
today on both counts, it is the sentence of law and the judgment
of this c ourt that as punishment, therefore, you shall be
committed to the Commissioner of Corrections of this state for
a period of 216 months on [c]ount 1 and 140 months on [c]ount
2. Count 2 will run concurrently with [c]ount 1.

937 N.W.2d at 155-56. Here, the district court made the following statement: “So having
adjudicated you and found you guilty as to Counts 1, 2, 3, and 4, the judgment of the Court
is you are guilty and convicted of those offenses.” We conclude that, like the district court
in Brown, the district court here convicted Artola of all four counts simultaneously.
Accordingly, we reverse the imp osition of lifetime conditional -release terms and remand
for resentencing in accordance with Brown.
Reversed and remanded.