State of Minnesota, Respondent,

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A19-1476

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Nathaniel Gerome Davenport,
Appellant.

Filed July 27, 2020
Reversed and remanded
Jesson, Judge

Mower County District Court
File No. 50-CR-17-610

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

Kristen Nelsen, Mower County Attorney, Megan A. Burroughs, Assistant County
Attorney, Austin, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Sara J. Euteneuer, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Hooten, Presiding Judge; Wo rke, Judge; and
Jesson, Judge.
S Y L L A B U S
A person charged—prior to the effective date of the 2005 amendment to Minnesota
Statutes section 243.166, subdivision 1(1), 2005 Minn. Laws ch. 136, art. 3, § 8, at 939—
with aiding and abetting criminal sexual conduc t is required to register as a predatory
offender only if they were subject to predatory-offender registration on or after the effective
date of the amendment.

2
O P I N I O N
JESSON, Judge
Appellant Nathaniel Gerome Davenport pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in
October 2001, and the state dismissed a char ge of aiding and abetting fourth-degree
criminal sexual conduct. At the time of his sentencing, Davenport was not required to
register as a predatory offender. But the legislature amended the registration statute
in 2005, requiring a person charged with ai ding and abetting criminal sexual conduct to
register as a predatory offender. Following his release from prison in 2017 on an unrelated
matter, Davenport was told that he must register. Davenport now challenges his
2019 guilty plea to failing to update his predatory-offender-registry address, asserting that
the 2005 amendments did not apply to him, a nd that his plea was not accurate. Because
Davenport was not subject to predatory-offe nder registration, we reverse and remand the
matter to the district court to allow Davenport to withdraw his guilty plea.
FACTS
In November 2000, appellant Nathaniel Gerome Davenport was charged with aiding
and abetting fourth-degree criminal sexual co nduct and disorderly conduct, relating to a
November 23, 2000, incident. 1 In October 2001, Davenport pleaded guilty to disorderly
conduct, and the aiding-and-abetting charge wa s dismissed. The district court sentenced
Davenport to ten days in jail with one year of probation.

1 The underlying facts of the 2000 incident that led to Davenport’s guilty plea are not part
of the record of this appeal.

3
At the time of his conviction for disorderly conduct, Davenport was not required to
register as a predatory offender despite bei ng charged with aiding and abetting criminal
sexual conduct. See Minn. Stat. § 243.166, subd. 1(1) (2000). In 2005, the legislature
amended section 243.166 to require registra tion if a person is charged with aiding and
abetting criminal sexual conduct and is “convic ted of . . . that offense or another offense
arising out of the same set of circumstances.” 2005 Minn. Laws ch. 136, art. 3, § 8, at 939.
The amendment was made “effec tive the day following final enactment and appl[ies] to
persons subject to predatory offender re gistration on or after that date.” Id. at 951. The
governor signed the amendment into law on June 2, 2005. See State of Minnesota, Journal
of the House, 84th Sess. 5050-51 (June 2, 2005).
In 2017, Davenport was discharged fro m prison on an unrelated offense and
informed that he was obligated to register as a predatory offender. Davenport registered at
an address in Austin, Minnesot a in March 2017. Davenport only stayed in Austin for a
short period of time and then moved to North Dakota without updating his
predatory-offender registration or informing the relevant authorities that he was leaving the
state. Davenport resided in North Dakota until sometime the following year.
In March 2017, the state charged Davenpor t with failing to register his change of
address. In accordance with the terms of a plea agreement, Daven port pleaded guilty to
the present failure-to-register charge in exchange for the dismissal of a separate
failure-to-register charge. The state recomm ended a downward durational departure of a
year-and-one-day prison term. The district court sentenced Davenport in accordance with
the plea agreement. Davenport appeals his failure-to-register conviction.

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ISSUE
Is Davenport required to register as a predatory offender?
ANALYSIS
When Davenport was originally sentenced in October 2001 for disorderly conduct,
he was not required to register as a predatory offender. This is because, at the time of
sentencing, section 243.166 di d not require registration when a person was charged with
aiding and abetting criminal sexual conduct. See Minn. Stat. § 243.166, subd. 1(1).
That changed. In 2005, the legislature amended the statute to require registration
when a person is charged with aiding and abe tting criminal sexual conduct if that person
was convicted of another offense arising out of the same set of circumstances. 2005 Minn.
Laws ch. 136, art. 3, § 8, at 939. And the le gislature added an effective date, stating that
the amendments are “effective the day following final enactment and apply to persons
subject to predatory offender regi stration on or after that date .” Id. at 951 (emphasis
added).
Davenport argues that because he was not subject to predatory-offender registration
on the effective date of the amendment, he was not subject to the statute and his conviction
must be reversed.
2 This contention presents a questi on of statutory interpretation, which
we review de novo. State v. Defatte, 928 N.W.2d 338, 340 (Minn. 2019).

2 While Davenport frames his first challenge as a request to reverse his conviction,
appellate courts have a responsibility “to decide cases in accordance with law.” State v.
Hannuksela, 452 N.W.2d 668, 673 n.7 (Minn. 1990 ) . A n d w e n o t e t h a t “ a c r i m i n a l
defendant’s valid guilty plea waives all non-jurisdictional defects arising prior to the entry
of the plea.” State v. Cruz Montanez , 940 N.W.2d 162, 163 (M inn. 2020) (quotation
omitted). In order to be valid , a guilty plea must be accurat e, voluntary, and intelligent.

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We agree with Davenport. It is uncon tested that he was not subject to
predatory-offender registration as of the effective date of the 2005 amendment—
July 3, 2005. Therefore, by the plain langua ge of the 2005 amendment, Davenport is not
required to register as a predatory offender due to his November 2000 charge of aiding and
abetting fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct.
To attempt to persuade us otherwise, the state argues that caselaw requires that the
2005 amendment retroactively applies to Da venport’s 2000 charge. Certainly, precedent
generally supports retroactive application of the registry statutes to offenses committed
prior to their enactment. In State v. Lilleskov, this court pointed out that “[t]he intended
goal of the [registration] statute, to monito r sex offenders released into the community,
would have been substantially impeded if it applied only to offenders who committed their
offense after the statute’s effective date.” 658 N.W.2d 904, 908 (Minn. App. 2003).
Furthermore, this court noted that beca use the purpose of the predatory-offender
registry is to aid law enforcement in subseque nt investigations, retroactive application of
amendments to the statute “allows the legislature to enlarge or reduce the group of offender
registrants as necessary to effectua te the purpose of the statute.” State v. Jedlicka ,

Brown v. State, 449 N.W.2d 180, 182 (Minn. 1989). “The main purpose of the accuracy
requirement is to protect the defendant from pleading guilty to a more serious offense than
he could properly be conv icted of at trial.” Id. And “a defendant who challenges a
judgment of conviction against him based on an invalid guilty plea may . . . appeal directly
to this court.” State v Anyanwu, 681 N.W.2d 411, 413 n.1 (Minn. App. 2004), overruled
on other grounds by Wheeler v. State , 909 N.W.2d 558 (Minn. 20 18). Accordingly, we
treat Davenport’s argument that he could not be found guilty of viol ating the registration
statute because he was not a person required to register as a challenge to the accuracy of
his guilty plea, and thus, its validity.

6
747 N.W.2d 580, 584 (Minn. App. 2008) (q uotation omitted). This is because the
offender-registration statute, according to precedent, is not pu nitive in nature.
State v. Manning, 532 N.W.2d 244, 249 (Minn. App. 1995), review denied (Minn. July 20,
1995). And, as the state points out, this court specifically held in Jedlicka that the 2005
amendments to section 243.166 apply retroactively. 747 N.W.2d at 584.
But while caselaw supports the determinat ion that the predatory-offender-registry
statutes may apply retroactively, retr oactivity is not ironclad. None of the above cases
presented the same procedural dilemma involving Nathaniel Davenport. In Lilleskov, the
appellant was adjudicated delinquent in May 1994 and informed by his probation officer
approximately at the time of sentencing of his registration obligation based on retroactive
application of the 1994 amendm ents to the statute. 658 N.W.2d at 906-07. Under these
facts, we explained that retroactive application was appropriate because “[t]he statute, by
making the offender register upon his release into the community , either on probation or
following release from prison, n ecessarily operates without re gard to the date of his
conviction.” Id. at 908 (emphasis added). Here, unlike Lilleskov, Davenport had already
completed his sentence prior to the enactment of th e 2005 amendments. As a result, we
are not presented with the scenario of an offender beginning or continuing a period of
supervised release following amendment of th e statute, but rather with an offender who
had already completed his sentence and was no longer on probation at the time the statute
was amended.
Our determination in Jedlicka that the 2005 amendmen ts apply retroactively
likewise can be harmonized with the determination that the 2005 amendments do not apply

7
to Davenport. In Jedlicka, this court applied the 2005 amendment to retroactively absolve
Jedlicka of the obligation to register, because under the amendment his conviction for
burglary no longer trigged the registration re quirement. 747 N.W.2d at 582-83. Unlike
Davenport, Jedlicka was a person subject to predatory-offender registration as of the
effective date of the amendment. It was only by retroactive operation of the
2005 amendments that he was no longer a person subject to registration.
In sum, Davenport’s case presents the converse factual scenario from Lilleskov and
Jedlicka. Their retroactivity analyses do not apply here. Therefore, we return to the plain
language of the amendment. Under the e ffective-date provision, Davenport was not a
person subject to predatory-offender registration. Thus, while the legislature has the ability
to enlarge or reduce the group of offenders subject to registration, id. at 584, here, the
legislature did not set the effective date of the amendment to include someone like
Davenport—someone who was not subject to registration on or after July 3, 2005. Because
the amendment did not obligate Davenport to register, he pleaded guilty to an offense for
which he could not properly be convicted of at trial. See Brown , 449 N.W.2d at 182.
Therefore, we reverse and remand the matter ba ck to the district court so that Davenport
may withdraw his inaccurate guilty plea.3

3 Because we remand Davenport’s guilty plea on the basis that the 2005 amendments to
Minnesota Statutes section 243.166, subdivision 1(1), were not effective against him, we
do not reach his arguments regard ing whether the record made at the time he entered his
guilty plea established that he knowingly violated the registration statute.

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D E C I S I O N
Because Davenport was not subject to predat ory-offender registration on or after the
effective date of the 2005 amendments to Minnesota Statutes section 243.166,
subdivision 1(1), he was not required to regi ster as a predatory offender due to his
November 2000 charge of aiding and abetting fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. On
this basis, we reverse and remand the matter to the district court to allow Davenport to
withdraw his guilty plea to failing to register as a predatory offender.
Reversed and remanded.