State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by
Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A20-1325

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Shanin Trevon English,
Appellant.

Filed August 9, 2021
Affirmed
Segal, Chief Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-19-22325

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 A ppellate Public Defender, Benjamin J. Butler, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Bjorkman, Presiding Judge; Segal, Chief Judge; and
Reyes, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
SEGAL, Chief Judge
Appellant brin gs this appeal arguing that the district court erred by denying his
motion to withdraw his guilty plea based on his attorney’s conflict of interest. We affirm.
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FACTS
The state charged appellant Shanin Trevon English in September 2019 with being
an ineligible person in possession of a firearm. Minn. Stat. § 624.713 (2018). He was
represented in the case by an attorney in the Hennepin County Public Defender’s Office
(HCPD). When he was charged with the firearm offense, English had at least three pending
felony theft cases in Hennepin County. T he alternative public defender team was
representing English in the theft cases in order to avoid a potential conflict of interest
because the HCPD was representing a codefendant in at least one of those cases.
English ultimately pleaded guilty to the firearm charge, entering a “straight” plea
with no agreement between himself and the prosecution regarding the length of sentence
or any other condition s. English entered the plea with the intent ion of seeking a
dispositional departure to a probationary sentence in order to obtain chemical-dependency
treatment. Under the sentencing guidelines, the firearm charge carried a presumptive
executed sentence of 60 months with a commitment to prison.
Following the entry of his guilty plea, the district court granted English conditional
release to allow him to enter chemical-dependency treatment prior to his sentencing. When
English appeared for his sentencing hearing, however, he submitted to a drug test which
showed the presence of THC and cocaine in his system . The district court delayed
English’s sentencing for three months and continued his conditional release, giving him
another chance to engage in treatment. English was required to return to court a couple of
weeks later, however, after a required drug test again showed that English had THC and
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cocaine in his sy stem. English fled the courtroom and was arrested approximately four
months later.
A few days after his arrest and before he was sentenced, English brought a motion
to withdraw his guilty plea , claiming that he was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right
to conflict-free counsel. English asserted that the HCPD’s representation of a codefendant
in one or more of the theft cases gave rise to a conflict of interest for the HCPD in his
firearm case. English’s HCPD attorney advised the court that he only became aware of the
alleged conflict after English had entered his guilty plea, approximately seven months
earlier. The attorney explained that the usual conflict check at the start of representation
was not conducted when he was assigned to represent Eng lish in the firearm case. The
district court denied the motion, concluding that it was not “fair and just” to allow English
to withdraw his plea. The court reasoned that , because English’s HCPD attorney was not
personally involved in the representation o f English or codefendant in any of the theft
cases, and had no knowledge of the conflict, the alleged conflict was “immaterial to the
choice that Mr. English made to pursue a dispositional departure.” English now appeals.
DECISION
The sole issue in this a ppeal concerns English’s claim that he was denied his right
to representation by conflict -free counsel and that the district court thereby erred when it
denied his motion to withdraw his guilty plea. Motions to withdraw a guilty plea are
governed by Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.05 . That rule requires courts to allow defendants to
withdraw a guilty plea at any time “upon a timely motion and proof to the satisfaction of
the court that withdrawal is necessary to correct a manifest injustice.” Minn. R. Crim.
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P. 15.05, subd. 1. The rule also provides that “[i]n its discretion the court may allow [a]
defendant to withdraw a plea at any time before sentence if it is fair and just to do so.”
Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.05, subd. 2. Because English’s motion to withdraw was brought
before sentencing, he was entitled to seek withdrawal under the fair-and-just standard, a
“less demanding” standard than the manifest-injustice standard. State v. Ellis-Strong, 899
N.W.2d 531, 541 (Minn. App. 2017).
We review de novo a district court’s denial of a defendant’s motion to withdraw a
plea based on manifest injustice. Id. at 535; see also State v. Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d 90, 94
(Minn. 2010). We review rulings on motions to withdraw a guilty plea under the fair-and-
just standard for an abuse of discretion. Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d at 97. “A district court
abuses its discretion when its decision is based on an erroneous view of the law or is against
logic and the facts in the record.” State v. Hallmark, 927 N.W.2d 281, 291 (Minn. 2019)
(quotation omitted).
Although the district court focused its analysis on whether to grant English’s motion
under the fair-and-just standard in Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.05, subd. 2, we will analyze both
the issue of whether withdrawal of the plea was mandated to correct a “manifest injustice”
and whether the district court abused its discretion by denying the motion to withdraw
under the fair-and-just standard. We address each in turn below.
I. Manifest-Injustice Standard
English argues that , because his HCPD attorney had a conflict of interest, his
constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel was violated and the district court was
required to allow English to withdraw his guilty plea to correct a manifest inju stice. The
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United States and Minnesota Constitutions guarantee criminal defendants the right to
effective assistance of counsel. U.S. Const. amend. VI; Minn. Const. art. 1, § 6. “A
lawyer’s performance is deficient if he represents a client despite havi ng a conflict of
interest.” State v. Paige, 765 N.W.2d 134, 140 (Minn. App. 2009).
In general, to constitute ineffective assistance, any deficiencies in counsel’s
performance must be prejudicial . Pearson v. State , 891 N.W.2d 590, 601 (Minn. 2017)
(citing Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 692, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 2067 (1984)). And
if counsel’s conflict of interest violated a defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights, as English
claims here, we may presume prejudice “if the defen dant demonstrates that counsel
actively represented conflicting interests and that an actual conflict of interest adversely
affected his lawyer’s performance. ”1 Id. (quotations omitted ). Here, the district court
assumed without deciding that English’s HCPD attorney had a conflict of interest. We will
also make this assumption and will focus our analysis on the question of whether any such
conflict adversely affected the performance of English’s HCPD attorney.

1 English cites Mickens v. Taylor, 535 U.S. 162, 122 S. Ct. 1237 (2002), for the proposition
that when a conflict of interest exists and is brought to the court’s attention , prejudice is
presumed and automatic reversal is required. However, the Supreme Court emphasized in
Mickens that it was only addressing the narrow question of “the effect of a trial court’s
failure to inquire into a potential conflict.” Mickens, 535 U.S. at 174, 122 S. Ct. at 1245
(emphasis added). Only if “an attorney informs the district court of a probable risk of
conflict, and the court fails to take adequate steps to ascertain whether an impermissible
conflict exists, [then] the defendant’s conviction must be reversed without inquiry in to
prejudice resulting from the alleged conflict.” Paige, 765 N.W.2d at 140-41 (emphasis
added) (quoting Cooper v. State , 565 N.W.2d 27, 32 (Minn. App. 1997), review denied
(Minn. Aug. 5, 1997) ). English’s assertion that if there is a conflict of interes t, then a
conviction must be reversed without inquiry into prejudice misstates Mickens and related
conflict-of-interest caselaw.
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English argues that his HCPD attorney’s performance was adversely affected
because he failed to negotiate “a global settlement” of the firearm and pending theft cases,
“because he did not know about them and, even if he did, he did not represent Mr. English
on the theft cases.” We are not persuaded. We note, first, that the district court concluded
that the HCPD attorney must have had some knowledge of the theft cases because the cases
were listed in the bail evaluation provided to the attorney at the first appearance and were
referenced again at a later date during an off-the-record discussion between the court and
counsel.
Second, English’s argument fails to link the conflict to the alleged performance
deficiency—failure to pursue a “global settlement .” The conflict of interest mu st be the
cause of the adverse performance; it is not enough to allege a conflict and an unrelated
performance deficiency.
Third, it appears that the decision to enter a straight plea to the firearm charge was
deliberate and strategic, not a hapless action tainted by the conflicted loyalties of English’s
HCPD attorney. A s reflected in the comments of English’s HCPD attorney at the plea
hearing, the decision to enter a straight plea was based on the hope that English could
obtain a dispositional departure and thereby avoid an almost certain five-year prison term.
The transcript of the plea hearing reveals that , while the district court was clear that no
promises were being made, the defense had good reason to believe that a dispositional
departure was a real possibility. And, in fact, the district court granted English not one,
but two opportunities while on co nditional release to engage in chemical -dependency
treatment to “prove himself worthy of a dispositional departure on a case that calls for a
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60-month prison term.” And, as the district court noted in its order , the consequences for
the theft cases were “ relatively minimal” compared to the firearm offense and carried no
presumptive prison sentence under the sentencing guid elines. The district court reasoned
that “it made sense for Mr. English to put all of his eggs in [the] dispositional departure
basket.” The decision to enter a “straight” plea thus appears to have been a strategic one
and not the consequence of any conflict of interest on the part of the HCPD attorney.
It is also significant that English’s HCPD attorney had no direct involvement in the
theft cases and did not know about the conflict until after English ple aded guilty. Th is
further undermines English’s argument that his attorney was laboring under conflicting
loyalties that affected the attorney’s performance. Under these circumstances, we discern
no adverse effect on the performance of English’s HCPD attorney by reason of the alleged
conflict and English is not entitled to a presumption of prejudice.
That does not end our inquiry, however, because e ven without a presumption of
prejudice, English can still obtain relief by demonstrating “a reasonable probability that,
but for counsel’s errors, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going
to trial.” Ellis-Strong, 899 N.W.2d at 536 (emphasis added) (quotations omitted); see also
Strickland, 466 U.S. at 692, 104 S. Ct. at 2067. Here again, for the same reasons set out
above, we are not persuaded that, but for the alleged conflict of interest on the part of his
attorney, English would have insisted on going to trial under the circumstances presented
here.
We therefore conclude that the district court did not commit error under the
manifest-injustice standard when it denied English’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
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II. Fair-and-Just Standard
We now turn to the issue of whether the district court abused its discretion when it
denied English’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea under the fair-and-just standard. Rule
15.05 provides that in assessing whether to allow a defendant to withdraw a guilty plea
before sentence under the fair-and-just standard, “[t]he court must give due consideration
to the reasons advanced by the defendant in support of the motion and any prejudice the
granting of the motion would cause the prosecution by reason of actions taken in reliance
upon the defendant’s plea. ” Minn. R. Crim. P. 15.05, subd. 2. “ A defendant has no
absolute right to withdraw a guilty plea after entering it”; and we will reverse “only in the
‘rare case.’” Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d at 93, 97.
Here, the district court reviewed the requisite factors and concluded that, while there
would be no prejudice to the prosecution by allowing the plea to be withdrawn, such a
result would not be “fair and just.” The district court appeared to be most influenced by
two factors: (1) the lack of evidence that the alleged conflict of interest adversely affected
the performance of English’s HCPD attorney, and (2) that the motion to withdraw the plea
was made only after English had tested positive twice for controlled substances during his
conditional release, thereby greatly diminishing his odds of obtain ing a dispositional
departure. The district court found that the alleged conflict of interest—which was the sole
basis for the motion to withdraw —“was immaterial to the choice Mr. English made to
pursue a dispositional departure.” The court also reasoned:
Mr. English is essentially seeking a do -over following his
failures to follow the Court’s directives pending sentencing
[regarding drug use]. . . . Having likely failed at his chance to
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earn a dispositional departure on his most significant case,
there is no unfairness in refusing to allow Mr. English to
withdraw his plea and start the process again. What is fair and
just is to hold Mr. English to the choice he made to enter a
straight plea and take his chances.

The court thus considered the evidence and the relevant factors and exercised its discretion
to deny the motion. On this record, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its
discretion in denying English’s motion to withdraw his plea.
Affirmed.