Facts: Petitioner Steven Clark was convicted of two counts of bank robbery in the Superior Court for King County and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as a persistent offender on the basis of earlier convictions for bank robbery and delivery of a controlled substance. Clark subsequently filed a personal restraint petition challenging his sentence, asserting that his earlier conviction and sentence for bank robbery was invalid on its face insofar as it had been based upon a plea agreement in which he had been erroneously informed that he would be sentenced to community placement (for which he did not meet the statutory criteria) prior to being sentenced to prison after pleading guilty. The Washington Court of Appeals ruled that Clark’s petition, despite being filed more than nine years after judgment and sentence was imposed with regard to the first bank robbery charges, was not time barred by Washington Revised Code §10.73.090(1), which requires that such petitions be filed within a year after final judgment, as the judgment and sentence were invalid on their face due to their deviation from the terms of the plea bargain Clark agreed to. Thus, the Court of Appeals vacated Clark’s conviction and remanded the case to the trial court to allow Clark to choose whether to withdraw his guilty plea. The state of Washington appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of Washington.

Question(s): Is Clark’s personal restraint petition time barred by §10.73.090(1)?

If not, was Clark’s guilty plea involuntary?

Conclusion: Justice Fairhurst’s opinion for the Court held that there was no need to reach the question of whether Clark’s guilty plea was involuntary as his petition was time barred by §10.73.090(1). In particular, the Court ruled that although petitions challenging convictions and sentences invalid on their face are not subject to the one year statute of limitations, Clark’s conviction and sentence was not invalid on its face despite the fact that the sentence imposed differed from the sentence stipulated in the plea bargain as the sentence correctly reflected the law, which forbade granting community placement to offenders such as Clark.

Docket No. 81522-4 (from Court of Appeals Division I Case No. 59970-4)

Petitioner: Steven Clark

(Counsel: Jeffrey Erwin Ellis)

Respondent: State of Washington

(Counsel: Ann Marie Summers)

Briefs:

Argument: Thursday, September 17, 2009 9:00am

[Source: TVW, http://tvw.org]

Decided: Thursday, April 8th, 2010

Prevailing Party: State of Washington (Respondent)

Vote: 8-1

Citation: Pending

Court: Madsen1 Court (2010-)

Alexander

Johnson

Madsen

Sanders
(Dissent)

Chambers

Owens

Fairhurst
(Majority)

Johnson

Stephens