State v. Bradley

NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION

No. 115,296

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS

STATE OF KANSAS,
Appellee,

v.

JAYLYN MAURICE BRADLEY,
Appellant.


MEMORANDUM OPINION

Appeal from Sedgwick District Court; BRUCE C. BROWN, judge. Opinion filed October 12, 2018.
Affirmed.

Michael P. Whalen, of Law Office of Michael P. Whalen, of Wichita, for appellant.

Matt J. Maloney, assistant district attorney, Marc Bennett, district attorney, and Derek Schmidt,
attorney general, for appellee.

Before LEBEN, P.J., GREEN and MALONE, JJ.

LEBEN, J.: Jaylyn Bradley appeals the district court's denial of his request to
withdraw his guilty plea to sexual exploitation of a child. Bradley mainly argues that he
should have been allowed to withdraw the plea because the alleged victim had recanted
her allegation against him.

But Bradley presented no actual evidence of that to the district court. There was no
convincing evidence that a statement Bradley said the victim had written actually was
from her—and the court found the statement inadmissible, a finding Bradley hasn't
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challenged on appeal. We reverse a district judge's decision on a motion to withdraw a
plea only for abuse of discretion, and we find no abuse of discretion here.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

The State charged Bradley with one count of aggravated human trafficking in
December 2013. The State alleged that Bradley had transported a minor, Y.A.M., to
motels to engage in prostitution. In January 2015, as part of a plea agreement, the State
amended the charge to sexual exploitation of a child, and Bradley pleaded guilty.

Before sentencing—and after the attorneys who had been representing Bradley
withdrew—Bradley moved to withdraw the guilty plea. The motion gave three reasons to
support withdrawal: (1) that one of the State's witnesses was promised benefits in
exchange for her testimony; (2) that newly discovered evidence suggested the State's key
witness, the victim, had lied during her testimony; and (3) that Bradley's plea wasn't
knowingly and voluntarily entered into because he hadn't had enough time to consider it
and hadn't fully understood it.

With a new attorney representing Bradley, the district court heard evidence from
both sides on Bradley's motion. The court heard five witnesses: Bradley; Bradley's
mother, Patreese Reid; a defense investigator, Roger French; Bradley's original attorney,
Charles O'Hara; and O'Hara's son, Chris O'Hara, who had assisted in representing
Bradley during the hearing in which Bradley entered the guilty plea.

Bradley testified that he felt he had been pressured into taking the plea, though he
agreed that he had told the court at the plea hearing that he had not been threatened or
coerced in any way. The testimony about statements Y.A.M. might have made after the
trial came from Reid. She testified that she had been contacted on Facebook by a person
she believed to be Y.A.M. Reid also said she received (from a friend of her daughter's)
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the one-sentence statement that purported to be from Y.A.M. and a video that purported
to show a person Reid thought was Y.A.M. signing something.

But not testifying was Y.A.M. French testified that he hadn't been able to locate
her. Even so, Bradley wanted the court to admit into evidence the one-sentence written
statement that he said was from Y.A.M.: "I, [Y.A.M.], was promised citizenship in trade
for false testimony against Jaylyn M. Bradley." But because Y.A.M.'s was not present to
testify and be cross-examined, the district court sustained the State's hearsay objection to
both the exhibit and to the post-plea statements Y.A.M. had supposedly made to Reid
through Facebook. The court admitted the video into evidence, apparently because it was
offered in part in an attempt to provide a foundation for the admission of the statements.

The district court denied the motion to withdraw Bradley's plea. The court said
that there had been no evidence admitted on Bradley's claim that one of the State's
witnesses was promised some benefit in exchange for testimony. (Bradley is not pursuing
that claim on appeal.) The court found "no credible evidence" either that Y.A.M. had
testified falsely or that Bradley had entered his plea based on pressure or a failure to
understand what he was doing.

Bradley has appealed to our court.

ANALYSIS

With that background, we turn next to the rules by which we must decide this
appeal. A plea may be withdrawn before sentencing on a showing of good cause and
within the sound discretion of the district court. K.S.A. 2017 Supp. 22-3210(d)(1). On
appeal, the defendant must show that the trial court abused its discretion in denying the
motion to withdraw plea. State v. Edgar, 281 Kan. 30, 38, 127 P.3d 986 (2006); State v.
Ruiz, 51 Kan. App. 2d 212, Syl. ¶ 1, 343 P.3d 544 (2015). A district court abuses its
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discretion if it makes an error of fact or law or if its discretionary judgment call is one
that no reasonable person could agree with. State v. Morrison, 302 Kan. 804, 812, 359
P.3d 60 (2015); Ruiz, 51 Kan. App. 2d at 218.

The district court must consider a series of factors—known as the Edgar factors
because they were announced in that case—when deciding whether to allow a plea
withdrawal: whether "'(1) the defendant was represented by competent counsel, (2) the
defendant was misled, coerced, mistreated, or unfairly taken advantage of, and (3) the
plea was fairly and understandingly made.'" Edgar, 281 Kan. at 36; Ruiz, 51 Kan. App.
2d 212, Syl. ¶ 2. Although those factors must be considered, they aren't an exhaustive list
of factors that may be relevant, and the court may consider other factors. See State v.
Aguilar, 290 Kan. 506, 512-13, 231 P.3d 563 (2010).

Here, Bradley says on appeal that "the Edgar factors are mostly inapplicable."
Instead, he argues that the "main issue before the district court was whether or not newly
discovered evidence of a recantation from the alleged victim" constituted good cause to
withdraw the guilty plea.

What Bradley does not argue on appeal, however, is the district court's ruling that
the statements he tried to introduce from Y.A.M. were inadmissible hearsay. So any
question about their admissibility has been abandoned on appeal. See State v. Littlejohn,
298 Kan. 632, 655-56, 316 P.3d 136 (2014). We are left, then, with a record in which
there is no evidence that Y.A.M. has actually recanted anything.

That substantially undercuts the main basis for Bradley's motion. After all, Y.A.M.
testified, under oath, at the preliminary hearing. And it was held several months before
Bradley entered his guilty plea.

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In her sworn testimony at the earlier hearing, Y.A.M. said that Bradley's girlfriend
posted an advertisement for Y.A.M. as an escort in Wichita. At the time, Y.A.M. was
staying at a Wichita motel; she said that Bradley and his girlfriend would come to the
motel to "check up on me." She said that the customers who called asked for sex, and she
charged for her time. Y.A.M. said that the woman she knew as Bradley's girlfriend set the
prices and that when Y.A.M. made appointments outside the motel, either Bradley or his
girlfriend would drive her there. She said that she would give the money to one of them,
although she understood that the money ended up with Bradley.

The district court had that sworn testimony as part of its record. It had no
admissible evidence that Y.A.M. had recanted. So the court concluded that "no credible
evidence" supported the claim that Y.A.M. had recanted and explained why hearsay
evidence isn't considered credible:

"We simply have no credible evidence of new information. What centuries have taught us
and why we have the rules of evidence is that we need to have legal proceedings in court,
subject to scrutiny of the judicial process, cross-examination[,] and that testimony be
given under oath. This is exactly the reason why. You start getting into hearsay, to third
parties interjecting things, frequently maybe a witness will say something to one side
because they think that's what they want to hear and say something different to the other
side. That's why we require an oath in court, subject to cross-examination and subject to
contempt and criminal charges if there's lying. And we don't have that."

Although Bradley doesn't emphasize the Edgar factors on appeal, the third claim
he raised before the district court—that the plea wasn't knowingly and voluntarily entered
into because he hadn't had enough time to consider it and hadn't fully understood it—
does fit within the Edgar factors. But here too, Bradley's claim isn't supported by the
evidence, though here we must rely on the district court's role as the fact-finder.

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The same judge who heard the evidentiary hearing on Bradley's motion to
withdraw his plea also took the plea. That judge again found "no credible evidence" to
support Bradley's claim that he didn't understand what he was doing or was coerced in
any way when he pleaded guilty:

"Final [claim by Bradley] is [that] defendant did not fully understand the plea,
[was] not given adequate time to discuss the plea, the plea was not knowing and
voluntary. Again, I find no credible evidence of this. This was a plea that was discussed
numerous times over the course of a day, two different court [hearings]. The Court even
allowed the second—to kind of go the second mile with the defendant in allowing him to
talk with his mother about this, she was involved. He was competently represented by
[his attorneys], there's no evidence that he was forced or threatened to enter the plea."

The court noted the extensive discussion it had had with Bradley at the plea hearing,
including his statements that he had not been coerced or pressured into entering the plea.

That's the substance of the issue before us. The district court, which acts as the
fact-finder, heard evidence and found "no credible evidence" to support the key factual
claims underlying Bradley's motion.

Rather than focusing on these central conclusions of the district court, Bradley's
appellate brief mainly tries another tack to convince us the district court abused its
discretion. Recall that the district court can do so not only by making an overall decision
that's unreasonable but also by relying on a factual or legal error when making its
decision. So claims of factual or legal error are the focus of Bradley's brief.

Before we briefly discuss each of them individually, we note that even when the
district court makes a factual error, that shouldn't lead to overturning its decision unless
the fact at issue was material (or important enough) to its decision. See Huffman v. City of
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Maize, 54 Kan. App. 2d 693, 696, 404 P.3d 345 (2017). We are confident that the district
court made no factual errors significant in any way to its central conclusions:
 Bradley complains that the court found that the video "not credible" even though
Reid testified it was Y.A.M. depicted in it. But the video wasn't presented as direct
proof of a recantation by Y.A.M.—even if Y.A.M. is the woman in the video, she
makes no statements in it. Rather, the video was simply intended to provide a
foundation for the admission of the written statement, which itself was intended to
prove that Y.A.M had recanted. The video wasn't significant substantive evidence
of anything; it was intended as a foundation for other evidence. Bradley didn't
succeed in gaining the admission of that evidence. And the hearsay ruling keeping
out that other evidence isn't challenged on appeal.
 Although the district court denied admission of the written statement Bradley
attributed to Y.A.M., Bradley suggests that the court erroneously relied on some of
the statement's contents. Bradley points to the court's comments that Y.A.M. had
some relationship with Bradley's family members and that it "would only be
natural that outside of the courtroom, not under oath," she might backtrack on her
allegations in talking to family members. Once again, though, we read the judge's
comments as related to reasons for refusing the admission of Y.A.M.'s written
statement as unreliable hearsay, not factual findings on the core issues being
decided.
 Bradley complains that another reason the district court cited for finding Y.A.M.'s
written statement unreliable was that she made her statements "to get a better deal
on [her] sentencing, hopefully, or with the hope that [she] might be able to get a
better deal." The district court was wrong on that point. The court had confused
Y.A.M's situation with that of Bradley's girlfriend, who had been separately
charged. But Bradley's attorney pointed this error out to the court before the
hearing ended, and the court recognized its error: "I'm wrong on that." The court
also said that didn't change its conclusions, again explaining that because Y.A.M.
had a relationship with the defendant and his family, she might naturally "mak[e]
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comments like this, if she did even make these comments." Again, the court's
primary focus was noting the unreliability of the statements ("if she did even make
these comments"), which it had excluded on hearsay grounds.
 Bradley's final complaint is that the district court was wrong when it said that
Charles O'Hara, one of Bradley's prior attorneys, had testified "that he was
presented with this and he did not—words to the effect that he did not see a legal
reason to withdraw the plea and . . . that he declined to move forward with this."
That statement was incorrect in that O'Hara never knew about the purported
statement from Y.A.M., which came after O'Hara withdrew from the case. But the
Y.A.M. statement never got admitted, so it provided no basis to set aside the
plea—whether O'Hara referenced it or not. And the court also found that Bradley's
prior attorneys "never got the feeling that the defendant was forced or not
voluntarily entering the plea," a finding supported by the evidence and that
supported the court's denial of the motion.

In sum, Bradley's motion to withdraw plea was premised on two main points:
(1) that Y.A.M. had recanted her testimony and (2) that Bradley had felt pressured and
hadn't really understood what he was doing when he entered the guilty plea. The district
court correctly concluded that no admissible evidence supported the first point, and
substantial evidence supported the district court's conclusion that Bradley hadn't proven
the second one. We find no abuse of discretion in the district court's denial of Bradley's
motion.

We affirm the district court's judgment.