In re Michael Lewis

Summary

The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment denying Michael Lewis’s petition for post-conviction relief from his 2009 convictions and habitual-offender sentence enhancement. The Court held that Lewis waived a collateral challenge to a 2005 predicate conviction by pleading guilty to the habitual-offender enhancement, that the absence of express verbal pleas to three 2009 charges did not invalidate those convictions under the totality of the circumstances, and that the PCR court properly declined to address ineffective-assistance claims omitted from the amended pleadings.

Holdings

1. A defendant who knowingly and voluntarily pleads guilty to a habitual-offender enhancement based in part on a predicate conviction waives a collateral challenge to the use of that predicate conviction to support the enhancement, absent a properly preserved challenge.
2. Although an express verbal guilty plea to each count is strongly preferred, failure to elicit one does not invalidate a conviction when the totality of the circumstances clearly establishes that the defendant knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily intended to plead guilty and that the court accepted the plea.
3. A PCR court does not abuse its discretion by declining to adjudicate ineffective-assistance claims that were omitted from the operative amended petition or raised for the first time in a motion to reopen the final judgment.

Questions Presented

1. Whether Lewis waived a collateral challenge to the 2005 false-pretenses conviction when he pleaded guilty to the 2009 habitual-offender enhancement supported in part by that conviction.
2. Whether the failure to elicit an express verbal guilty plea to three charges during the 2009 plea colloquy invalidated the resulting convictions.
3. Whether the PCR court abused its discretion by declining to address ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims omitted from the operative amended petition or raised for the first time in a motion to reopen judgment.

Disposition

affirmed