State Of Louisiana v. Chrystal Clues-alexander

FOR IMMEDIATE NEWS RELEASE NEWS RELEASE #023
FROM: CLERK OF SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA
The Opinions handed down on the 13th day of May, 2022 are as follows:
PER CURIAM:
2021-KK-00831 STATE OF LOUISIANA VS. CHRYSTAL CLUES-ALEXANDER (Parish of St.
Martin)
REVERSED AND REMANDED. SEE PER CURIAM.
Hughes, J., dissents for the reasons assigned by J. Griffin.
Griffin, J., dissents and assigns reasons.

S
UPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA
No
. 2021-KK-00831
S
TATE OF LOUISIANA
VS.
CHRYSTAL CLUES-ALEXANDER
O
n Writ of Certiorari to the Court of Appeal, Third Circuit, Parish of St. Martin
PER CURIAM:
We granted the application to determine whether the court of appeal erred in
ruling that defendant i s entitled to withdraw her guilty plea based on Ramos v.
Louisiana, 590 U.S. ___, 140 S.Ct. 583, 206 L.Ed.2d 583 (2020). At the time
defendant pleaded guilty, the district court advised her that she had the right to a jury
trial. After she pleaded guilty, the United States Supreme Court announced a new
rule of criminal procedure in Ramos v. Louisiana, holding that a state jury must be
unanimous to convict a criminal defendant of a serious offense. W e find that this
jurisprudential development subsequent to defendant’s knowing and voluntary plea
does not render her plea involuntary or unknowing. Accordingly, we reverse the
ruling of the court of appeal and reinstate the district court’ s ruling, which denied
defendant’s motion to withdraw her guilty plea.
Defendant was indicted for the second degree murder of her husband. She
made two motions to declare former La.C.Cr.P. art. 782(A) unconstitutional and
require a unanimous jury at trial, which the district court denied. In 2018, she pleaded
guilty to manslaughter. She pleaded guilty unconditionally and did not reserv e any
issues for review pursuant to State v. Crosby, 338 So.2d 584 (La. 1976). She has not
yet been sentenced.

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In 2020, after the Supreme Court decided Ramos v. Louisiana, defendant filed
a motion to withdraw her guilty plea. She contended that she accepted the State ’s
plea offer because the jury could reach a nonunanimous verdict if she proceeded to
trial. Defendant contended her primary reason for accepting the plea agreement was
undermined after Ramos eliminated that possibility , and therefore she should be
permitted to withdraw her plea.
After a hearing at which defendant testifie d that the possibility of a
nonunanimous jury verdict was the primary reason she pleaded guilty, the district
court denied the motion. The district court observed that de fendant’s guilty plea
waived all defects prior to the plea other than jurisdictional ones, and that its
advisement to defendant of the Boykin rights was correct at the time it was given.1
The court of appeal reversed the trial court’s ruling. State v. Clues-Alexander,
20-471 (La. App. 3 Cir. 11/16/20) (unpub ’d). The court of appeal found that the
holding of Ramos applies to these proceedings because direct review of the guilty
plea was not final when Ramos was decided. Under Ramos, the trial court’ s
advisement of the right to a jury trial was not correct, according to the court of
appeal, because it did not inform defendant that the jury must reach its verdict
unanimously. Therefore, defendant’s plea was unknowingly made , in ignorance of
the law, and she must be permitted to withdraw it.
The State contends that the holding of Ramos does not apply here. We agree.
In Ramos, the Supreme Court stated, “ Louisiana and Oregon may need to retry
defendants convicted of felonies by nonunanimous verdicts whose c ases are still
pending on direct appeal.” Ramos, 140 S.Ct. at 1406 (emphasis added). A new rule
of criminal procedure applies to cases on direct review, even if the defendant’s trial

1 Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969). The federal
constitutional rights waived when a plea of guilty is entered in a state criminal trial are the privilege
against compulsory self-incrimination, the right to a trial by jury, and the right to confront one ’s
accusers.

3

has already concluded. See Griffith v. Kentucky , 479 U.S. 314, 328, 107 S.Ct. 708,
93 L.Ed.2d 649 (1987). The court of appeal here cited Griffith for that principle when
it found that the new rule of criminal procedure established in Ramos applies to these
proceedings. However, defendant was not convicted by a jury, unanimous or
otherwise; she pleaded guilty. As such, Ramos does not apply. The court of appeal’s
decision to the contrary incorrectly extended Ramos beyond its proper context of
convictions based on non -unanimous jury verdicts, with wide ranging potential
consequences for guilty pleas.
Defendant proposes that the effect of the court of appeal’ s ruling can be
limited to guilty pleas in which a motion to withdraw the plea is made before
sentencing. Code of Criminal Procedure A rticle 559(A) provides that a “[u]pon
motion of the defendant and after a contradictory hearing, which may be waived by
the state in writing, the court may permit a plea of guilty to be withdrawn at any time
before sentence.” The comments to that article explain that the discretion to permit
a plea of guilty to be withdrawn before sentence cannot be arbitrarily exercised, and
a trial court’ s improper refusal to permit a change of plea is reversible error.
La.C.Cr.P. art. 559, Official Revision Comment 1966. The comment also notes that
“[t]he defendant should be permitted to withdraw the plea when induced to make it
through ignorance, fraud, or intimidation.” Id. , citing Orfield, Criminal Procedure
from Arrest to Appeal 301 (1947).
We find that the district court did not abuse its discretion in not permitting
defendant to withdraw her plea before sentencing. The re is nothing suggesting that
the plea was induced through ignorance, fraud, or intimidation. We also note that
there is no support in the jurisprudence for a reviewing court to treat the denial of a
pre-sentence motion to withdraw an unconditional guilty plea significantly
differently from one denied after sentencing. Instead, “appellate review [is] confined
to the question of whether the plea was volunt arily and intelligently entered, or

4

should have been permitted to be withdrawn as involuntarily and unknowingly
made[.]” State v. Johnson, 2019-02004, p. 4 (La. 12/1/20), 314 So.3d 806, 808–09.
Two years after defendant pleaded guilty, the Supreme Court declared in
Ramos that a state jury must be unanimous to convict a criminal defendant of a
serious offense . The court of appeal considered the plea made before that
pronouncement to rest upon a defective advisement of the right to jury trial because
it was made in ignorance of a future legal development. In support, the court of
appeal cited State v. Bouie , 2000-2934, p. 9 (La. 5/14/02), 817 So.2d 48 , for the
proposition that ignorance of the law is a valid ground to withdraw a guilty plea
pursuant to La.C.Cr.P. art. 559 before sentencing.
The court in Bouie reiterated the settled law that a district court has broad
discretion in ruling on a defendant’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea before
sentencing, and that when circumstances indicate that the plea was constitutionally
invalid, the district court should allow the defendant to withdraw her plea. See Bouie,
2000-2934, p. 9, 817 So.2d at 53, citing State v. Toney, 412 So.2d 1034, 1035– 36
(La. 1982). Bouie does not stand for the novel principle that unawareness of a future
legal development renders a guilty plea constitutionally invalid.
Ample jurisprudence suggests that legal developments that occur after a guilty
plea, such as the Ramos decision, do not invalidate a defendant’s otherwise
intelligent, knowing, and voluntary guilty plea. The Supreme Court in Brady v.
United States, 397 U.S. 742, 757, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed.2d 747 (1970), rejected the
principle that defendant advances here. In Brady, the defendant challenged the
validity of his plea to kidnapping under the federal kidnapping statute. At the time
he pled guilty, the offense carried a possible death penalty, but the Supreme Court
subsequently held that capital punishment for a violation of the kidnapping statute
was unconstitutional. The C ourt found that his plea was knowing and voluntary,
despite the subsequent change in the law concerning the availability of the death

5

penalty. The Court explained:
A defendant is not entitled to withdraw his plea merely because he
discovers long after the plea has been accepted that his calculus
misapprehended the quality of the State’s case or the likely penalties
attached to alternative courses of action. More particularly, absent
misrepresentation or other impermissible conduct by state agents, cf.
Von Moltke v. Gillies, 332 U.S. 708, 68 S.Ct. 316, 92 L.Ed. 309 (1948),
a voluntary plea of guilty intelligently made in the light of the then
applicable law does not become vulnerable because later judicial
decisions indicate that the plea rested on a faulty p remise. A plea of
guilty triggered by the expectations of a competently counseled
defendant that the State will have a strong case against him is not
subject to later attack because the defendant’s lawyer correctly advised
him with respect to the then exis ting law as to possible penalties but
later pronouncements of the courts, as in this case, hold that the
maximum penalty for the crime in question was less than was
reasonably assumed at the time the plea was entered.

Brady, 397 U.S. at 757, 90 S.Ct. at 1473.
The United States Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit has likewise rejected
the argument that changes in the legal landscape subsequent to an otherwise knowing
and voluntary plea warrant a defendant’s withdrawal of his plea. See United States
v. Hardy, 838 Fed.App’x. 68 (5th Cir. 2020) (passage of legislation that removed
mandatory consecutive minimum sentence subsequent to guilty plea did not render
plea involuntary or unknowing). As noted in Hardy, other federal circuits agree. See,
e.g., United States v. Cortez-Arias, 425 F.3d 547, 548 (9th Cir. 2005) (“[A] favorable
change in the law does not entitle a defendant to renege on a knowing and voluntary
guilty plea.”); United States v. Morgan , 406 F.3d 135, 137 (2d Cir. 2005) (“[T]he
possibility of a favorable change in the law after a plea is simply one of the risks that
accompanies pleas and plea agreements.”); United States v. Bradley, 400 F.3d 459,
463–64 (6th Cir. 2005) (“[W]here developments in the law later expand a right that
a defendant has wai ved in a plea agreement, the change in law does not suddenly
make the plea involuntary or unknowing or otherwise undo its binding nature. A
valid plea agreement, after all, requires knowledge of existing rights, not
clairvoyance.”); United States v. Haynes, 412 F.3d 37, 39 (2d Cir. 2005) (per curiam)

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(“The plea allocution shows Haynes to have been fully informed, competent, free of
coercion, and cognizant of his rights at the time of the plea. While ignorance of then-
existing rights can invalidate a plea agreement in some cases, ignorance of future
rights is unavoidable and not a basis for avoiding a plea agreement.”).
“The general rule is that a guilty plea waives all nonjurisdictional defects in
the proceedings prior to the plea and precludes review thereof either by appeal or by
post-conviction remedy.” State v. McKinney, 406 So.2d 160, 161 (La. 1981), citing
State v. Torres, 281 So.2d 451 (La. 1973) and State v. Foster, 263 La. 956, 269 So.2d
827 (1972). However, a defendant may plead guilty while express ly reserving the
right to seek appellate review of an error the defendant believes “made useless any
continued trial of their defense.” State v. Crosby , 338 So.2d 584, 586 –587 (La.
1976). Defendant here pleaded guilty unconditionally without reservation. Appellate
review is confined to the question of whether the plea was voluntarily and
intelligently entered, or should have been permitted to be withdrawn as involuntarily
and unknowingly made (in addition to any jurisdictional defects that appear on the
face of the pleadings and proceedings). See State v. Spain, 329 So.2d 178 (La. 1976);
State v. Knighten, 320 So.2d 184 (La. 1975); see also Tollett v. Henderson, 411 U.S.
258, 267, 93 S.Ct. 1602, 1608, 36 L.Ed.2d 235 (1973) (“[An unconditional] guilty
plea represents a break in the chain of events which has preceded it in the criminal
process. When a criminal defendant has solemnly admitted in open court that he is
in fact guilty of the offense with which he is charged, he may not thereafter raise
independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred
prior to the entry of the guilty plea. He may only attack the voluntary and intelligent
character of the guilty plea ....”).
The court of appeal found defendant’s guilty plea was constitutionally invalid
because it was made in ignorance of the law. However , the record does not show
that defendant was ignorant of the law. To the contrary, d efendant correctly

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understood at the time she pleaded guilty that a nonunanimous jury could have
convicted her if she had proceeded to trial. Her lack of prescient knowledge that
future Sixth Amendment jurisprudence would substantially alter the right to a jury
trial did not make her guilty plea involuntary or unknowing or otherwise undo its
binding nature. Accordingly, we reverse the ruling of the court of appeal. We
reinstate the district court’s ruling, which denied defendant’s motion to withdraw
her guilty plea. We remand for sentencing.
REVERSED AND REMANDED

S
UPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA
No
. 2021-KK-00831
S
TATE OF LOUISIANA
VS.
CHRYSTAL CLUES-ALEXANDER
O
n Writ of Certiorari to the Court of Appeal, Third Circuit, Parish of St. Martin
H
ughes, J., dissenting.
I
respectfully dissent for the reasons assigned by Griffin, J.

SUPREME COURT OF LOUISIANA
No. 2021-KK-00831
STATE OF LOUISIANA
VS.
CHRYSTAL CLUES-ALEXANDER
On Writ of Certiorari to the Court of Appeal, Third Circuit, Parish of St. Martin
GRIFFIN, J., dissents and assigns reasons.
I respectfully dissent and find the trial court abused its discretion based on the
record evidence and the lack of benefit to Ms. Clues from her plea deal.1 See State
v. Hart, 50,295, p. 11 (La. App. 2 Cir. 11/18/15), 183 So. 3d 597, 604-05. Ms. Clues
filed a notice of intent to assert a defense of justifiable homicide. The record is
replete with numerous instances of domestic violence by Mr. Alexander against Ms.
Clues, including immediately prior to the shooting. The open ended plea was of no
benefit to Ms. Clues as she may still be given the maximum sentence. Further, the
State concedes it would not be prejudiced by withdrawal of the guilty plea.
1 I agree with the majority to the extent that the court of appeal erred in finding Ms. Clues’ plea
constitutionally infirm. By its terms, Ramos does not apply to plea agreements. Ramos v.
Louisiana, 140 S.Ct. 1390, 1406 (2020) (limiting application to convictions). Were we to find the
defendant’s plea constitutionally infirm predicated on a change in the law , this would logically
apply to every plea made before Ramos as constitutionally infirm pleas can be withdrawn after
sentencing. State v. Gross, 95-0621, pp. 2-3 (La. App. 5 Cir. 3/13/96), 673 So.2d 1058, 1059-60.
However, La. C.Cr.P. art. 559 allows trial courts the option of allowing withdrawal of a guilty plea
outside of the constitutional ly infirm plea context, subject only to an abuse of discretion or
arbitrariness standard.