Jones v. State

COLLINS J. SEITZ, JR. CHIEF JUSTICE

Submitted: April 6, 2023

Count Below-Superior Court of the State of Delaware Cr. ID No. 1712008278 (N)

Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; VALIHURA and TRAYNOR, Justices.

ORDER

COLLINS J. SEITZ, JR. CHIEF JUSTICE

After consideration of the appellant's opening brief, the State's motion to affirm, and the record on appeal, it appears to the Court that:

(1) The appellant, Joseph E. Jones, filed this appeal from the Superior Court's denial of his motion for correction of illegal sentence. The State has filed a motion to affirm the judgment below on the ground that it is manifest on the face of Jones's opening brief that his appeal is without merit. We agree and affirm.

(2) In April 2018, a Superior Court grand jury indicted Jones for first-degree unlawful sexual contact, first-degree sexual abuse of a child by a person in a position of trust, continuous sexual abuse of a child, and three counts of first-degree rape. On August 16, 2018, Jones pleaded guilty to continuous sexual abuse of a child. Although continuous sexual abuse of a child is a Class B Felony ordinarily subject to a statutory maximum sentence of twenty-five years imprisonment, under the terms of the plea agreement, Jones acknowledged that he was subject to enhanced sentencing under 11 Del. C. § 4205A because the victim was under the age of fourteen. In exchange for his guilty plea, the State agreed to dismiss the remaining five charges in the indictment. Following a presentence investigation, the Superior Court sentenced Jones to fifty years of incarceration, suspended after forty years for decreasing levels of supervision. Jones did not appeal his conviction or sentence.

(3) In April 2022, Jones filed a motion for correction of illegal sentence, arguing that his sentence was illegal because it exceeded the statutory maximum sentence for a Class B Felony. The Superior Court denied the motion, and we affirmed its denial on appeal. In October 2022, Jones filed another motion for correction of illegal sentence, arguing that his sentence is illegal because the conduct that formed the basis of his guilty plea to continuous sexual abuse of a child began before Section 4205A was amended to include continuous sexual abuse of a child (11 Del. C. § 776) as a predicate offense for enhanced sentencing. The Superior Court denied Jones's motion on the basis that his twenty-five-year prison sentence was legally imposed under either Section 4205A or Section 776. This appeal followed.

(4) We review the denial of a motion for correction of illegal sentence for abuse of discretion. To the extent a claim involves a question of law, we review the claim de novo. A motion to correct an illegal sentence may be filed at any time.A sentence is illegal if it exceeds statutory limits, violates the Double Jeopardy Clause, is ambiguous with respect to the time and manner in which it is to be served, is internally contradictory, omits a term required to be imposed by statute, is uncertain as to its substance, or is a sentence that the judgment of conviction did not authorize.

(5) In his opening brief on appeal, Jones argues that the Superior Court erred by denying his motion for correction of illegal sentence because the Superior Court analyzed his motion under the mistaken belief that Jones is serving a twenty-five-year sentence. Although Jones is correct that the Superior Court appears to have been under the impression that Jones is serving a twenty-five-year sentence, we nonetheless affirm the Superior Court's judgment on the independent and alternative basis that Jones's forty-year-prison-sentence was legally imposed under Section 4205A.

(6) A person is guilty of continuous sexual abuse of a child if he either resides with or has recurring access to a child under the age of eighteen and he intentionally engages in three or more acts of sexual conduct with the child over a period of time of at least three months. Here, Jones was indicted for sexually abusing his biological daughter (with whom he had regular weekend visitation) over a period of twenty-two months, including a sixteen-month period of time following the August 6, 2016 amendment to Section 4205A that added continuous sexual abuse of a child as a predicate offense for enhanced sentencing. That is to say, even setting aside the fact that Jones is bound by the representations he made on the TIS Guilty Plea Form and in open court during the guilty plea colloquy (namely, that he was subject to enhanced sentencing under Section 4205A), the Superior Court's imposition of a forty-year prison sentence under Section 4205A was legal. Accordingly, we affirm the Superior Court's judgment.

NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the motion to affirm be GRANTED and the judgment of the Superior Court be AFFIRMED.