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The Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected the office’s appeal this week and upheld 22-year-old Natasha Janice Schweitzer’s sentence of 12 months and one day in jail and five years of probation.
Winona County Attorney Chuck MacLean and his Assistant County Attorney Kevin O’Laughlin argued Schweitzer’s plea agreement contained an agreed-upon sentence of two years in prison. Because Judge Margaret Shaw Johnson did not follow that agreement, she should have allowed the county attorney’s office to withdraw from the plea agreement, they argued.
Court of Appeals Judge Renee Worke disagreed, saying the two-year prison sentence in the agreement was simply a nonbinding recommendation to the court.
“There is nothing in the record to indicate the parties agreed to a specific sentence,” she wrote.
At Schweitzer’s sentencing hearing, the prosecutor said “the parties will jointly recommend” upward departures from state sentencing guidelines, Worke wrote. She wrote that Schweitzer’s attorney, Gary Gittus, asked her if she understood her sentence was ultimately up to the judge’s discretion, to which she said yes, and the county attorney’s office failed to object.
According to the Court of Appeals decision, the agreement detailed a “sentencing recommendation to the court, which reinforces the conclusion that the plea agreement was not binding on the court.”
O’Laughlin did not express disappointment at the higher court’s decision.
“It is what it is,” he said.
O’Laughlin said he didn’t know if there were any plans for his office to re-appeal the decision.
Schweitzer admitted last June to wrenching a baby’s leg in frustration at her day care facility. She initially told investigators the baby fell off a couch, but X-rays revealed the baby suffered a “twisting” fracture of her right thigh bone and showed a healed break in a calf bone.
Contact Kevin Behr at (507) 453-3524 or at kbehr@winonadailynews.com.
WSUGrad07' wrote on May 29, 2008 12:46 AM: