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Woods v. State5/19/1998
nying Woods' motion to withdraw his guilty plea.
The district court did not err in denying Woods' motion to set aside the plea pursuant to NRS 484.3795(2).
At the time of the accident, NRS 484.3795(2) provided:
No prosecuting attorney may dismiss a charge of violating the provisions of subsection 1 in exchange for a plea of guilty or nolo contendere to a lesser charge or for any other reason unless he knows or it is obvious that the charge is not supported by probable cause or cannot be proved at the time of trial . . . .
Woods contends that the State's decision to combine the four original counts into two counts in the plea agreement rendered the plea bargain unlawful pursuant to NRS 484.3795(2). Thus, Woods contends that the district court erred in accepting an unlawful plea agreement.
In Jenkins v. District Court, 109 Nev. 337, 849 P.2d 1055 (1993), the defendant was charged with three alternate offenses in a single count: DUI causing death, reckless driving causing death, and involuntary manslaughter. Id. at 338, 849 P.2d at 1056. The defendant asked the district court for leave to plead no contest to the involuntary manslaughter charge and asked it to dismiss the DUI and reckless driving charges. id. The district court made the State set forth all of the alternate offenses in separate counts and agreed to accept the defendant's no contest plea to manslaughter, but refused to dismiss the remaining counts. Id. at 339, 849 P.2d at 1056. The defendant filed a petition for a writ of prohibition arguing that the district court erred in refusing to dismiss the remaining charges after accepting his no contest plea. Id.
We denied the petition and stated, in relevant part:
ismissing the felony DUI charge and accepting petitioner's plea of no contest would destroy the intent of NRS 484.3795(2). The statutory language reflects a clear legislative intent to prevent defendants from escaping a conviction for felony DUI by pleading to a "lesser charge." If the district court had agreed to accept petitioner's no contest plea to involuntary manslaughter and dismiss the felony DUI charge, the intent behind NRS 484.3795(2) would have been unlawfully circumvented.
Jenkins, 109 Nev. at 340, 849 P.2d at 1057 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added).
Jenkins is distinguishable from the instant case. Woods is not escaping a felony DUI conviction for a lesser charge. More importantly, Woods voluntarily entered into the plea agreement and accepted its attendant benefits. In People v. Webb, 230 Cal. Rptr. 755 (Ct. App. 1986), the defendant argued that the trial court lacked jurisdiction to accept his plea bargain because it violated a California statute that limits plea bargaining in cases of driving under the influence . Id. at 761. The California appellate court concluded that the defendant lacked standing to challenge the validity of the plea bargain, reasoning that " ince [the statute] was not intended for the defendant's benefit, no public policy precludes estopping the defendant from using that section as a shield after consenting to the acceptance of a plea bargain." Id. at 763. On these facts, we conclude that Woods is now estopped from challenging the lawfulness of the plea agreement under NRS 484.3795(2).
The district court did not err by imposing consecutive sentences.
In Galvan v. State, 98 Nev. 550, 555, 655 P. 2d 157-58 (1982), we held that when applying drunk driving statutes, multiple victims give rise to multiple offenses. In Galvan, a case remarkably similar to the one at bar, defendant was convicted of two counts of felony DUI causing death, pursuant to NRS 484.3795. Id. at 551
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