Sentencing Guidelines Resentencing.

Byline: Derek Hawkins

WI Court of Appeals District I

Case Name: State of Wisconsin v. Vaylan G. Morris

Case No.: 2018AP1694-CR

Officials: Brash, P.J., Kessler and Dugan, JJ.

Focus: Sentencing Guidelines Resentencing

Vaylan G. Morris appeals his judgment of conviction entered after he pled guilty to second-degree recklessly endangering safety as a party to a crime, and the trial court's order denying his postconviction motion for resentencing. Morris was charged after the death of his infant daughter, O.M., who had been co-sleeping with Morris and O.M.'s mother, Monica Gonzalez. The cause of O.M.'s death was undetermined, but Morris admitted to smoking synthetic marijuana prior to co-sleeping with O.M. and thought he may have rolled over on her. Additionally, synthetic marijuana was detected in O.M.'s stomach contents, although it was determined not to have caused her death.

In his postconviction motion, Morris argued that the trial court relied on inaccurate information regarding O.M.'s cause of death. Specifically, the State represented at sentencing that the synthetic marijuana could have been the cause of O.M.'s death; however, the medical examiner had advised the State that the ingested synthetic marijuana was not the cause of death. The trial court denied Morris's postconviction motion. It stated that the information presented by the State was not necessarily inaccurate just because it...