Judge lets plea stand

The News & Observer

Author: LYNETTE BLAIR MITCHELL; STAFF WRITER

DURHAM - A Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that a woman who pleaded guilty last month to felony child abuse charges knew what she was doing when she entered her plea and that her attorney provided her with competent counsel.

Melinda Ann Wilkins insisted that she was innocent and tried to convince Judge Orlando Hudson during a daylong hearing that she would not have pleaded guilty to abusing her adopted daughter if she had known that she was going to get more than six months jail time.

"I knew I didn't do anything intentionally to hurt my daughter because I went through too much to get her," Wilkins said on the stand Tuesday. "At that time, I was scared. That's why I took the plea bargain

It's not right. No one came to me and said, 'By taking the plea bargain, you would be setting yourself up for three years in prison.' " Hudson sentenced Wilkins last month to a maximum sentence of at least 31 months in prison for cracking her daughter's skull, breaking her ribs and for leaving her permanently brain-damaged. The child, now almost 3, lives in the Hilltop Home for Retarded Children in Raleigh.

But Wilkins told the judge she agreed to the plea only because her attorney, Assistant Public Defender Greg Hughes, led her to believe that she had an agreement with the state and because she thought she could plead guilty without actually admitting guilt.

Wilkins, 32, maintains that she never abused her daughter but merely dropped the toddler one day as she threw her into the air while playing. Wilkins said she became dizzy and didn't catch her daughter who hit the floor.

Tom Loflin, Wilkins' attorney during the hearing, told Hudson that Hughes probably thought he had conveyed all the possible outcomes of a plea to Wilkins but that she just didn't understand him. Loflin said his client, who took special education classes in high school, wasn't a sophisticated person and clearly didn't know what she was doing last month in court.

"Her plea wasn't knowing and in intelligence," Loflin said. "The plea should be vacated."

But prosecutor Elizabeth Armstrong urged Hudson to leave the plea intact. She said that Wilkins knew exactly what she was doing when she pleaded guilty and that she was just upset because she didn't get the outcome she wanted. Armstrong called Hughes to the stand, and he testified that he never told Wilkins that she had a plea bargain with the state offering her a six-month jail stint with probation.

Instead, he told the court that he had asked Hudson in a trial conference what kind of sentence he might consider giving in the case. Hudson said he'd consider a six-month split sentence, Hughes said, but it wasn't something the judge guaranteed.

Hughes said he and his boss - Public Defender Bob Brown - then encouraged Wilkins to enter a plea even though she maintained that she was innocent. Brown and Hughes agreed that the evidence against Wilkins was so strong that a jury would convict her.

In closing her case, Armstrong said: "This defendant took a gamble and she lost. She was completely sober, sane and knowledgeable when she entered this plea. Mr. Hughes was not ineffective."

Hudson agreed.

"She understood the consequences of her plea," he said. "She had effective and competent counsel. There was no violation of rights.