SD Supreme Court denies former Watertown man's request to revoke guilty plea to 2020 rape
The South Dakota Supreme Court has denied the request of a former Watertown man to revoke his guilty plea to a rape charge involving a child.
Roberto Carlos Alvarez, 38, pleaded guilty in September 2021.
In seeking to have his guilty plea withdrawn, he claimed his court-appointed attorney misled him about some aspects of the plea agreement and only visited him twice during the 17 months he was in custody before he entered his plea, according to court paperwork.
While he claimed ineffective assistance of counsel, "he did not claim innocence as a basis" in asking to revoke his guilty plea, according to the supreme court ruling.
"Alvarez attributes several errors to his court-appointed counsel that, he claims, entitle him to relief at this stage. Among them are factual allegations claiming a lack of visits to Alvarez while he was incarcerated; failing to ask if Alvarez understood the plea agreement; explaining to him that he would only serve five years in prison; and encouraging Alvarez to sign the plea agreement despite the assertion of his innocence," the justices wrote. "However, we cannot determine, under the current state of the record, the accuracy of these claims and, consequently, whether defense counsel’s performance was so patently ineffective under the standard set out above so as to support review of Alvarez’s claims now. We, therefore, decline to address Alvarez’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel on direct review."
According to the decision, Alvarez said he understood the charge and the possible maximum sentence when he entered his plea.
In a letter he wrote after pleading guilty but before sentencing that asked if he could withdraw his guilty plea, Alvarez "did not assert his innocence and, instead, alleged only that his use of illicit drugs had caused him to act in an uncharacteristically heinous way," according to the decision.
At sentencing, Alvarez said he did not fully read the plea agreement because he had a hard time understanding written English. But the judge, prosecuting attorney and his defense attorney agreed that was the first time in the 17-month history of the case that he voiced such concerns.
In his appeal, Alvarez also claimed that some of the details outlined in the case were wrong.
Alvarez pleaded guilty to raping a 5-year-old girl during an incident that started in the parking lot of a Watertown business on Jan. 14, 2020. Police were then called to the girl's home to investigate. By the time they obtained an arrest warrant, Alvarez had fled, authorities said at the time. He was arrested in Texas in early March 2020 after a nationwide manhunt.
He was sentenced to 100 years in prison with 15 years suspended.
This article originally appeared on Watertown Public Opinion: sd supreme court rules watertown man cannot revoke guilty plea to rape
