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187 Wis. 2d 529

523 N.W.2d 569

State v. Wills

Court of Appeals of Wisconsin

Decided September 15, 1994

Court of Appeals of Wisconsin · decided 1994-09-15

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1994-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently July 2022

14 state decisions

601994200020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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GARTZKE, P.J.

¶1(concurring). The prosecutor and the defense attorney asked the trial court to sentence Wills to life plus five years consecutive, the parole board to determine his parole eligibility. The prosecutor stated that she "would strongly recommend this plea to the court." The court directed that a presentence investigation report be furnished to it.

¶2Later the court wrote to the prosecution and defense, noting its obligation under § 973.014, Stats., to either let the parole commission set the parole eligibility date under § 304.06(1), Stats., or to set the parole eligibility date itself for any date after the earliest possible date calculated under § 304.06(1). The court sought assistance on setting a parole date, should it decide not to leave the matter to the parole board, and later stated that seeking such assistance was its intent when writing the letter.

¶3The prosecution could not comply with both the trial court’s request and the plea bargain. The prosecution was bound by the terms of the plea bargain to request that parole eligibility be set by the parole board. To assist the court in its setting Wills's parole eligibility date was inconsistent with the State's bargain because the date set by the court would *539necessarily be later than the earliest date the parole board could set.

¶4Because the court's request for assistance was inconsistent with the plea bargain, the prosecutor should have declined to make any response, other than point out the inconsistency and reiterate its recommendation that the parole board determine Wills's parole eligibility.

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