Cases | State v. Bryan, 535 So. 2d 815 (La. Ct. App. 1998) | 2018
The defendant managed and co-owned a car dealership, and was charged with 4 counts of theft of dealership property. An amended bill charged him with 21 counts of theft. The defendant pled nolo contendere to one count of theft over $500 that tracked 20 of the 21 counts in the amended bill, totaling over $58,000. The defendant was placed on supervised probation conditioned on paying $74,487.52 in restitution to the other three owners of the dealership. The amount included $44,487.52 as the value of property taken and $30,000 for inconvenience, humiliation, embarrassment, and grief. On appeal, the defendant claimed that: (1) he did not admit guilt when he pled nolo contendere and restitution was for losses resulting from criminal responsibility; (2) the $30,000 for nonpecuniary loss was not part of the plea agreement and was not factually supported by the record; (3) the court did not give him credit for payments made to victims under his reorganization plan in bankruptcy court; (4) he did not have the means to pay; and (5) restitution was owed to the dealership corporation and not to the individual stockholders as the court ordered. The appellate court held that: (1) while the plea agreement stated that restitution was to cover only those matters for which the court found criminal responsibility, it also stipulated that property descriptions and values for the 21 counts were prima facie proof of the amount due; (2) restitution for nonpecuniary damage was too speculative to uphold under the plea agreement; (3) the defendant’s request for credit was premature because the record did not show how much he paid or that the bankruptcy payments were for the same items on which criminal restitution was based; (4) because the court reduced the restitution obligation, it avoided further discussion of the scant income and expense information in the PSI report and would not modify the payment terms set by the trial court; and (5) the stockholders were “victims” or “aggrieved parties” because they became responsible for corporate debts they personally guaranteed, and should be entitled to receive restitution for stolen corporate assets.