C-2000-1344
In OCCA case No. C-00-1344, Betts appealed his conviction for multiple offenses including Driving Under the Influence of Drugs and Assault on a Police Officer. In a published decision, the court decided to grant his petition for relief regarding some of the convictions due to a lack of adequate factual support for those charges. One judge dissented. Betts had pleaded guilty to several charges in a lower court, but later claimed he did not understand all the details of the offenses or the punishments he could receive. He filed a motion to withdraw his plea, which was denied by the district court. The case was then brought to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. The court looked at the reasons Betts provided for wanting to withdraw his plea. One of the main issues was that there was not enough factual evidence to support certain charges against him. For instance, when Betts admitted some wrongdoing, he did not talk about other specific charges like the drug possession or tampering with a vehicle. The court found that because of this, Betts did not really enter his plea to those counts in a fair way. While the court affirmed one of his convictions related to Assault and Battery on a Police Officer, they reversed other convictions regarding Driving Under the Influence of Drugs and related charges. The court also mentioned that there were problems with how restitution was handled, which means determining if and how much money Betts should pay for what he did. Overall, the court sent the case back to the district court to ensure that the restitution issues were corrected and to check if the earlier order of restitution was appropriate for the right case. The court set a timeframe for the district court to work on these issues. In summary, the court found that Betts was not properly informed or supported for several of the charges against him, leading them to reverse some of his convictions while affirming one, and they ordered further hearings on the restitution matter.