NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION No. 120,648 IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS RENATO SALCIDO, Appellant, v. STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee. MEMORANDUM OPINION Appeal from Wyandotte District Court; WESLEY K. GRIFFIN, judge. Opinion filed April 17, 2020. Affirmed. Gerald E. Wells, of Jerry Wells Attorney-at-Law, of Lawrence, for appellant. James Antwone Floyd, assistant district attorney, Mark A. Dupree Sr., district attorney, and Derek Schmidt, attorney general, for appellee. Before LEBEN, P.J., GARDNER, J., and MCANANY, S.J. PER CURIAM: Renato Salcido appeals the district court's summary dismissal of his claim that the attorneys who represented him in his criminal trial were ineffective. Salcido speaks Spanish, and he claims the attorneys should have realized that a language barrier was preventing Salcido from understanding the plea agreement he entered into. But the record shows that Salcido understood the plea agreement when he entered into it. After all, as the district court knew, Salcido's plea agreement was written in Spanish, and he had the assistance at the plea hearing of a court-certified Spanish interpreter and a Spanish-speaking attorney. Salcido has not shown any reason why the transcript of that hearing doesn't accurately reflect the situation—that he understood the essential terms of the plea agreement when he entered into it. We therefore affirm the district court's judgment. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND Salcido pleaded no contest to the aggravated criminal sodomy of his stepdaughter. The issues in this appeal relate to what happened when he entered his no-contest plea and when he later tried to withdraw it. Central to this dispute is the extent to which a language barrier prevented Salcido from understanding what was happening during those proceedings. As a result, we must first review what happened leading up to Salcido's plea. The State initially charged Salcido with two counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and one count of aggravated criminal sodomy. In exchange for his no-contest plea, the State dismissed the indecent-liberties charges and agreed to seek a 10-year prison sentence. That sentence was shorter than the presumptive sentence Salcido would have faced under this state's sentencing guidelines. Salcido's native language is Spanish, and while he could read and write in that language, he could do neither in English. So Salcido's attorneys—one of whom was a native Spanish speaker—prepared a plea agreement written in both English and Spanish. For example, a section that read, "I am represented by a lawyer. His/Her name is Stephen Parker," was immediately followed by, "Yo estoy representado por un abogado. El nombre de él/ella es Stephen Parker." Although we will quote only the English portions in the rest of our opinion, all provisions of the agreement were in both English and Spanish. 2 Salcido signed the agreement. One of the paragraphs described the consequences of pleading no contest: "I know that if I plead 'No Contest', I am thereby waiving all of the above rights and that there will be no further trial of any kind, either before the court or jury." By signing ...
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