State v. Garcia-Gutierrez, Minn.S.Ct., 4/2/2014. There are legal fictions, and then there are legal fictions. One of them is that the legislature knows what it’s doing, writes what it means. This lets an appellate court say with undeserved confidence that if the legislature had intended thus and so it would have written thus and so. Bah.
Mr. Garcia-Gutierrez and a bunch of his buddies broke into a house, stole things, including a locked safe. Only later, after they were caught, did they learn that there was a gun inside the safe. The state charged all of them with burglary in the first degree – “possession” of a weapon. The trial court thought this was ridiculous, that a burglar had to know that he was possessing a weapon, which these guys indisputably did not, in order to be convicted of first degree burglary. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the first degree burglary count. Read here.
Chief Justice Gildea, for a unanimous court, says, no. The portion of the burglary statute that elevates second degree to first degree “is silent with respect to the actor’s mental state.” Rather, the statute only says that the burglar must “possess, when entering or at any time while in the building” a dangerous weapon. The court bolsters this conclusion by mentioning the opinion that says you don’t have to know that the person you just killed was a peace officer to be convicted of first degree murder of a peace officer, State v. Evans, 756 N.W.2d 854 (Minn. 2008), (which is true even when you didn’t see the guy, State v. Chambers, 589 N.W.2d 466 (Minn. 1999); and the opinion that says you don’t have to know that you are carrying your drugs through a school zone to be convicted possession of narcotics in a school zone, State v. Benniefield, 678 N.W.2d 42 (Minn. 2004).
So, the lesson here is if you’re going to commit a burglary, don’t take what you can’t see.
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