State v. Davis, Minn.S.Ct., 9/19/2012. A jury convicted Mr. Davis of aiding and abetting the first degree felony murder of Armando Calix. This was apparently a drug robbery that ended up with a dead man on the floor of his apartment. A witness placed Mr. Davis and a Mr. Dorman at the location where Mr. Calix was shot just minutes before the shooting. Shortly after the shooting another witness met up with Davis and Dorman and eventually went from Minneapolis to St. Paul with Davis. David told this witness the details of the robbery and shooting of Mr. Calix.
Meantime, both before and after the shooting, Mr. Davis was chatting up an inmate at the jail, during which Davis made several incriminating statements about the robbery and murder of Mr. Calix. This got the police suspicious. Davis got himself arrested for an unrelated assault. While in jail on that assault charge an officer came to see him about it. The officer gave Davis a Miranda warning and Davis agreed to talk about the assault. However, when the officer asked Davis where he was on the night of the Calix shooting it suddenly dawned on Davis that the officer really, or additionally, wanted to talk about the Calix shooting, not the assault. Davis told the officer that he was at home in St. Paul that night and then pretty much shut down, pleading with the officer just to “send me to jail” on the assault, that he didn’t know anything. The officer persisted in questioning Davis about the Calix shooting, all the while Davis is saying, take me to jail. He also said that he wanted a lawyer.
The officer then let Davis stew in the interrogation room for a half hour or longer, all the while Davis asking the officer if he could go home if he told what he knew. The officer punted the question. The officer then read Davis the Miranda advisory again and Davis sang. He admitted being in the apartment where Calix was shot but insisted that he was only “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Davis said he thought he was just tagging along with Dorman to get some weed. He said that all of a sudden he saw Dorman pull out a gun at which point Davis ran and hid in a closet.
Needless to say, Mr. Davis moved to suppress this interrogation. The trial court denied the motion. Chief Justice Gildea assumed without deciding: (1) that the officer violated Davis’s right to remain silent by continuing to question him after Davis first said he didn’t want to talk, and (2) that the trial court erred in admitting the statement. No heavy lifting here. With these questions out of the way all that’s left is the more amorphous question whether these alleged errors were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
And of course, they’re not. The chief justice broke down the statement into the admissible part and the inadmissible part. During the admissible part Mr. Davis repeatedly lied to the police – the court’s words not mine. A jury hearing this part would surely think less of Mr. Davis’s credibility, but because this part was admissible there can’t be any harm. During the inadmissible part all that Davis did was – wait – put himself in the murder room “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” How is this not harmful?
Moving on. Davis complained that the trial court should not have allowed a witness to state that when someone cooperated with the police he puts his life at risk and might end up killed. There was no objection to this testimony so it’s plain error time. The state conceded that this was plain error because the trial court did not provide a cautionary instruction to the jury about what to do with it. (Check out State v. Harris, 521 N.W.2d 348 (Minn. 1994) to see what should be said.) Again, no heavy lifting. That left only the (again) amorphous question whether this plain error affected Mr. Davis’s substantial rights. Which it didn’t.
Mr. Davis made a couple of other complaints on appeal, one which the court rejected having to do with some hearsay statements that the defense wanted admitted, and another having to do with an adverse inference instruction that the trial court gave without Mr. Davis’s consent. See State v. Gomez, 721 N.W.2d 871 (Minn. 2006). This instruction advises the jury not to draw any adverse inference from a defendant’s election not to testify. Again, no objection so it’s plain error time once more. The court agrees that giving this instruction without Mr. Davis’s consent was plain error, but once again, the error did not affect his substantial rights.
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