No Abuse of Discretion in Paradee In Camera Review Drill.

State v. Hokanson, Minn.S.Ct., 10/3/2012.  A jury convicted Mr. Hokanson of first degree murder while committing malicious punishment of a child, past pattern of child abuse, for the death of his seventeen month old stepson.  The child died in Wisconsin, but the medical examiner determined that the cause of death had been multiple blunt-force injuries that had occurred over a period of time while the child lived in a rural farmhouse with several family members, including Mr. Hokanson, in Minnesota.  Mr. Hokanson wanted to defend by accusing another of these family members of causing the injuries.

Mr. Hokanson sought access to the entire child protection files relating to two of these family members, who were the child’s parents.  The trial court conducted an in camera review of these files under State v. Paradee, 403 N.W.2d 640 (Minn. 1987), and released portions of those records to the defense.  In the run up to trial, the trial court released additional social services and child protection records to Mr. Hokanson’s attorneys.  The trial court also excluded evidence that one of the parents had shaken a different child, excluded evidence about anyone’s parenting skills, excluded evidence about custody arrangements or child protection proceedings for the parents’ other children, and excluded evidence that one of the parent’s parent had (inappropriately) disciplined that parent as a teenager.

The records that Mr. Hokanson sought are all protected by the data practices act.  To obtain even an in camera review of such records, a defendant must make a “plausible showing” that the records contain both material and favorable information to him.  State v. Hummel, 483 N.W.2d 68 (Minn. 1992).  Mr. Hokanson did not challenge this in camera drill, so the court’s task was simply to determine whether the trial court had abused its discretion in disclosing some but not all documents to him.  Justice G. Barry Anderson said that the court had, itself, plowed through all those records and the only abuse of discretion arguably was the trial court’s generosity in what it gave up to the defense.

On the effort to present alternative perpetrator evidence, the court breaks no new ground in its analysis.  The defense must lay a proper foundation by offering evidence that has an inherent tendency to connect the alternative perpetrator to the commission of the charged crime; and if he does then he may offer admissible evidence of a motive of the third person to commit the crime, threats by the third person, or other facts tending to prove the alternative perpetrator’s guilt.  State v. Hawkins, 260 N.W.2d 150 (Minn. 1997); State v. Jones, 678 N.W.2d 1 (Minn. 2004).  A defendant may also offer evidence of other crimes, wrongs or bad acts committed by the alleged alternative perpetrator in order to case reasonable doubt upon the identification of the defendant as the person who committed the crime, so called reverse Spreigl evidence.  Woodruff v. State, 608 N.W.2d 881 (Minn. 2000).