State v. Vang, Minn.S.Ct., 5/7/2014. In 2001, the state filed a juvenile petition against then-14 year old Jerry Vang. The petition charged him with first and second degree felony drive by murder, and with attempted first degree felony drive by murder. Even though the court never certified Mr. Yang to adult court these charges somehow got presented to a grand jury, which indicted him. Mr. Yang plead guilty to those charges, but the supreme court vacated those convictions and sentences because the adult court didn’t have subject matter jurisdiction to impose the adult sentences. Vang v. State, 788 N.W.2d 111 (Minn. 2010). In fact, it was the juvenile court that had taken the guilty pleas and imposed the sentences.
By the time the convictions and sentences were vacated, Mr. Yang was past age twenty-one. There’s a statute that says that once an individual turns twenty-one, the district court and not the juvenile court has original and exclusive jurisdiction even if the offense occurred before that individual turned eighteen. So that’s where the supreme court sent the case when it vacated the previous convictions and sentences. The state re-filed the same indictment in the district court. Mr. Yang plead not guilty, went to trial and was convicted. Before that, however, he argued that the case should go back to juvenile court because he still had never been certified to adult court. Writing for six members of the court – Justice Wright not participating – Justice Dietzen latches onto this statute and thus side steps the messy and unseemly business of getting juveniles into adult court simply by waiting out the clock.
Mr. Yang challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support the convictions. Mr. Yang apparently shot at two guys –killing one and injuring the other – while he was, himself, either in or having just got out of a car. He fired seven shots in a narrow alley, striking a garage twice and, of course, killing and wounding the two victims. Mr. Yang’s actions put two different mental states in play: intent to kill and reckless discharge of a firearm at or toward a car or building. Mr. Yang argued that if he had the intent to kill then he had not recklessly discharged the weapon with which he tried to carry out the deaths. The court concludes that these are distinct mental states that are not mutually exclusive. The state has to prove both, but in this case they did.
The trial court instructed the jury that it had to find that Mr. Yang recklessly discharged a firearm at or toward “ a person.” The statute requires that the discharge be at or toward a motor vehicle or building. Minn.Stat. 609.66, Subd. 1e. The court assumes without deciding that this instruction was an error, but concludes that the error did not create a reasonable likelihood that it had a significant effect on the verdict.
Mr. Yang tried to extend both Miller v. Alabama and Florida v. Graham, to adult sentences of life with the possibility of release, where the adult was a juvenile at the time of the offense. The court isn’t going there, even though Mr. Yang’s consecutive sentences create a near life without parole sentence, something the court barely mentions. Mr. Yang must serve a minimum of thirty years before becoming eligible for parole consideration on the life sentence. If and when he is granted parole, he must then serve a ninety (90) month sentence on the attempted murder conviction.
Mr. Yang argued that the trial court could not impose a sentence that was greater than the original sentence. The court says that in this instance it can because the first sentence was the result of guilty pleas and this one was the result of jury verdicts. The court based this result on “public policy” and not constitutional grounds. This prompted a concurrence from Justice Stras, who does not believe that there is any such thing as “public policy” which can guide judicial decision making. Justice Stras would have reached the constitutional due process issue – vindictiveness – and then rejected it for Mr. Yang.
Last, Mr. Yang complained that he got bad advice from one of his attorneys, the advice being to reject a plea offer - the terms of which were not stated in the opinion - and go to trial on a claim of self defense. Cf.,, Lafler v. Cooper, 132 S.Ct. 1376 (2012). The trial court did instruct the jury on that claim. Just before the shooting, which took place in a narrow alley, the deceased had threatened Mr. Yang (and had beaten him in a previous fight). There was no opportunity for Mr. Yang to retreat. The court went on to describe the evidence presented in support of the self defense claim:
Appellant presented evidence at trial that David intended to seriously harm or kill him. Appellant testified that David and Kou had come to his house on July 6, that David had “rushed” him without provocation, and that David and Kou beat him while he was on the ground and then David grabbed a shovel and tried to seriously injure him. Appellant stated that the fight made him “afraid” that David intended to seriously harm or kill him, and his fear continued until the day of the shooting. A couple of days later, David had driven by his house and “flicked” him off, and then two days before the shooting, David came by the house looking for appellant. On the day of the shooting, appellant stopped in the alley in order to smooth things over with David and Kou. But David “got angry.” When appellant got out of the car David stepped toward him and yelled at him in a threatening manner. Appellant testified that he experienced fear because David was only five or six feet away, was bigger than him, and he remembered being beaten to the ground by David in the previous fight. There was also evidence that appellant did not have an opportunity to retreat because the alley was narrow, there was a fence and two cars directly behind him, and the driver had also gotten out of the car and appellant did not have the keys to the car. When asked if he felt that he had any alternative to shooting the gun to save himself, appellant replied “no.”
Without really much of an explanation, the court says, somewhat disturbingly, that whether the advice to reject the plea offer and go to trial was “objectively unreasonable” was a “close call.” The benefit of the doubt went to the lawyers. Whether this would have been so had the trial court not instructed on self defense is an unanswered question.
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