Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Monday, August 25, 2014
Sunday, August 24, 2014
Decision to Tow Vehicle That is Lawfully Parked & Not Impeding Traffic Which Belonged to Driver Who Is Not Under Arrest Is Unreasonable Under Fourth Amendment
State v. Rohde, Minn.S.Ct., 8/20/2014. An officer saw a Monte Carlo drive away from a house that he suspected hosted a drug trade. This officer knew from some other officer that people involved in drug trafficking at this house “might be riding in a Monte Carlo.” But, apparently, not this Monte Carlo because the plate number did not match the information from these other officers. Nonetheless, as luck would have it, this Monte Carlo’s registration had been revoked and the registered owner’s driver’s license had also been revoked. This officer asked yet another officer to stop the Monte Carlo. This officer followed the Monte Carlo until it committed a “signaling violation” at which point the officer stopped the car. Ms. Rohde was driving the car. Ms. Rohde pulled to the side of a residential street; it was neither interfering with traffic nor blocking access to any property. In other words, it was parked legally.
The Monte Carlo did not have insurance, so the officers decided to tow the vehicle, a decision based on a department policy to tow any vehicle that did not have insurance. The officers detained Ms. Rohde while they completed the paperwork but they were not planning on taking her into custody. When the officers did the inventory search, Ms. Rohde’s bad day got worse; the officers found methamphetamine.
The state charged her with fifth degree drug possession. Ms. Rohde moved to suppress the drugs found in the Monte Caro. She did not challenge the initial stop but said that the search violated the Fourth Amendment and the state constitution’s counterpart because the officers were not authorized to impound the Monte Carlo and because the inventory search was pre-textual. The trial court denied the motion and found her guilty on a stipulated facts trial. The court of appeals affirmed, State v. Rohde, 839 N.W.2d 758 (Minn.Ct.App., 2013). Justice G. Barry Anderson, for the full court, concludes that the impoundment was unreasonable and thus the subsequent inventory search was unconstitutional.
Justice Anderson says that an impoundment is proper only when the state’s interest in impoundment outweighs the individual’s Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures. See State v. Gauster, 752 N.W.2d 496 (Minn. 2008). He states these reasons that would justify an impoundment: To remove a vehicle that is impeding traffic or threatening public safety and convenience; and To protect an individual’s property from theft and the police from claims of theft. The Justice concedes that state law prohibits an uninsured vehicle from remaining on a public roadway. That, however, is wide of the mark because the Fourth Amendment reasonableness test is the determining factor because a state statute might authorize an unconstitutional search. See Cooper v. California, 386 U.S. 58 (1967). The officers conceded that the Monte Carlo was not violating any parking laws, impeding traffic, or posing a threat to public safety.
As to any caretaking function – prevention of theft and the like – until the officers found the drugs they had not planned on arresting Ms. Rohde. She was present during the inventory search and thus retained control over the vehicle; there was thus no reason for the police to take responsibility for the vehicle. State v. Robb, 605 N.W.2d 96 (Minn. 2000). Indeed, the officers had already allowed Ms. Rohde to call her Mom to come get her, so,presumably the two of them could figure out what to do about the car on their dime and not the state’s.
Saturday, August 23, 2014
Fourth Amendment Exclusionary Rule Apples in Civil Forfeiture Actions
Garcia-Mendoza v. 2003 Chevy Tahoe, Minn.S.Ct., 8/20/2014. Procedurally, this is a messy, really messy case. The facts are reasonably straight forward, as is the holding of the court. In a few words, the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment applies to forfeiture actions.
Police saw Mr. Garcia-Mendoza’s vehicle moving down I-94 at just a hair over the speed limit. The officer ran a a registration check for the vehicle but when the officer then ran a license check for the registered owner he got nothing back. The cop then stopped the vehicle in the belief that the driver didn’t have a valid driver’s license.
Which was correct, at least for Mr. Garcia-Mendoza and his passenger. Since no one could drive the car and it didn’t appear safe to the officer to leave the car on the break down lane of the interstate the officer called for a tow; alas, the inventory search incident to the two produced methamphetamine, a lot of it.
Both the state and the feds charged Mr. Garcia-Mendoza with drug crimes. Mr. Garcia-Mendoza moved in federal court to suppress the drugs as the fruit of an illegal stop and search. The federal court rejected that claim and thereafter Mr. Garcia-Mendoza pled guilty. As part of his plea he agreed to forfeit the vehicle.
Meantime, the state filed a forfeiture action against the vehicle. Mr. Garcia-Mendoza made the same objection, saying that the cops had discovered the legal justification for the forfeiture – the drugs – as a result of a violation of the Fourth Amendment. That meant that under the exclusionary rule the drugs should be suppressed at which point there was no longer a legal basis to grab the vehicle. The trial court upheld the forfeiture by pointing to Mr. Garcia-Mendoza’s federal plea agreement to allow just that forfeiture. As an aside, the trial court said that the stop and search of the vehicle had, indeed, violated the Fourth Amendment.
The court of appeals affirmed the district court, but not on the basis of the federal plea agreement. Rather, that court affirmed the district court by concluding that the exclusionary rule did not apply to forfeiture actions, and that the state statute presumed that the vehicle was to be forfeited, a presumption that Mr. Garcia-Mendoza did not rebut. There were other issues lurking in the bushes in both the trial court and court of appeals, but the supreme court plucked out only the applicability of the exclusionary rule for review.
Justice Dietzen somewhat regrettably it seems acknowledges that the court must follow a U.S. Supreme Court opinion from 1965 that said that the exclusionary rule of the Fourth Amendment applies to civil forfeiture actions brought under the federal forfeiture statute. One 1958 Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania, 380 U.S. 693 (1965). The Justice, writing for the entire court, declines the state’s invitations to ignore this Plymouth Sedan case, invitations based upon the withering away of the exclusionary rule since 1965.
Having reached that conclusion, the court sends the case back to the court of appeals to sort through the detritus left along the side of the road, which include:
(1) appellant is collaterally estopped from relitigating the determination of the federal district court that the March 19 stop and search did not violate appellant’s Fourth Amendment rights; (2) appellant’s factual admissions in the federal guilty plea agreement in which he agreed to give up his rights to property obtained as a result of his drug trafficking offense provide an independent basis for forfeiture of the seized property; (3) appellant’s exclusive remedy to suppress the challenged evidence is Minn. Stat. § 626.21 (2012) (“A person aggrieved by an unlawful search and seizure may move . . . to suppress the use, as evidence, of anything so obtained . . .”), but appellant waived that remedy by not asserting it; and (4) the district court erred when it observed in dictum that the March 19 stop and search violated appellant’s Fourth Amendment rights.
These guys are just getting started. Start your engines, indeed.
Self Defense “Duty to Retreat” Extends to Common Hallways of Secure Apartment Building
State v. Devens, Minn.S.Ct., 8/20/2014. At about midnight, Mr. Devens heard loud noises coming from the hallway of his secured apartment building. Mr. Devens went out to see what all the commotion was about and found J.P. down at the end of the hall. Mr. Devens went down to J.P.’s location and asked him to leave. After some hesitation, J.P. agreed to the request. However, as the two were walking to the exit Mr. Devens surmised from J.P’.’s attempt to punch him that J.P. had developed second thoughts about leaving. J.P., not surprisingly, said that Mr. Devens had started the fight.
The state sided with J.P. and charged Mr. Devens with assault in the first and third degree. The court dismissed the first degree charge for lack of probable cause but the jury convicted Mr. Devens of third degree assault, rejecting his claim of self defense.
Over objection, the trial court instructed the jury that Mr. Devens had a duty to retreat if reasonably possible. Mr. Devens said, wait a minute. I’m in my own “home” – a secured apartment building – and so I don’t have any duty to retreat. Justice Lillehaug, for the entire court, says that he does. Although one’s “home” is one’s “castle” the hallways of one’s “home” – the actual apartment to which you have exclusive right of control (with some landlord exceptions not pertinent) – are not one’s “home”. The court said that the key to determining whether a particular location is part of one’s home for self defense purposes is the extent to which that individual exercises exclusive possession and control over the area in question. Because that exclusive possession and control did not include the common hallways, the duty to retreat remained intact. It apparently did not matter at all that the hallway was not open to the public and was supposed to be secure.
Monday, August 18, 2014
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Waiver of a Jury Trial is Charge Specific; a Valid Waiver Obtained Before the State Amends The Complaint With Additional Charges Does Not Carry Over to Those New Charges.
State v. Little, Minn.S.Ct., 8/13/2014. The state charged Mr. Little with one count of criminal sexual conduct in the third degree, and one count of criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree. At some point before trial, Mr. Little waived his right to a jury trial on these two counts; everyone agreed up and down the line that the court had obtained a valid personal waiver from Mr. Little. Then, right before trial, the state amended the complaint to add a count of first degree criminal sexual conduct. Mr. Little’s attorney told the judge, in Mr. Little’s presence, that his client still waived his right to a trial by jury. The judge said fine, heard the proof and found Mr. Little guilty.
In the court of appeals, Mr. Little challenged the absence of a personal waiver to a jury trial on the added CSC I count. The court of appeals rejected that challenge and affirmed the conviction. In an opinion by Justice Page, writing for six members of the court – Justice Stras concurred in part and dissented in part – the Supreme Court reverses the conviction and remands for a new trial.
Justice Page goes back to an 1893 case, McGeagh v. Nordberg, 53 Minn. 234, 55 N.W. 117 (1893) that says that a jury trial waiver only applies to the issues formed at the time of the waiver. The Justice can find no reason to apply a different rule in criminal cases. So, a defendant may waiver his right to a jury trial on the charges then in front of him, but if the state thereafter piles on additional charges there must be another personal waiver from the defendant. In reaching this result, the court rejected the state’s argument that all that a defendant needs to understand about waiving a jury trial is the general concept of what a jury trial looks like. Not good enough. When the state amends a complaint after a defendant’s jury trial waiver, the trial court must obtain a renewed waiver – personally from that defendant and not his lawyer – on the amended complaint.
That part was fairly easy, so much so that even Justice Stras concurred in that part of the opinion. But, then the court has to decide what the remedy is, tricky because Mr. Little did not object to the omitted personal waiver. Indeed, he stood by silently while his attorney made that waiver for him. The absence of a trial objection asks the question, what standard of review to apply. The state and the defense differed on just what standard of review should apply to this error: plain error or “structural error.” If it’s structural error then Mr. Little immediately advances to go, gets a new trial without any regard to prejudice from the error. If it’s plain error, then Mr. Little has to establish that the error, besides being “plain” affected his substantial rights. Justice Page ducks that fight all together by saying without deciding that Mr. Little was entitled to a new trial under plain error analysis.
Mr. Little easily gets past the first two requirements of plain error. There was error, and it was plain because of this nineteenth century civil case. Justice Page concludes that on the facts of this case that Mr. Little met the substantial rights requirement as well. Those facts convinced the court, except for Justice Stras, that there were significant concerns whether Mr. Little and his counsel had fully discussed the advantages and disadvantages of waiving a jury trial after the state added the CSC I count. Indeed, Mr. Little may not even have been aware of the additional count according to what he said to the pre-sentence investigation officer.
As mentioned, Justice Stras concurred in the conclusion that failure to have obtained an additional personal waiver was error. Justice Stras dissented over the standard of review and over the grant of a new trial. Justice Stras dons his cap and gown, picks up a piece of chalk and proceeds to lecture the other members of the court on the various standards of review of trial error. He scolds them for not taking up the gauntlet of just exactly which standard of review should have been applied in this instance, and points out why it should be plain error. The Justice just doesn’t like these messy short cuts of utilizing a particular standard of review without really saying whether it’s the correct one to be employing. Justice Stras’s take on plain error leaves Mr. Little sitting in prison. The Justice thought that Mr. Little needed to have shown that he would have chosen a jury trial had the trial court questioned him about the waiver on the new charge. Result over process. Justice Page focused on the process, concluding that it would be sheer speculation to try to second guess what Mr. Little might have done in the face of a valid waiver inquiry.
Monday, August 11, 2014
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Evidentiary Rulings on Spreigl & Relationship Evidence, Even If Error, Were Harmless
State v. Rossberg, Minn.S.Ct., 8/6/2014. A jury convicted Mr. Rossberg of the first degree premeditated murder of Devan Hawkinson. Before Mr. Rossberg shot Mr. Hawkinson six times with a .22 firearm the two of them were friends. Indeed, the rumor in the trailer park where the two lived was they were having it on with the same woman, D.T. Anyway, eventually, Mr. Rossberg became less and less enamored of this arrangement to the point that he began behaving rather inappropriately toward Mr. Hawkinson. There was lots of back and forth between the two men leading up to Hawkinson’s death. The woman in this triangle sometimes lived at Mr. Rossberg’s trailer, sometimes at Mr. Hawkinson’s trailer, and sometimes back with her husband.
The trial court allowed the state to introduce evidence of several incidents of prior bad acts, some of which were Spreigl evidence, and some of which were “relationship” evidence. Justice Anderson distinguished these two kinds of “prior bad acts” evidence. Spreigl evidence is prior bad acts evidence of an unrelated crime or bad act against another person not the present victim. “Relationship evidence” is prior bad acts between an accused and a victim that illuminates the history of the relationship between the two individuals. These evidentiary rulings by the trial court are the subject of Mr. Rossberg’s appeal.
The Spreigl evidence pertained to testimony about a 911 call from D.T. in which she reported that Mr. Rossberg might be suicidal because she had heard a gunshot from his trailer. The trial court had admitted this testimony because it believed that it was relevant to the “disputed fact” of whether Mr. Rossberg had committed the homicide; and was relevant to whether he was in possession of the weapon used to commit it. Justice Anderson rejects this explanation. Whether Mr. Rossberg committed the homicide was not really a “disputed fact” but the ultimate issue of guilt. Essentially, the court is saying that if whether Mr. Rossberg committed the homicide is a State v. Ness, 707 N.W.2d 676 (Minn. 2006) “disputed fact” then it swallows Ness in one gulp. Whether Mr. Rossberg possessed the murder weapon is a specific fact but not one that was in dispute. This is because Mr. Rossberg, himself, had reported the theft of the gun. Unfortunately for Mr. Rossberg, Justice Anderson goes on to conclude that this error was harmless.
The rest of the evidence that the trial court admitted was “relationship” evidence. Here’s the court’s description of this evidence:
two 911 calls from September 2008, in which D.T. reported that Rossberg might be suicidal and that he was yelling and pounding on Hawkinson’s door; Rossberg telling his son that he would hurt Hawkinson if Hawkinson got too close to D.T.; Rossberg’s statements to his friend about wanting to kill Hawkinson with a machete; Hawkinson’s neighbor seeing Rossberg repeatedly pounding on Hawkinson’s doors and windows; one of Hawkinson’s black eyes and Rossberg’s admission that he caused it; the two 911 calls from November 2008 about Rossberg yelling, pounding on Hawkinson’s door, and entering Hawkinson’s trailer; and Rossberg’s statement in fall 2010 about wanting to shoot Hawkinson with his .22.
Most of these “relationship” evidence events were old. The court said, however, that age isn’t enough. Rather, the court employs a “balancing process as to time, place and modus operandi” to determine whether older conduct remained relevant. The court upheld the admission of testimony of these events because it illuminated Mr. Rossberg’s ongoing confrontational behavior toward Mr. Hawkinson and the continuing strained relationship between the two men.
Mr. Rossberg also complained on appeal about the admission of evidence about two statements that Mr. Hawkinson made to the police. In the first statement, Mr. Hawkinson said that he knew that Mr. Rossberg owned guns and said that he was afraid that Mr. Rossberg would shoot him. The challenge to the admissibility of this statement was on evidence rules, not the Confrontation Clause. Under a plain error review of any confrontation clause challenge, the court ducks the question by concluding that if there were an error it was harmless because it didn’t affect his substantial rights.
In the second statement, Mr. Hawkinson said the he was afraid of Mr. Rossberg, that Mr. Rossberg had come into his trailer even though the door was locked, and that he didn’t want Mr. Rossberg to come back. The court said that the reported statement that Mr. Rossberg had entered Mr. Hawkinson’s locked trailer came closest to affecting the verdict, but not close enough. This was because there was other undisputed evidence that Mr. Rossberg knew where Mr. Hawkinson hid a spare key. The court does say that evidence that Mr. Hawkinson was afraid of Mr. Rossberg was not relevant because Mr. Rossberg did not raise a self defense claim. The error in admitting this evidence was, again, harmless.