11/26/2014: No Supreme Court Published Criminal Opinions

11/24/2014: No Court of Appeals Published Criminal Opinions

Court Rejects Claim That Recanted Testimony Entitled Petitioner to New Trial

Ortega, Jr. v. State, Minn.S.Ct., 11/19/2014.  Mr. Ortega, Jr. filed this post conviction petition which claimed that some of the state’s witnesses had recanted their trial testimony.  A bit more about the circumstances of this murder conviction are available here.  In support of his petition, Mr. Ortega, Jr. submitted an affidavit which said that another of the state’s witnesses had regretted the way he had testified, and had felt pressured to put more blame on Mr. Ortega, Jr. than he deserved.  Also, the affidavit said that this other witness said that Mr. Ortega, Jr. had acted in self defense.

The post conviction court denied the petition without a hearing.  Chief Justice Gildea, for the full court, affirms.  The court concludes that Mr. Ortega, Jr. had not shown that it might have made a difference to the jury’s verdict if the recanted testimony had not been presented at trial.  This is because the court believed that there was “significant additional evidence” of Mr. Ortega, Jr.’s guilt.

Post Conviction Claim of “Newly Discovered Evidence” Consisting of Testing Deficiencies of Crime Lab is Time Barred

Roberts v. State, Minn.Ct.App., 11/17/2014.  Back in 2005, Mr. Roberts pled guilty to a drug offense.  During what was described as a “routine traffic stop” officers smelled a “strong odor” of marijuana emanating from within Mr. Roberts’ car and then they saw a small plastic bag that turned out to have forty-nine individually wrapped rocks of suspected crack cocaine fall out of his pants.  The St. Paul crime lab tested twenty-one of the rocks, all of which tested positive for cocaine.

When the story broke about the troubles with the St. Paul crime lab Mr. Roberts filed a post conviction petition asking to withdraw his guilty plea.  In his petition he did not, however, claim that what the crime lab had tested in his case was not cocaine.  Instead, he summarized the various problems that had come to light at the lab and said something about the testing program no longer being generally accepted in the scientific community.  The post conviction court denied the petition without a hearing.

That court said, as Mr. Roberts conceded, that his petition was beyond the two year limitations period and so the petition had to meet one of the exceptions to that limitations period.  Mr. Roberts maintained that two of the exceptions applied:  newly discovered evidence, and interests of justice. Both the post conviction court and the court of appeals reject each of these claims.

Now, a petition that asserts one of these exceptions has to be filed within two years of the date the claim arises.  A claim arises when you knew or should have known that the claim existed.  Mr. Roberts knew back in 2005 that the state’s case depended in large part on the lab testing.  He knew that the lab had concluded that all those rocks – well, at least twenty-one of them – contained cocaine and yet he neither challenged that conclusion nor sought independent expert testimony to rebut it.  Another impediment for Mr. Roberts is that none of that stuff about the general deficiencies of the crime lab established that he was innocent, which he must do under the newly discovered evidence exception. 

The other exception, interests of justice, is also of no avail to Mr. Roberts.  Although the court recites a litany of reasons, the real fear is that if Mr. Roberts is allowed to reopen his nine year old conviction on the basis of generalized concerns about the crime lab, then, truly, the horses are out of the barn.

11/12/2014: No Supreme Court Published Criminal Opinions

11/10/2014: No Court of Appeals Published Criminal Opinions

11/5/2014: No Supreme Court Published Criminal Opinions

Introduction of Computer Generated Data Does Not Violate Confrontation Clause

State v. Ziegler, Minn.Ct.App., 11/3/2014.  These days, if you take your car to a mechanic, odds are that she will plug your car into a computer.  The mechanic’s computer chats up your car’s computer and a few hundred dollars later there’s a suggestion to replace the air filter.  So, what if instead of the mechanic’s computer chatting up your car’s computer it’s the state patrol’s computer?

Ms. Ziegler set out to do, not sure just what, to a Ford Focus that had just passed her and then just barely passed the car in front of her.  She gave chase, then moved into the oncoming lane to pass the Focus.  The Focus sped up to keep that from happening so now the two cars are drag racing down the highway.  Problem is, there’s another car coming right at Ms. Ziegler.  By the time the Focus relents and lets Ms. Ziegler back into the correct lane it’s too late; she and the Focus collide and end up in the ditch. 

The state charged her with three counts of criminal vehicular operation.  During the trial, the state called a crash reconstructionist; his testimony relied, in part, on data that another officer had collected from the computer in Ms. Ziegler’s car.  Essentially, the car’s computer spilled the beans into a software program.  The software program crunched the numbers and then spit out a report totally without any other human intervention.  From that report, along with his other reconstructing, the reconstructionist testified about the speed and braking actions of Ms. Ziegler’s car in the final seconds before the crash.

Ms. Ziegler objected to all this.  She said that the data from her car was hearsay and that its admission at her trial violated her right of confrontation as currently understood from Crawford and its progeny.  Both the trial court and the court of appeals disagreed with that assertion.  The court of appeals adopts the conclusion of several federal appeals circuits that “statements” that are within the purview of the confrontation clause of are those of humans, and not computers.  So, for instance, a chemist’s written report that recites the readings from the testing instrument is admissible while the chemist’s conclusions that those readings mean that the tested substance is cocaine is not.  For Ms. Ziegler, the speed and braking data is not hearsay, but the conclusions drawn from that data by the reconstructionist were subject to cross examination.  The data are not testimonial statements at all and thus do not implicate any confrontation concerns.