State v. Onyelobi, Minn.S.Ct., 5/18/2016. Ms. Onyelobi, her boyfriend Maurice Wilson, and David Johnson were heroin dealers. Among others, they sold to Anthony Fairbanks, his sister and his mother. Ms. Onyelobi, et.al. took drug orders on a cell phone dedicated for that purpose, the "208" phone. They made deliveries in a somewhat distinctive two-tone van with darkly tinted rear windows.
Just before he was killed the feds indicted Fairbanks on drug conspiracy charges. They also indicted Wilson, who was in the local jail. Wilson called Ms. Onyelobi from the jail to inquiry if she and Johnson had "taken care of that," apparently referring to Fairbanks. She said that they had not but that they were working on it.
And, apparently they were. Later that same day, Fairbanks left his mother's place to pick up heroin from Ms. Onyelobi. A short distance from his mom's place, however, someone shot Fairbanks three times and left in the aforementioned two-tone van. Police later found the murder weapon in a storage facility that Ms. Onyelobi had rented. The cops also connected Wilson's federal indictment to Fairbanks and to Ms. Onyelobi, learned who belonged to the 208 phone and located Ms. Onyelobi at a local motel. When the cops arrived, the two-tone van was in the parking lot; Ms. Onyelobi wasn't there, but Johnson was. When he opened the door the cops saw suspected narcotics inside; they "froze the scene" until they could get a search warrant. While waiting for that Ms. Onyelobi showed up. Once they had the search warrant they seized the suspected narcotics and arrested Ms. Onyelobi for possession of those suspected narcotics. And then for aiding and abetting Fairbanks' murder.
At trial for premeditated first degree murder Ms. Onyelobi complained that the police didn't have probable cause to arrest her for possession of the narcotics and so all of the evidence that the cops seized thereafter had to be suppressed. The trial court disagreed and Chief Justice Gildea affirmed that determination. The Chief said that at the time that the cops took off to the local motel to find Ms. Onyelobi here's what they knew that supported probable cause that she constructively possessed the drugs in her motel room:
(1) Onyelobi was Fairbanks’s and S.F.’s drug dealer; (2) Onyelobi dealt drugs with two other males; (3) Fairbanks and S.F. called the 208 number to acquire heroin and spoke with Onyelobi; (4) Fairbanks called the 208 number to acquire heroin 3 days earlier, immediately before his death; and (5) tracing technology placed the cell phone connected to the 208 number at the Red Roof Inn. Furthermore, when they arrived at the hotel, VCAT officers confirmed with Red Roof Inn staff that Onyelobi had been renting a room there since March 6, and that she had renewed her stay through March 15. VCAT officers also observed the two-tone van—which S.F. indicated was typically used by Onyelobi and Wilson in drug deals—located in the Red Roof Inn parking lot. After observing the bag of suspected narcotics in the room, VCAT officers also saw multiple cellular phones lying in plain view. 6 And while Onyelobi was not initially present inside the room, she arrived at the Red Roof Inn around 30 minutes later, confirming her occupancy.
During jury selection the state struck three potential jurors who self identified as Black or African American. The jury apparently did include one juror from Ghana. The defense made Batson challenges to the three strikes, all of which the trial court rejected and all of which Chief Justice Gildea affirms. The Chief focused on the first Batson, requirement, a prima facie case of discrimination. The first strike, by itself, does not necessarily establish a prima facie case, State v. White, 684 N.W.2d 500 (Minn. 2004). Nor was the Chief satisfied that the third strike, which the trial court described as a "pattern," established a prima facie case. The court avoided the issue, however, by jumping to the third requirement of "purposeful discrimination." For each of the strikes the court concluded that the state had not engaged in purposeful discrimination.
Ms. Onyelobi complained about the trial court's accomplice liability instructions. She said that the instructions should specify the exact crime that the state said she was aiding and abetting. The language of the pattern jury instructions use "a crime" and "the crime;" Ms. Onyelobi wanted those words replaced with "first degree premeditated murder" to assure that the jury would not convict her under the belief that she was guilty if she intended to aid some lesser included crime.
First, the state said that Ms. Onyelobi had failed to object to this instruction. After lengthy discussions about the jury instructions, during which the trial court rejected defense counsel's request that the trial court give a tendered instruction that aligned with her "specific crime" argument defense counsel said that the instructions that the court intended to give were "accurate and correct" but nevertheless were "misleading" and "confusing. The Chief says that this sufficiently brought the alleged error "to the attention of the trial court," and would not be reviewed under "plain error."
The Chief then addressed the merits of the argument and rejects it, saying that when the instructions are considered "as a whole" there could have been no confusion among the jurors about what crime they had to believe that Ms. Onyelobi aided. The court also rejected a similar argument under the "expansive" complicity liability statute, that is, other crimes, having already rejected this argument a year ago in State v. Taylor, 869 N.W.2d 1 (Minn. 2015).
Ms. Onyelobi made several pro se arguments which the court rejected.
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