State v. Barshaw, Minn.S.Ct., 5/25/2016. A judge found Mr. Barshaw guilty of first degree premeditated murder for the shooting death of Jeffrey Schutz. Mr. Barshaw was having an affair with Jeffrey's wife, Mandy. Mandy went to Mr. Barshaw's apartment to pick him up and bring him back to where she lived with Jeffrey; Mr. Barshaw brought along a semi-automatic assault rifle and a semi-automatic pistol. Back at Mandy's Jeffrey wasn't pleased to see Mr. Barshaw and said that he could not stay there. So, Mandy and Mr. Barshaw stayed in a motor home that was some fifteen to twenty feet from Jeffrey and Mandy's place. When Jeffrey realized that Mandy and Mr. Barshaw might be inside the motor home he and his cousin Anthony, pounded on the door to the motor home. Mandy and Jeff talked, shared a cigarette and everyone seemed to have calmed down.
Except for Mr. Barshaw, who began to yell, while also holding the assault rifle. Mr. Barshaw and Jeffrey continued to yell at each other. Mr. Barshaw "came barreling out" of the motor home with the rifle; Jeffrey began to back away. Mr. Barshaw pursued Jeffrey for about a hundred feet. Mr. Barshaw eventually pointed the rifle at Jeffrey and repeatedly pulled the trigger. Of the nine shots that Mr. Barshaw got off, six or seven of them struck Jeffrey's body. At least two of the them were fatal.
At trial Mr. Barshaw said that he was too intoxicated to have formed the intent to kill, or, that Mandy was the one who shot Jeffrey. He also said that shooting Jeffrey was a "snap response" and so there was no premeditation. The court rejected all of these defenses. On premeditation the trial court said that Mr. Barshaw:
prepared for the potential use of his firearms by removing them from the trunk . . . and taking them into the motor home. If the rifle was not loaded and ready to fire when he took it into the motor home, it certainly was by the time he burst out of the motor home with the murder weapon in hand. Defendant still had a few minutes to consider what he was doing. He menaced Jeffery Schutz with his weapon and deliberately followed him a distance of some 80 to 100 feet around the motor home to the area of the utility pole before taking aim and firing repeatedly at Jeffery Schutz.
On appeal Mr. Barshaw said that the state had not proven premeditation. Chief Justice Gildea disagreed and said that they had. The court applied the two-step analysis for circumstantial evidences cases by first identifying the circumstances proved, and then independently examining the reasonableness of all inferences that might be drawn from the circumstances proved to determine whether the circumstances proved are consistent with guilt and inconsistent with any rational hypothesis except that of guilt.State v. McAllister, 862 N.W.2d 49 (Minn. 2015). State v. Anderson, 789 N.W.2d 227 (Minn. 2010). The Chief said that the court looks at three kinds of evidence relevant to determining premeditation: planning activity, motive, and the nature of the killing. Since the trial judge did not make any findings about motive the Chief focused on the remaining two categories of evidence and found that the evidence of both planning activity and the nature of the killing were sufficient.
Planning activity can be pretty minimal. Grabbing the murder weapon just before the killing is sufficient planning. So is fetching the murder weapon from one one and bringing it into another room. The number of shots fired, the number of wounds inflicted, being a good shot by wounding "vital areas" of the body, and escaping are the kinds of things the court is looking for when it examines the nature of the killing.
No comments:
Post a Comment