No Error In Granting For Cause Challenge To Prospective Juror Who Lied on Juror Questionare

State v. McKinley, Minn.Ct.App., 2/13/2017.  A prospective juror in this criminal sexual conduct case flat out lied about his prior record. In answer to a question on the written questionnaire about whether he'd been arrested or convicted of a crime the juror owned up to some but not all of such incidents.  The state moved to strike this juror for cause and the trial court granted that request.

Mr. McKinley on appeal said that because the rule, Rule 26.02, subd. 5(1)(1), does not explicitly list "not being forthcoming" as a basis on which to challenge a juror for cause the trial court abused its discretion by granting the challenge.  This is a "plain error" review of this claimed error and the court doesn't get past the first requirement, that the error be "plain".  

A juror may be challenged for cause when “[t]he juror’s state of mind—in reference to the case or to either party—satisfies the court that the juror cannot try the case impartially and without prejudice to the substantial rights of the challenging party.” Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.02, subd. 5(1)(1). McKinley is correct that nothing in the rule explicitly allows the district court to excuse a juror for cause because a juror does not give truthful, candid answers to the court’s questions on a juror questionnaire or during voir dire. But the rule allows a court to dismiss a prospective juror if the juror demonstrates a state of mind that satisfies the court that the juror cannot try the case impartially. See id. 

Arrest Warrant Good Enough To Authorize Cops To Enter Third Person's House to Make the Arrest

State v. deLottinville, Minn.S.Ct., 2/15/2017.  The cops went to an address with an arrest warrant for Ms. deLottinville.  That’s not where Ms. deLottinville lived.  When one of the officers saw Ms. deLottinville through a ground level patio door he immediately went in and arrested her.  Ms. deLottinville said that the arrest warrant wasn’t enough to authorize entry into a third person’s residence.  The trial court, the court of appeals, and now the supreme court disagreed.  Justice Lillehaug puts Minnesota into the camp that says that an arrest warrant is a “bad ass sword” that unlocks any and all doors.  Justice Chutich dissented, concerned that the cops will take this new authority to rely upon an arrest warrant to barge into any and everyone’s house in pursuit of the person named in the warrant.

Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573 (1980) says that a valid arrest warrant justifies entry into the home of the subject of the warrant. The Supreme Court, however, has never extended Payton, to permit entry into a third person's home in order to arrest the person named in the arrest warrant.  The Minnesota Supreme Court had previously mused that in that situation the officers may need a search warrant but it wasn't really the holding of the case. State v. Patricelli, 324 N.W.2d 351 (Minn. 1982).

The officer's testimony amazingly similar to that of another officer in an Eighth Circuit Opinion a long time back, United States v. Clifford, 664 F.2d 1090 (8th Cir. 1981).  In that case, officers went to a third person's residence with an arrest warrant for Clifford.  A cop swore he saw and recognized Clifford inside so he went in and arrested him.  The Eighth Circuit said that even assuming that Clifford had a legitimate expectation of privacy in a third person's home, the officer's knowledge of Clifford's presence inside the third person's home justified entry to execute the arrest warrant for Clifford.  Just swap out Clifford for deLottinville - which is exactly what the court of appeals did - and you're done:

[W]hen police have probable cause to believe that the subject of a valid arrest warrant is present as a visitor in the residence of another, police may enter that residence to effectuate the arrest under that warrant without violating the Fourth Amendment rights of the person named therein.

Post Conviction Claims, All 200 Pages of Them, Are Statutorily Time Barred

Hannon v. State, Minn.S.Ct., 2/8/2017.  Here's about all that needs to be said about this third post conviction petition, from  Justice Hudson's opening salvo:

This case involves Hannon’s third petition for postconviction relief, which he filed in September 2015. In nearly 200 pages of materials, Hannon brought a host of claims, which generally fall into 12 categories: (1) an unauthorized sentence, (2) incompetence to stand trial; (3) ineffective assistance of trial counsel; (4) judicial bias by the trial judge; (5) judicial bias by the previous postconviction judge; (6) failure to serve the indictment; (7) actual innocence; (8) evidence of false DNA testimony from the BCA scientist; (9) evidence of false/inaccurate statements from the State’s witnesses; (10) evidence relating to substantive evidence referenced at trial; (11) evidence of a violation of Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963); and (12) prosecutorial misconduct. The postconviction court denied Hannon’s petition without holding an evidentiary hearing, concluding that all of the claims except the sentencing claim were untimely filed under section 590.01, subdivision 4, because they were brought more than 2 years after our disposition of his direct appeal and none of the statutory exceptions to the 2-year statute of limitations applied. Regarding the sentencing claim, the court held that the claim was meritless because the applicable statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.106, subd. 2(2), authorized the sentence that Hannon received. Hannon then filed this appeal.

Driving in Light Rain Provided Lawful Basis To Stop Vehicle

State v. McCabe, Minn.Ct.App., 2/6/2017.  There's a statute that says that drivers must display lighted headlamps and lighted tail lamps in three circumstances:

(1) at any time from sunset to sunrise; (2) at any time when it is raining, snowing, sleeting, or hailing; and (3) at any other time when visibility is impaired by weather, smoke, fog or other conditions or there is not sufficient light to render clearly discernible persons and vehicles on the highway at a distance of 500 feet ahead.

Minn.Stat. 169.48, subd. 1(a).  Well, when the cops stopped the vehicle in which Mr. McCabe was a passenger it was "raining lightly."  There were no lights.  Mr. McCabe had a handgun that he wasn't supposed to have so the state charged him with that.  He said, and the trial court agreed, that despite this "light rain" the visibility was not impaired and so the cops had no business stopping the vehicle.

The court of appeals said, no, the statute creates three distinct conditions under which lights must be displayed.  In this case, the "light rain" was enough.  That gave the cops a lawful basis to have stopped the vehicle and that was that.

No Fifth Amendment Violation By Asking a Defendant Who Is Not In Custody Just Where He Was When the Cops Showed Up to Execute A Search Warrant

State v. Heinonen, Minn.Ct.App., 1/30/2017.  Police executed a search warrant at a house where Mr. Heinonen happened to be at the time. Officers told him that he was not under arrest although he was handcuffed.  The officers then demanded to know Mr. Heinonen's full name, date of birth, and where he was when the cops showed up.  Mr. Heinonen provided that information, including that he had been in the southwest bedroom.  The cops then took Mr. Heinonen out to a squad car, read  him his Miranda rights, when he invoked.

Police found ammunition and a short barreled shotgun  in the southwest bedroom.

At the jail, an officer asked Mr. Heinonen to consent to a DNA test; the officer did not precede this request with another Miranda warning. Mr. Heinonen consented to the test but also blurted out that he had touched the shotgun.  A jury convicted Mr. Heinonen of possession of the shotgun by an ineligible person.

Mr. Heinonen challenged the admission of his statements at the house and at the jail.  The court of appeals said that just because the cops had handcuffed Mr. Heinonen that did not mean that he was in custody.  In fact, the court said that he was not in custody.  The court seems to say that if there is more than one person inside the house at the time of execution of the search warrant, the cops are authorized to restrain all of them regardless whether any of the occupants are causing a problem. So, since he was not in custody the police had no obligation to precede the demand to Mr. Heinonen to tell them where he was when they arrived with a Miranda warning.  Somehow this question about his location inside the  house when the cops arrived was also not an "interrogation" but just an "on-the-scene questioning" intended to "get a preliminary explanation of a confusing situation."  Really?  What was confusing other than to figure out who to tag with any contraband discovered during the search?  How better to resolve that confusion than to get Mr. Heinonen to them the cops where he was?

As to the question at the jail whether Mr. Heinonen would consent to a DNA test, this, too, is not an "interrogation" such that it triggers a Miranda warning.  The court insists that Mr. Heinonen "volunteered" the admission that he'd touched the shotgun so this slip of the tongue the court says is on Mr. Heinonen.

Manipulation of Steering Wheel of a Moving Vehicle By a Passenger Is Operation" of a Motor Vehicle

State v. Henderson, Minn.Ct.App., 1/30/2017.  Backseat driving, actually passenger seat driving, is still, well, driving, or in the parlance of the criminal vehicular operation laws "operating a motor vehicle."  Mr. Henderson got annoyed with the driving of the "driver" - the person sitting behind the steering wheel - and grabbed the wheel. The laws of motion and gravity being what they are, the car turned in the direction that Mr. Henderson charted. Unfortunately, Mr. Henderson had no access to the brake pedal from the passenger seat and so his wheel maneuver caused the driver to lose control of the car, which crashed upside down.  This got the attention of the cops, which got their attention on Mr. Henderson, which lead them to charge him with criminal vehicular operation.

Mr. Henderson said that to "operate" a motor vehicle required that he activate or manipulate any of the controls of a motor vehicle necessary to put the vehicle in motion.  He borrowed this definition from the jury instructions for driving under the influence of alcohol.  He said that grabbing the wheel kept the car in motion but did not put the car in motion; for that you needed access to the gas pedal.  Neither the trial court nor the court of appeals was persuaded:

We agree that the manipulation of the steering wheel of a moving motor vehicle by a passenger constitutes “operation” of a motor vehicle under Minn. Stat. § 609.21. This conclusion is supported by the policy of giving impaired driving laws the broadest possible effect in favor of public safety, the plain meaning of the word “operate,” and the fact that the vehicle was not stationary when appellant manipulated the steering wheel. 

Court Ducks Question Whether Fifth Amendment Prohibits Testimony About a Defendant's Post Arrest, Pre-Miranda Silence During Squad Car Ride to Jail

State v. Lilienthal, Minn.S.Ct., 2/1/2017.  Without objection, during the state’s case in chief the prosecutor elicited testimony from an officer that following Mr. Lilienthal's arrest and placement in a locked squad car but before any Miranda warning he remained silent. SCOTUS has not addressed whether the Fifth Amendment prohibits evidence of a defendant’s post-arrest, pre Miranda silence. The federal circuits are evenly split.  Because there was no contemporaneous objection to the admission of this testimony, the appellate review standard is "plain error."  Because the federal circuits are split and SCOTUS hasn't said Justice Hudson could proclaim that any error in the admission of such evidence is not plain, under the “plain error” doctrine, and the analysis goes no further.

Mr. Lilienthal did timely object to the prosecutor’s two references to this silence during closing argument.  In keeping with its practice of punting whenever possible and eschewing guidance to the lower courts, the Justice says that even if these references were error they were harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.  End of discussion.

There are two end results, one neutral and the other not so much. The neutral end result is that the court consumes a lot of ones and zeros to produce an uninformative fourteen page opinion that simply doesn't answer the question that had prompted them to take the case in the first place.  It's really important, nonetheless, to keep in mind that because the court ducked the question, it remains unanswered whether evidence of post arrest, pre Miranda silence is admissible. 

The not good end result is that the Justice incorrectly suggests that the answer would be “yes”.  She says this based on a SCOTUS case from 2013, Salinas v. Texas, 133 S.Ct. 2174 (2013) in which Justice Alito said that the state may introduce a defendant’s silence to the one of many questions asked during a non-custodial interrogation. Alito said that a response of silence to a question is not the invocation of any Fifth Amendment privilege and so no error occurred in admitting testimony about that silence. 

Here, there was no interrogation, just a car ride in which Lilienthal kept his mouth shut because no one was talking to him.  Officers arrested Lilienthal somewhere up on the Iron Range and then drove him to jail in Duluth.  During the ride to jail, Lilienthal said nothing except to say that he didn’t need medical attention.  Other than that he wasn't asked any questions:

The record provides no evidence to indicate that Lilienthal ever made a statement in response to his arrest, except to deny that he needed medical attention. Deputy Feiro did not interrogate Lilienthal or read him a Miranda warning before he drove Lilienthal to the jail in St. Louis County.

This is a horrific opinion that some prosecutors and judges will surely misread and misapply.  Bring the popcorn because juries may soon be transfixed by squad videos supposedly indicative of guilt of arrested suspects riding silently in the back of the squad on the way to jail.