State v. Guzman, Minn.S.Ct., 4/12/2017. A jury convicted Mr. Guzman of first degree premeditated murder. The trial court sentenced him to life with possibility of release.
The state's initial Complaint charged Mr. Guzman with second degree intentional murder. At his first appearance the trial judge asked the prosecutor to notify the court and defense counsel if there was going to be a presentation to the grand jury. The prosecutor apparently didn't say anything in response, but seventeen days later the state convened a grand jury which eventually returned the murder 1 indictment. Mr. Guzman said that the indictment was untimely, citing to Rule 8.02, subd. 2:
If the complaint charges a homicide, and the prosecuting attorney notifies the court that the case will be presented to the grand jury, or if the offense is punishable by life imprisonment, the defendant cannot enter a plea at the Rule 8 hearing.
Presentation of the case to the grand jury must commence within 14 days from the date of defendant’s appearance in the court under this rule, and an indictment or report of no indictment must be returned within a reasonable time.
Justice G. Barry Anderson pointed to the court's opinion last year, State v. Vang, which rejected this very argument.
Mr. Guzman also wanted the entire grand jury transcript, not just the testimony of trial witnesses. The court talked about this just the other week, State v. Loving, and laid out what the defense has to show in order to get the non-testimonial portion of grand jury proceedings. The defense must show good cause to acquire the non-testimonial portion; the trial court found, and Justice Anderson agreed, that this burden had not been met.
Mr. Guzman defended in part by saying that a Mr. Hector was a third party perpetrator. Mr. Guzman wanted to introduce "prior bad acts" of Mr. Hector, some of which the court allowed but most of which it excluded on evidentiary grounds:
Here, the district court allowed appellant to present evidence that at the time of Rufino’s death, Hector had consumed alcohol and possessed a firearm.11 The court, however, excluded the following reverse-Spreigl evidence as irrelevant: testimony that during the spring 2014 robbery Hector consumed alcohol and possessed a firearm and testimony about an alleged dispute between Hector and his neighbor that involved a gun. The court also excluded evidence that Hector and Rufino were gang members, concluding that the evidence was “innately prejudicial.” Finally, the district court excluded testimony regarding an alleged confrontation between Hector and J.R., finding that if it was offered for the truth of the matter asserted, it was hearsay, and if it was offered for impeachment, Hector did not have an opportunity to admit or deny it.
The trial court allowed the state to introduce recordings of jail calls between Mr. Guzman and his girlfriend, some of which occurred while he was in jail on something else. While the court didn't like it that the state told the jury how it was that it had these recordings it said that any error was harmless.
Once again, the whole business of "expansive liability" language in the jury instruction on accomplice liability came up:
The law further provides that a defendant who intentionally aids and abets another person in the commission of a crime is not only guilty of the intended crime but also any other crime which was a reasonably foreseeable and probable consequence of trying to commit the intended crime.
Appellant objected to the italicized language, which for purposes of this opinion we will call “the expansive-liability language.” According to appellant, the expansive-liability language is appropriate only when there is evidence that the defendant intentionally aided and abetted an accomplice in the commission of a crime, like robbery, and the accomplice commits another crime that was reasonably foreseeable to the defendant, like murder.
The court says that if there were any error it was harmless.
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