Court Rejects Batson Challenge Because Defense Could Not Establish Prima Facie Showing That Peremptory Strike Was Racially Motivated

State v. Wilson, Minn.S.Ct., 8/16, 2017.  A jury convicted Mr. Wilson of first degree premeditated murder on an accomplice liability theory for his involvement of Anthony Fairbanks. One of his codefendants had already been tried and convicted, about which you can read here.  On appeal Mr. Wilson raised a Batson issue and an evidentiary issue.

The court yet again rejects a Batson juror challenge.  Mr. Wilson did not survive the first requirement of establishing a valid Batson challenge, that the state had exercised a peremptory challenge against a prospective juror - identified only as "Juror 29" - on the basis of race. Here's the gist of what Juror 29 had to say during voir dire:

1. Although married to a prosecutor, Juror 29 said that he and his spouse "have their own views and that they debate about the law and the judicial system.  He said that his spouse had been involved in a trial of a Minneapolis police officer two weeks earlier and that he had been disappointed in the outcome.
2. Three years earlier a St. Paul officer pulled a gun on Juror 29 as he was sitting in his parked car preparing for a job interview. When Juror 29 explained to the officer what he was doing the officer apologized and went on his way.
3. Juror 29 said in his questionnaire that in theory the criminal justice system works fine but "not so much in practice."  He elaborated on this during questioning that “I think maybe we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, disproportionate amount of those are African American.” Juror 29 further stated that, as a juror, “for the system to work well, it would be incumbent upon me to be . . . non-partial, not biased, to have an open mind about the evidence, both sides of the evidence and to . . . withhold any sort of opinion I had until all the evidence [has] kind of been submitted and heard.”  
4. Juror 29 stated that he did not believe that his views on the disproportionate incarceration rate Black me would not impact how he viewed a criminal case if he wee on a jury.
5. Juror 29 said that it was view that society was largely divided based on race and that it would be a "stretch to think that 12 people would be completely impartial going into a jury trial."

Justice G. Barry Anderson affirms the trial court's conclusion that Mr. Wilson had not shown that the state's peremptory challenge to Juror 29 had been racially motivated.  The Justice emphasized the "great discretion" afforded trial judges in making these determinations, and that just as it was not an abuse of discretion for the trial judge here to rejected the challenge neither would it have been an abuse of discretion had the trial court come to the opposite conclusion:

Taking these facts into consideration, and given the low bar for Wilson to establish a prima facie showing of an inference of discrimination, it likely would not have been error for the district court to conclude that Wilson had established a prima facie showing of discrimination. But neither was it error for the district court to conclude that Wilson failed to make a prima facie showing of discrimination. We must give “great deference” to the district court’s determination...

Police found the murder weapon in a storage locker rented to an alleged accomplice.  Mr. Wilson wanted to argue to the jury that drug dealers, which the accomplice apparently was, knew to keep their stash separate from their weapons so that's why the gun was in that storage locker.  Drug dealers knew this, the defense wanted to argue, because they also knew that the penalties for drug crimes where guns were involved were significantly higher.  The problem for Mr. Wilson was that he had no evidence to present in support of these assertions so when the state moved to exclude any further talk about this the trial court agreed.  The state said, and the trial judge agreed, that Mr. Wilson had no evidence that either of the accomplices to Mr. Fairbanks' death knew about the consequences that would result from keeping drugs and guns in the same place. Justice G. Barry Anderson agrees with the trial court's ruling, concluding that there was no abuse of discretion in the ruling because such evidence was irrelevant.

Probable Cause Existed For Defendant's Arrest; Batson Challenges Rejected

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.

Batson Challenge Denied, and No Abuse of Discretion by Trial Court’s Admission of Evidence of Defendant’s Threat of a Witness

State v. Diggins, Minn.S.Ct., 8/28/2013.  A jury convicted Mr. Diggins of two counts of premeditated first degree murder and various other related offenses.  On appeal, he complained about the denial of his Batson challenge to the state’s peremptory removal of an African-American prospective juror, Juror 16; and about the admission of evidence that he had assaulted and threatened a witness two days before trial.

Juror 16 was the second African-American prospective juror examined; the state had not challenged Juror 4, who was also African-American and who already sat on the jury.  When Mr. Diggins objected to the state’s peremptory removal of Juror 16, the trial court said that Mr. Diggins had not made a prima facie showing that the state’s challenge was racially motivated.  This could have ended the whole thing but the trial court plowed ahead and asked the state to articulate its reasons for the challenge.  The state said that its concerns were about inconsistencies between the juror’s answers on the questionnaire and responses in court, and about the juror’s “intellectual capacity” to serve as a juror.  The trial court said that this was a race-neutral explanation.

Writing for a six person court, Justice Lillehaug not participating, Justice Dietzen agreed that the state had articulated a race-neutral explanation for the challenge. 

On the evidence issue, Justice Dietzen reminds everyone that evidence of a defendant’s threat against a witness is relevant to show consciousness of guilt.  State v. Harris, 521 N.W.2d 348 (Minn. 1994).  However, such evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury.  Or, if it tends to show that a defendant was predisposed to commit the crime charged.  So, the trial court has to play Goldilocks and admit just the right amount of such evidence and then instruct the jury about its function.  Here, the court concludes that the trial court’s handling of this evidence was just right.

Court Again Rejects Batson Challenge; Finds Erroneous Self Defense Instructions Harmless

State v. Carridine, Minn.S.Ct., 5/9/2012.  A jury convicted Mr. Carridine of premeditated murder in the first degree for the shooting death of Lorenzo Guffie.  Mr. Carridine said that he shot Mr. Guffie without intending to  in self defense.  Before that, however, the two men argued, first inside a bar and then out on the street, over whether Mr. Guffie had robbed Mr. Carridine,. The state and the defense disagreed over which side was the aggressor in the argument, each saying that it was the other who “started it.”  The state’s witnesses said that once the argument moved outside that Mr. Guffie got in his car and began to drive away.  Mr. Carridine went up to the car, said something like “get me some” and shot at the moving car six times.  Mr. Carridine said that it was Mr. Guffie who drew down on him and that it had been his intent only to shoot at the car door.

The main issues on appeal had to do with jury instructions on self defense and on jury strikes.  The state removed two potential jurors of color for cause, to which Mr. Carridine objected on Batson grounds.  Alas, the court continues its streak of never reversing a conviction for this reason (or, maybe there’s been one).  The state’s first strike was of J.C., an African American woman.  Here’s the court’s summary of her qualifications:

J.C. is a nurse at the V.A. Medical Center. About 20 or 30 years earlier she testified as an alibi witness in her brother’s assault trial. Her brother was convicted and served time in prison. Although J.C. testified that she respected the jury’s verdict, she said she was “disappointed” with the decision and that it made her feel “sad.” Although she said that she would be able to listen to the testimony and be impartial, she said the trial “will bring up memories of the past.” The State asked her if she felt comfortable sitting in judgment of another person, and she replied, “Not completely. . . . I would have to – I would have to pray and ask for guidance to do the right thing.”

The state’s second strike was of P.G., an Asian-Pacific Islander:

P.G. was unemployed and looking for work. The State asked P.G. how he would view the State’s witnesses, who may have lifestyles that he does not particularly like, and P.G. responded that he would not judge them by their “nature of looks or how they sit” but would “look at the facts.” When asked if the witnesses’ prior bad acts would affect whether he believed their testimony, P.G. replied that he “would go by the weight of the facts.”

The court accepted the state’s reasons for striking J.C. as race neutral.  As to P.G., the court said that the defense had not even made out a prima facie case.

Before trial, Mr. Carridine had pled guilty but then asked to withdraw that plea; he sent the judge a letter in support of that request in which he told the judge what had happened which led him to believe that he had a self defense claim.  At trial, the court permitted the state to impeach Mr. Carridine.  The supreme court ducks the question whether this was impermissible impeachment by saying that even so the error was harmless.

Because Mr. Carridine maintained that it had not been his intent to kill anyone, the supreme court says that it was error to have given the jury CRIMJIG 7.05, justifiable taking of life, which includes language about intentional killing.  Instead, the jury should have been given CRIMJIG 7.06, which does not include language about intentional killing.  The court reviewed this error under a “plain error” analysis and concluded that the error had not affected Mr. Carridine’s substantial rights.  The court also concluded that there was enough evidence to have warranted the instruction on revival of the right of self defense.

Finally, the court considered and rejected a number of claims of prosecutorial misconduct.