Testimony About some of What Defendant Said during Interrogation Does Not Authorize Defense To Introduce Entirety of Recorded Statement

State v. Robertson, Minn.S.Ct., 9/14/2016.  A jury convicted Mr. Robertson of first degree premeditated murder of Kevin Braziel.  It was the state's theory that Mr. Robertson shot and killed Mr. Robertson by mistake.  When police interrogated Mr. Robertson he denied any involvement in Mr. Braziel's death.

The state did not play Mr. Braziel's recorded statement during the trial.  Instead, the officer to conducted the interrogation testified about parts of the interview.  Although the trial court allowed defense counsel to ask this officer about other portions of the interrogation the court denied a request to play the whole thing. 

Mr. Robertson made this request under Rule 106 of the rule of evidence.  This rule says that if one side introduces a portion of a recorded statement  then the other side may be permitted to play any of the remainder of the recording "which ought in fairness to be considered contemporaneously with it."  Chief Justice Gildea said, however, that the problem for Mr. Robertson was that the state didn't introduce any of the recorded statement (or its transcript). State v. Bauer, 598 N.W.2d 368 (Minn. 1999) says just that.  It should be permissible, however, for the defense to introduce portions of the recorded interview where not doing so would mislead the jury.

Mr. Robertson raised some additional errors on appeal, none of which did the court find persuasive.

Post Conviction Claims are Knaffla Barred.

Davis v. State, Minn.S.Ct., 6/15/2016.  Mr. Davis is serving a life sentence for the felony murder of Armando Calix.  Mr. Davis appealed that conviction and sentence, in which he raised some fifteen claims.  The court denied relief on all of those claims.

He then filed a post conviction petition in which thirteen of the fifteen claims he presented were duplicate claims raised on direct appeal. Under the Knaffla rule those claims are procedurally barred. Neither the post conviction court nor Justice Stras addressed whether the statutory adoption of the Knaffla rule, Minn.Stat. 590.04, subd 3 is either a separate basis for denial of the post conviction petition; or has superseded Knaffla.  Justice Stras affirms the denial of relief on the other two claims - sufficiency of evidence, and an evidentiary ruling - because those claims were or should have been known to Mr. Davis at the time of his direct appeal.  Justice Stras also declined to address either the two Knaffla exceptions, or the limitations exceptions in the statute.

Justice Paul Anderson Court Festival

6/11/2013:  Until yesterday I had believed that I had posted this announcement about the multitude of opinions that came out of the Supreme Court on Justice Paul Anderson's last day on the court.  Here's what I wrote (and some may have actually seen if you have a blog feed of some sort).

5/31/2013:

Justice Paul Anderson’s last day on the court was this past Friday.  There were a slew of opinions.  It seemed, though, that the remaining justices were more keen on showing Justice Anderson the door rather than bidding him a fond farewell.  The opinions in which the Justice was not in the majority excoriated him in lengthy footnotes.  Justice Anderson gave as good as he got. Anyway, it may take a few more days to work through the five criminal opinions.

Source Code Opinion Affirms Reliability of Intoxilyzer 5000EN

[Source Code Litigation], Minn.S.Ct., 6/27/12.  In a 4-3 Opinion, the supreme court has upheld the district court’s conclusion that the results of measured breath alcohol from the Intoxilyzer 5000EN are reliable, and that should individual litigants seek to introduce evidence related to the challenge’s results may not do so in any upcoming trials. 

Justices Page, Paul Anderson and Meyer dissented.  You may wish to read the dissent closely if you are thinking of trying to offer evidence of an unreliable result in a particular case for hints of challenges to be made.