Bobo v. State
| Decision Date | 09 February 2022 |
| Docket Number | A21-0440 |
| Citation | 969 N.W.2d 829 |
| Parties | De-Aunteze Lavion BOBO, Appellant, v. STATE of Minnesota, Respondent. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Zachary A. Longsdorf, Longsdorf Law Firm, PLC, Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, for appellant.
Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Nicole Cornale, Assistant County Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for respondent.
Considered and decided by the court without oral argument.
In 2007, De-Aunteze Bobo was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. In this appeal, Bobo challenges the district court's denial of his fifth petition for postconviction relief. The district court refused to admit hearsay evidence under Minn. R. Evid. 804(b)(3) and concluded that Bobo failed to satisfy the newly discovered evidence exception in Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4(b)(2) (2020). Because we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion, we affirm.
Our opinions in Bobo's previous appeals set forth the facts underlying his murder conviction. See State v. Bobo (Bobo I ), 770 N.W.2d 129 (Minn. 2009) ; Bobo v. State (Bobo II ), 820 N.W.2d 511 (Minn. 2012) ; Bobo v. State (Bobo III ), 860 N.W.2d 681 (Minn. 2015). In this case, we focus on the facts and procedure relevant to the newly discovered evidence claim raised in Bobo's fifth petition for postconviction relief.
At approximately 2:30 a.m. on June 2, 2006, James Roberts and Robert Nichols were sitting in a car outside of Stand Up Frank's, a bar in Northeast Minneapolis, when a large dark-colored SUV drove past and made a U-turn. When the SUV came by a second time, someone fired gunshots at the car, killing Roberts and wounding Nichols. Police were initially unable to identify any suspects. But police later recovered the gun used in the drive-by shooting while executing an arrest warrant for Bobo's cousin, Leonard Slaughter, on unrelated charges. Police then began investigating Bobo as a known associate of Slaughter.
About 3 months after the shooting, Samuel James came forward with information. At the time, James—a relative and friend of Bobo's—was being held in custody awaiting sentencing for aggravated robbery. James told police that Bobo talked to him about the shooting while they were both being held in the Hennepin County jail. According to James, Bobo and Slaughter were at Slaughter's mother's house before the shooting. After leaving the house, Bobo drove his two-door, black Chevy Blazer with Slaughter as the passenger. Bobo allegedly told James that he instructed Slaughter to get a gun out—the gun recovered by police—and when they pulled up alongside another vehicle, Bobo told Slaughter to shoot both occupants. After the shooting, Bobo and Slaughter went back to Slaughter's mother's house and then got a ride to south Minneapolis. James explained that Slaughter had shown James the murder weapon several months before the shooting occurred—along with several other handguns—while Bobo, Slaughter, and another person were cooking crack at Slaughter's mother's house.
As part of an agreement to avoid further jail time for his robbery conviction, James testified before a grand jury and implicated Bobo as the driver involved in the shooting. James explained that his information about the shooting came from multiple conversations with Bobo. James's grand jury testimony largely mirrored his earlier statements to police.1 When James was asked whether he is afraid or "fearful" of Bobo and Slaughter, he responded, "Yeah, in a way, yes."
James signed two affidavits denying that he had provided any information to police about Bobo's criminal activity, which he gave to Bobo's mother. James signed the first affidavit after giving his statements to police and the second after testifying before the grand jury.
Bobo was subsequently charged with several crimes related to the shooting. During the jury trial, the State presented evidence that Bobo had access to multiple SUVs similar to the one described by eyewitnesses as being involved in the shooting and that cell phone tower records placed Bobo and Slaughter around Stand Up Frank's at the time of the shooting. When James was called to testify at the trial, several alleged gang members entered the courtroom. James refused to testify, denied knowing anything about the shooting, and repeatedly shouted that Bobo was innocent. The jury was excused from the courtroom and the district court heard from the State about several alleged attempts to intimidate James not to testify. Later, when James returned to the witness stand, defense counsel cross-examined James and elicited testimony that his statements to the grand jury were false and that police had offered him a deal on his aggravated robbery conviction if he framed Bobo. Following the cross-examination, the district court permitted the State to introduce James's grand jury testimony as evidence of a prior inconsistent statement under Minn. R. Evid. 801(d)(1)(A).
Bobo did not testify during the jury trial but did present an alibi defense through the testimony of Slaughter's mother, who told the jury that Bobo had left her house shortly before the shooting, along with Bobo's child and the child's mother. The defense also presented testimony that another person had been a suspect in the murder but was ultimately ruled out by police because the suspect did not associate with Slaughter.
The jury found Bobo guilty of first-degree murder while committing a drive-by shooting, second-degree intentional murder, and second-degree murder while committing a drive-by shooting in connection with the death of Roberts. The jury also found Bobo guilty of drive-by shooting in connection with the wounding of Nichols. The district court convicted Bobo of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Bobo filed a timely direct appeal which was stayed to allow him to pursue postconviction claims of ineffective assistance of counsel and juror misconduct. The district court denied Bobo's first petition for postconviction relief. We affirmed Bobo's conviction and the district court's denial of his first petition for postconviction relief. Bobo I , 770 N.W.2d at 133.
In 2010, Bobo filed second and third petitions for postconviction relief. In the second petition, Bobo presented an affidavit from James that reiterated testimony from the jury trial but did not implicate James in the shooting. Bobo's third petition for postconviction relief asserted a newly discovered evidence claim that James had confessed to Demetrius Tyson and Jesse Clark that he was the driver. The district court summarily denied Bobo's second and third petitions for postconviction relief. We affirmed the dismissal of Bobo's second petition but reversed and remanded for an evidentiary hearing on the newly discovered evidence claims in his third petition. Bobo II , 820 N.W.2d at 520.
Before we decided Bobo II , Bobo filed a fourth petition asserting another newly discovered evidence claim that an eyewitness had identified James as the driver, not Bobo. The district court held an evidentiary hearing on Bobo's remanded third petition and the claim in his fourth petition. Bobo presented evidence from Tyson, the new eyewitness Jermaine Mack-Lynch, and James. Tyson testified that, while they were both in prison, James confessed to being in the car during the shooting. Mack-Lynch testified that he witnessed the shooting, and that James was in the driver's seat. Mack-Lynch explained that it was only later, when he and James were in jail together, that he recognized James as the driver of the vehicle involved in the shooting.
James's testimony during the postconviction evidentiary hearing was mostly the same as his testimony during the jury trial—including that Bobo is innocent—but did contain some new information. James told the district court that he was initially implicated in the shooting and was under the influence of alcohol or high on ecstasy when he provided his statements to police. James claimed that he did not testify during the grand jury proceeding but was forced to attend. James explained that he is currently incarcerated for two murders and his earliest release date is 2047. On the second day of the postconviction evidentiary hearing, James refused to testify further and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
The district court found Tyson's and Mack-Lynch's testimony not credible and denied Bobo's third and fourth petitions for postconviction relief.2 Bobo appealed, and we affirmed. Bobo III , 860 N.W.2d at 683.
In 2020, Bobo filed his fifth postconviction petition for relief alleging another newly discovered evidence claim, which included an affidavit signed in 2018 by James asserting that he was the driver of the vehicle involved in the shooting, not Bobo. The petition also included an affidavit from the mother of Bobo's child claiming that she was with Bobo on the night of the shooting.
The district court granted Bobo's request for an evidentiary hearing. The district court allowed testimony from Bobo and James during the evidentiary hearing, but James exercised his Fifth Amendment right and refused to respond to most of the questions. James did testify for the first time, however, that he was with Bobo at Slaughter's mother's house after 10 p.m. the night of the shooting, and when he left, Bobo was still at the house with his child and the child's mother.3 The district court excluded the affidavit and testimony of the mother of Bobo's child because this evidence did not qualify as newly discovered evidence.4 The district court also excluded recordings of jail calls between James and a reporter, as well as James's 2018 affidavit, because they failed to meet the standards for admissibility under Minn. R. Evid. 804(b)(3). Finally, the district court excluded the testimony of the private investigator who obtained James's signature on the 2018 affidavit to the...
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