Fagin v. State

• Decision Date: 02 October 2019
• Docket Number: A17-1705
• Citation: 933 N.W.2d 774
• Parties: Jason Maurice FAGIN, Respondent, v. STATE of Minnesota, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

933 N.W.2d 774

Jason Maurice FAGIN, Respondent,

v.STATE of Minnesota, Appellant.

A17-1705

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Filed: October 2, 2019

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Amy Lawler, Assistant Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for respondent.

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Peter Orput, Washington County Attorney, Nicholas Hydukovich, Assistant Washington County Attorney, Stillwater, Minnesota, for appellant.

OPINION

LILLEHAUG, Justice.

This case requires that we decide whether, on a petition for postconviction relief under Minn. Stat. ch. 590 (2018) asserting the invalidity of a test-refusal conviction under Birchfield v. North Dakota , 579 U.S. ––––, 136 S. Ct. 2160, 195 L.Ed.2d 560 (2016), and Johnson v. State , 916 N.W.2d 674 (Minn. 2018), the petitioner bears the burden to allege and prove that no applicable exception to the warrant requirement applies. Johnson made retroactive the rule announced in Birchfield that, in the absence of a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement, refusal to submit to a blood or urine test cannot be criminalized. The district court denied respondent Jason Fagin’s request for postconviction relief because he failed to prove there was no applicable exception to the warrant requirement. Concluding that the district court erred by placing the burden of proof on Fagin instead of the State, the court of appeals reversed and remanded for further proceedings. Because the district court properly placed the burden of proof on Fagin, we reverse the decision of the court of appeals. We also announce a heightened pleading standard for Birchfield / Johnson postconviction proceedings. We remand to the district court to allow supplemental pleadings under this standard and reconsideration of Fagin’s request for postconviction relief.

FACTS

Around 2:00 a.m. on March 22, 2012, the Washington County Sheriff’s Department received a report of a car stopped across two lanes of traffic on a rural road. When deputies arrived, they found two unconscious men. The deputy who walked up to the driver’s side of the car noticed that the driver’s left shoe was off, his left sock was pulled down, and his left foot was placed over his right knee. The deputy immediately suspected that the driver had injected himself with a narcotic and become unconscious.

The deputies woke up the men. As he awakened, the driver sped away. The car stopped about 30 seconds later. The deputies ordered the men out of the car and took them into custody. A pat search of the driver, later identified as respondent Jason Fagin, produced a plastic bag that the deputies believed contained methamphetamine. They described Fagin as "extremely impaired." In the car, the deputies found several needles, syringes, spoons, and other items often used with narcotics.

Fagin was booked into the Washington County Jail. A deputy read Fagin the implied-consent advisory, and asked him whether he understood. Fagin did. The deputy asked Fagin whether he would like to speak with an attorney. Fagin declined. The deputy asked if he would take a urine test. Fagin declined. Fagin also declined a blood test. Fagin later told deputies that he would take a urine test, but then changed his mind. Then he again declined a blood test. There is no evidence in the record that deputies sought a warrant or offered Fagin a breath test.

The Washington County Attorney charged Fagin with first-degree test-refusal,¹ Minn. Stat. § 169A.20, subd. 2 (2010), and fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance, Minn. Stat. § 152.025, subd. 2(b)(1) (2010). On July 30, 2012, by plea agreement, Fagin pleaded guilty to the test-refusal charge and the possession charge was dismissed. The district court sentenced him to 65 months in prison and imposed a five-year term of conditional release. Fagin did not appeal.

On July 29, 2014, Fagin filed a timely postconviction petition in which he argued that Missouri v. McNeely , 569 U.S. 141, 133 S.Ct. 1552, 185 L.Ed.2d 696 (2013), had rendered Minnesota’s test-refusal statute unconstitutional, and sought to withdraw his guilty plea. Fagin’s petition was denied without a hearing. Fagin filed and then voluntarily dismissed a notice of appeal.

On May 23, 2017, Fagin filed a second postconviction petition in which he argued that our decisions in the companion cases of State v. Trahan , 886 N.W.2d 216 (Minn. 2016), and State v. Thompson , 886 N.W.2d 224 (Minn. 2016), rendered his test-refusal conviction unconstitutional. The State responded that Fagin’s second petition was barred on three procedural grounds. First, Fagin had waived his claims when he pleaded guilty. Second, his claims were barred by the rule announced in State v. Knaffla , 309 Minn. 246, 243 N.W.2d 737, 741 (1976), because they could have been raised in his 2014 postconviction petition. Third, Fagin’s claims were untimely under Minn. Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4 (2018). On the merits, the State argued that the Birchfield rule, as applied in Trahan and Thompson , was procedural and therefore not retroactive. Finally, the State argued that Fagin had not met his burden to prove the absence of a warrant exception. Specifically, the State contended that Fagin had "not met his burden of showing that exigent circumstances did not exist."

The postconviction court denied Fagin’s second petition without a hearing on August 30, 2017. The court concluded that Fagin had waived his constitutional claims by pleading guilty, that he failed to establish that the Birchfield rule applied retroactively to him, and that, even if the Birchfield rule was retroactive, Fagin failed to prove the absence of exigent circumstances.

Fagin appealed. The court of appeals stayed the appeal pending our decision in Johnson v. State , 916 N.W.2d 674 (Minn. 2018), which involved the question of whether the Birchfield rule applied retroactively to postconviction proceedings. After our opinion in Johnson was released, the State conceded that Fagin had not waived his claim by pleading guilty and that the Birchfield rule applied retroactively.

This left for the court of appeals the issues of whether, as the district court held, Fagin had the burden of proof to show the absence of exigent circumstances and had failed to meet it. The court of appeals concluded that the district court erred by placing the burden of proof regarding the absence of exigent circumstances on Fagin instead of the State. Fagin v. State , No. A17-1705, 2018 WL 6034962, at *2 (Minn. App. Nov. 19, 2018). The court reasoned that Trahan conclusively allocated the burden to the State. Therefore, the court of appeals reversed and remanded for an evidentiary hearing on the issue of exigent circumstances, at which the burden would be on the State. Id.

We granted the State’s petition for review. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the district court properly placed the burden of proof on Fagin, and, therefore, the court of appeals erred when it reversed the district court’s decision.

ANALYSIS

We review denial of a petition for postconviction relief for an abuse of discretion. Johnson , 916 N.W.2d at 678. Reversal is required if the district court exercised its discretion in an arbitrary or capricious manner, based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law, or made clearly erroneous factual findings. Id.

To set the stage for our discussion of the burden of proof in postconviction proceedings involving DWI-test-refusal convictions, a brief overview of the relevant law is necessary. In 2016, the Supreme Court consolidated three cases, including one from Minnesota,² regarding whether state statutes criminalizing chemical-test refusal violated the Fourth Amendment. Birchfield v. North Dakota , 579 U.S. ––––, ––––, 136 S. Ct. 2160, 2170–72, 195 L.Ed.2d 560 (2016). The cases concerned statutes criminalizing blood and breath test refusal. Id. The Court held that, although a breath test was permissible as a search incident to arrest (consistent with our decision in Bernard ), a blood test did not fall within this exception to the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement. 579 U.S. at ––––, 136 S. Ct. at 2185. Therefore, refusal to give a blood sample by a person suspected of driving under the influence could only be criminalized if (a) the police had a valid warrant, or (b) some other exception to the warrant requirement applied. See 579 U.S. at ––––, 136 S. Ct. at 2185–86.

Four months later, we decided companion cases applying Birchfield : State v. Trahan , 886 N.W.2d 216 (Minn. 2016), and State v. Thompson , 886 N.W.2d 224 (Minn. 2016). The former was a postconviction petition arising out of a guilty plea to first-degree test refusal for refusing to submit to a warrantless blood test. Trahan , 886 N.W.2d at 219. The latter was a direct appeal from a conviction for second-degree test refusal for refusing to submit to warrantless blood or urine tests. Thompson , 886 N.W.2d at 227. We decided that the State may not criminalize refusal of a blood or a urine test absent a search warrant or an applicable exception to the warrant requirement. Johnson , 916 N.W.2d at 679. Therefore, Minn. Stat. § 169A.20, subd. 2 (2014) was unconstitutional as applied to Trahan and Thompson because both attempted searches were warrantless and no exceptions to the warrant requirement applied. Johnson , 916 N.W.2d at 679.

Nearly two years later, we decided Johnson , a postconviction petition challenging two chemical-test-refusal convictions entered before Birchfield , Trahan , and Thompson . Id. at 677–78. Johnson argued that the Birchfield rule was a new, substantive rule of federal constitutional criminal law that was retroactively applicable to his convictions. Id. at 678.

We agreed, deciding that the Birchfield rule "placed a category of conduct outside the State’s power to punish." Id. at 683. Therefore, the rule was substantive and applied retroactively to Johnson’s convictions.³ Id. at 684. We also held that, because the Birchfiel...