Race v. State

• Decision Date: 24 December 1987
• Docket Number: No. C2-87-539,C2-87-539
• Citation: 417 N.W.2d 264
• Parties: Larry Gene RACE, petitioner, Appellant, v. STATE of Minnesota, Respondent.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 264

417 N.W.2d 264

Larry Gene RACE, petitioner, Appellant, v. STATE of Minnesota, Respondent.

No. C2-87-539.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Dec. 24, 1987.

Syllabus by the Court

District court properly denied petition for postconviction relief based upon a claim of newly discovered evidence.

David W. Larson, Minneapolis, for appellant.

Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Alan L. Mitchell, Co. Atty., John E. DeSanto, Asst. Co. Atty., Duluth, for respondent.

Heard and considered by the court en banc.

OPINION

COYNE, Justice.

This is an appeal by Larry Gene Race (hereafter "petitioner") from an order of the district court denying a petition for postconviction relief in the form of a new trial based upon a claim of newly discovered evidence. We affirm.

In 1983 petitioner was found guilty by a district court jury of first-degree murder in the death of Deborah Race, his wife and the mother of his three children. Petitioner was sentenced to life imprisonment. We affirmed his conviction in State v. Race, 383 N.W.2d 656 (Minn.1986), against claims that the evidence of his guilt was insufficient, that his counsel failed to represent him effectively at trial, and that the prosecutor committed prejudicial misconduct in closing argument.

The evidence presented at trial is summarized in detail in our earlier opinion. Briefly, petitioner took his wife out to dinner on the evening of May 11, 1982, to celebrate their 14th wedding anniversary, then took her for a ride on Lake Superior in his 22-foot cabin cruiser. At 2:00 a.m. on May 12 petitioner, wearing a so-called dry suit, appeared at a motel adjacent to the Lakeshore Restaurant at which they had dined, woke the operator of the motel, and said he needed help rescuing his wife, who was out on the lake. Petitioner told authorities that a leak had developed in the water jacket of the engine and that when he activated the bilge pump to pump out water his wife had become hysterical and insisted on getting into a life raft and leaving the boat. He said that he had tried to inflate one of the two rafts on board the cruiser but that, when it would not hold air, he inflated the other one. He said that Deborah got in the raft, which took on some water, and he, wearing his dry suit to protect him against hypothermia, began towing the raft toward shore by swimming. He said that when he stopped towing to warm his hands, the raft drifted away out of reach. He said that after he yelled at Deborah to head towards shore, he swam back to his boat and began setting off flares.

A search for the raft and for Deborah Race was unsuccessful. Later, in the afternoon, a school boy found Deborah's body washed up on shore. An autopsy revealed that she had died of immersion hypothermia resulting from exposure to the 35? to 37? Fahrenheit water.

Authorities who examined the boat found that the engine worked, that it did take on water but that the bilge pump worked and had the capacity to remove the water and that the boat had been in no danger of sinking. The officers found a blue and yellow raft on the boat; several gallons of water were still in the raft and there were numerous cuts on the underside of the raft giving the appearance of having been made with an upward thrust of a diver's knife while the raft was inflated.

It was the state's theory at trial that the second raft never existed, that the victim had gotten into the raft that the officers later found on the boat and that petitioner, wearing his dry suit, had swum under the raft and punctured it, knowing that once Deborah was in the water she would die from immersion hypothermia in a relatively short time. As we stated in our earlier opinion, inconsistencies in petitioner's various statements concerning the raft found in the boat were a significant factor in resolving the issue of the existence or nonexistence of a second raft. 383 N.W.2d at 660. While petitioner's brother and his young daughter testified to knowing that petitioner possessed a second raft, neither of them had mentioned this until shortly before trial, which commenced 1 1/2 years after the victim's death. Id. And, of great significance, the second raft was never found. As we stated in our opinion:

On May 12 and immediately thereafter, a comprehensive effort was made to locate the alleged second raft. Notwithstanding extensive radio, television and newspaper media attention given to the search for the "other" blue and yellow rubber raft, no one reported sighting or finding such a raft. Trial evidence established that a raft similar to that found on the boat, with pockets of air in it, would be virtually unsinkable. Because of the intensity of the search for the raft, one of the search officers went so far as to testify at trial that had any "other" raft existed, it would have been found. Many witnesses who testified at trial, who were on or near Lake Superior on May 11-12, 1982, and who have been on or near the lake since, indicated they had neither seen, found nor heard of anyone else who had seen or found any other blue and yellow rubber raft.

383 N.W.2d at 660-61.

In November of 1986 petitioner filed this petition for postconviction relief based on newly discovered evidence. The newly discovered evidence consisted primarily of the testimony of two persons, Theresa Styniski and Hugh Bernhardt. A Duluth television station had broadcast a documentary about petitioner's case in October and Styniski had...