State v. Collins
| Decision Date | 21 July 2014 |
| Docket Number | A13-1176 |
| Parties | State of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Robert Edward Collins, Jr., Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Court of Appeals |
This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2012).
Affirmed
Olmsted County District Court
Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
Mark A. Ostrem, Olmsted County Attorney, Eric M. Woodford, Assistant County Attorney, Rochester, Minnesota (for respondent)
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Jennifer Workman Jesness, Assistant Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Halbrooks, Presiding Judge; Smith, Judge; and Klaphake, Judge.*
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
On appeal from his conviction of being an ineligible person in possession of a firearm, appellant argues that the district court erred by accepting his stipulation to an element of the offense without securing a valid waiver of his rights under Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 3(a). Appellant also argues that the district court abused its discretion when it admitted hearsay statements under Minn. R. Evid. 807. Because we conclude that any error in accepting appellant's stipulation was harmless and that the district court properly exercised its discretion in admitting the disputed hearsay statements, we affirm.
On June 3, 2012, police responded to a call that there had been a drive-by shooting near an apartment building in Rochester. Witnesses alleged that a man sitting in the front passenger seat of a green Kia had fired a handgun at a group of pedestrians. Witnesses described the man as an African-American male with shoulder-length, dreadlocked hair. D.P., a 13-year-old boy who witnessed the shooting, told police that a man named "Chewy" was driving the green Kia. D.P. told police that "Chewy's" real name is James Dortch and that "Chewy" was in the vehicle with a "[k]id named Shorty D," who had dreadlocked hair. D.P. did not know "Shorty D's" real name. Police recorded their interview with D.P. and repeatedly noted D.P.'s nervous demeanor and that he was uncooperative when speaking with them.
Weeks later, police located Dortch, and he was brought to the police station for questioning. During his 24-minute interview with police, Dortch admitted that he wasthe individual driving the green Kia on the day of the drive-by shooting. He told police that "Shorty D" was the passenger in the vehicle and that "Shorty D's" real name is Robert Edward Collins, Jr., the appellant in this matter. Thereafter, police located and arrested appellant, charging him with the crime of being an ineligible person in possession of a firearm. Against the advice of counsel, appellant waived his right to a jury trial.
Before his bench trial began, appellant stipulated that he had a prior felony-level conviction making him ineligible to possess a firearm. Specifically, he admitted that he had been convicted of a third-degree controlled-substance crime and that he had received a felony-level sentence for that conviction. Appellant conferred with counsel on the matter and was advised of the state's burden of proving this element beyond a reasonable doubt. The district court also advised appellant as to the disadvantages of stipulating to this element. Nevertheless, appellant stated that he still wished to stipulate, and the district court accepted the stipulation. The parties proceeded to trial, disputing whether appellant was the man who possessed a firearm in the passenger seat of the green Kia.
At trial, the three witnesses whom police talked to immediately after the shooting testified. They testified consistently with their earlier statements to police—that the passenger in the vehicle was an African-American male who had shoulder-length, dreadlocked hair. But D.P. recanted his earlier statements to police. D.P. testified that there were two people in the green Kia, but claimed that he did not remember who was in the passenger seat. D.P. testified that he did not know appellant, had never seen him before, and had never heard of the nickname "Shorty D." D.P. stated that he could nolonger remember the events of that day and that his memory was "just gone." By the conclusion of his direct examination, D.P. recanted his earlier trial testimony, stating that he did not remember if there were two people in the vehicle. At a bench conference, defense counsel advised the district court that D.P. was afraid. D.P. himself said that he was "just doing what [his] parents told [him] to do."
Dortch also testified at trial. Dortch appeared in court only after he had been arrested for failing to comply with a subpoena. Dortch also recanted his earlier statements to police. Dortch admitted that he was the individual driving the green Kia. He also agreed that appellant's nickname is "Shorty D." But he claimed that appellant was not the passenger in the vehicle; rather, it was his friend Mikey. Dortch did not know Mikey's last name, despite claiming to have known him for about a year. He did not know where he had met Mikey or where Mikey lived, but he knew that Mikey had "light skin." When asked why he had told police that the passenger was "Shorty D," Dortch said it was because he felt "pressured" by police during his interview.
Because of Dortch and D.P.'s recantations, the prosecutor sought to admit into evidence both witnesses' earlier statements to police under Minn. R. Evid. 807, the "catchall" exception to the hearsay rule. The district court allowed both witnesses' prior statements into evidence, finding that both D.P. and Dortch's earlier statements were trustworthy and met the requirements of rule 807. The district court determined that D.P.'s testimony "was limited by his unwillingness to 'snitch'" and that D.P. "displayed an increasing lack of cooperation with the prosecutor's direct examination." The district court determined that D.P.'s statements to police were trustworthy because they "weremade and recorded very shortly after the incident, before there was any extended opportunity to fabricate, for memory to dim, or for [D.P.] to ruminate at length on the stigma or possibly dangerous consequences of 'snitching.'" The district court also found that there was "nothing in the manner or content of the [police] interrogation that cause[d] [it] to question the reliability of Dortch's identification of 'Shorty D.'"
The district court found appellant guilty of being an ineligible person in possession of a firearm. Appellant was sentenced to 60 months in prison. This appeal follows.
To be convicted of being an ineligible person in possession of a firearm, the state must prove that the defendant: (1) was previously convicted of a "crime of violence" and (2) possessed a firearm. Minn. Stat. § 624.713, subd. 1(2) (2012). Appellant stipulated to the first element at trial. He now argues that the district court erred by accepting his stipulation because he did not waive his rights as described in Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 3(a).
A defendant's right to a trial includes the right to be tried on each element of the charged offense. State v. Bluhm, 457 N.W.2d 256, 260 (Minn. App. 1990), aff'd in part, rev'd in part on other grounds, 460 N.W.2d 22 (Minn. 1990). "A defendant may agree to waive a jury determination of a particular element of the offense by stipulating to it." State v. Hinton, 702 N.W.2d 278, 281 (Minn. App. 2005), review denied (Minn. Oct. 26, 2005). To stipulate to an element of an offense, a defendant must, either orally or in writing, "acknowledge and personally waive the rights to: (1) testify at trial; (2) have theprosecution witnesses testify in open court in the defendant's presence; (3) question those prosecution witnesses; and (4) require any favorable witnesses to testify for the defense in court." Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 3(a); State v. Wright, 679 N.W.2d 186, 191 (Minn. App. 2004), review denied (Minn. June 29, 2004). We have held that rule 26.01, subdivision 3(a), must be strictly complied with for each issue waived. State v. Antrim, 764 N.W.2d 67, 70 (Minn. App. 2009); see also Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 3(c). Failure to obtain a valid waiver may result in the reversal of a defendant's conviction. Antrim, 764 N.W.2d at 71.
Here, appellant's stipulation was made orally on the record. A fair reading of the transcript leads us to conclude that appellant actively participated in the stipulation discussion. The transcript even reflects that the district court tried to persuade appellant not to stipulate to the prior-conviction element, informing him that because he wished to have a bench trial, his stipulation would not serve the same strategic purpose as it would if he were in front of a jury. But it is also true that while appellant personally verified his past conviction and his understanding of its consequences, he did not explicitly agree to waive his rights as described in Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 3. We therefore must conclude that the district court erred by accepting appellant's stipulation to the prior-conviction element of his offense. See State v. Craig, 807 N.W.2d 453, 466-67 (Minn. App. 2011) (), aff'd, 826 N.W.2d 789 (Minn. 2013). But that does not end our inquiry.
The next issue presented is whether the district court's error, which was unobjected to at trial, was plain error. See State v. Kuhlmann, 806 N.W.2d 844, 852 (Minn. 2011) (). Under plain-error analysis, we must determine whether there was error, that was plain, and that affected the...
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