State v. Ezeobi

• Decision Date: 11 January 2016
• Docket Number: A15-0062
• Parties: State of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Livinus Ndubisi Ezeobi, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Court of Appeals

State of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Livinus Ndubisi Ezeobi, Appellant.

A15-0062

STATE OF MINNESOTA IN COURT OF APPEALS

January 11, 2016

This opinion will be unpublished and may not be cited except as provided by Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2014).

Affirmed

Schellhas, Judge

Stearns County District Court

File No. 73-CR-14-1371

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, Karen B. Andrews, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Janelle Kendall, Stearns County Attorney, St. Cloud, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Benjamin J. Butler, Assistant Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Schellhas, Presiding Judge; Rodenberg, Judge; and Reilly, Judge.

UNPUBLISHED OPINION

SCHELLHAS, Judge

Appellant challenges his conviction of terroristic threats, arguing that (1) the district court abused its discretion by admitting expert testimony on battering, (2) the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction of terroristic threats, and (3) the court erred by determining that appellant is subject to the predatory-offender registration requirement.¹ We affirm.

FACTS

In or around March 2013, appellant Livinus Ndubisi Ezeobi and L.F. began a cohabiting romantic relationship. At that time, L.F. had a young child by another man and was pregnant with Ezeobi's child. In October 2013, police arrested L.F. and cited her for misdemeanor domestic assault of Ezeobi. The district court consequently issued a domestic-assault no-contact order (DANCO) that prohibited L.F. from having any contact with Ezeobi. But L.F. continued to live with Ezeobi. In December 2013, police arrested L.F. for violating the DANCO. L.F. nevertheless continued to live with Ezeobi.

In February 2014, Ezeobi allegedly struck L.F., choked her, threatened her with a knife, and sexually assaulted her. L.F. reported the alleged crimes to police, resulting in her arrest for violating the DANCO. Respondent State of Minnesota charged Ezeobi with first-degree criminal sexual conduct, third-degree criminal sexual conduct, second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon, terroristic threats, domestic assault by strangulation, and misdemeanor domestic assault. Before Ezeobi's jury trial, the district court ruled that thestate could introduce expert testimony "explaining victim behaviors in domestic violence situations." At trial, Scott Miller provided expert testimony on battering, L.F. testified, and Ezeobi testified in his own defense. The jury found Ezeobi guilty of terroristic threats, domestic assault by strangulation, and misdemeanor domestic assault; it found Ezeobi not guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, third-degree criminal sexual conduct, and second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. The court stayed imposition of sentence for terroristic threats, placed Ezeobi on supervised probation for four years, determined that Ezeobi was required to register as a predatory offender, and declined to adjudicate Ezeobi's guilt of domestic assault by strangulation and misdemeanor domestic assault.

This appeal follows.

DECISION

Expert testimony

Ezeobi argues that the district court abused its discretion by admitting Miller's expert testimony on battering, asserting that L.F. "was not a battered woman" and "exhibited none of the supposedly common behaviors of battered women." Ezeobi claims that the expert testimony incorrectly insinuated that he was a repeat domestic abuser of L.F. We construe Ezeobi's argument as an attack on the relevance of the expert testimony on battering.

"Rulings concerning the admission of expert testimony generally rest within the sound discretion of the district court and will not be reversed absent a clear abuse of discretion." State v. Mosley, 853 N.W.2d 789, 798-99 (Minn. 2014), cert. denied, 135 S. Ct. 1185 (2015). Likewise, "[r]ulings on the relevancy of evidence are generally left to thesound discretion of the trial court." State v. Hanks, 817 N.W.2d 663, 668 (Minn. 2012). "When the admissibility of evidence is challenged on appeal, [appellate courts] defer to the district court's exercise of discretion in the conduct of the trial, and [appellate courts] will not lightly overturn a district court's evidentiary ruling." Id. at 667 (quotation omitted). Even if a district court abuses its discretion by admitting expert testimony against a criminal defendant, appellate courts will not reverse "if there is no reasonable possibility that [the testimony] substantially influenced the jury's decision." See State v. Taylor, 869 N.W.2d 1, 14 (Minn. 2015) (quotation omitted) (assuming, without deciding, that district court erred by admitting expert testimony and concluding that assumed error was harmless).

"If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise." Minn. R. Evid. 702. "Expert testimony is only admissible if the testimony will help the trier of fact in evaluating evidence or resolving factual issues." State v. Ali, 855 N.W.2d 235, 251-52 (Minn. 2014) (quotation omitted). "[T]he standard for assessing the helpfulness of proposed expert testimony . . . is an objective standard." Mosley, 853 N.W.2d at 800. That is, "[a]n expert opinion is helpful if the members of the jury, having the knowledge and general experience common to every member of the community, would be aided in the consideration of the issues by the offered testimony." State v. Dao Xiong, 829 N.W.2d 391, 396 (Minn. 2013) (quotations omitted).

"Generally, battered woman syndrome expert testimony may be helpful to juries because battered woman syndrome is beyond the understanding of the average person, and expert testimony may help to explain a phenomenon not within the understanding of an ordinary lay person." Hanks, 817 N.W.2d at 667 (quotations omitted). More specifically, "[the supreme court] ha[s] recognized that battered woman syndrome expert testimony is admissible . . . when the State seeks to rehabilitate the credibility of a battered woman in the prosecution of her batterer," id., by "educat[ing] jurors about battered woman syndrome (BWS) and counterintuitive behaviors commonly associated with BWS," State v. Obeta, 796 N.W.2d 282, 291 (Minn. 2011). "In determining the relevance of battered woman syndrome evidence, [appellate courts] consider whether the proffered evidence demonstrated that the [parties] had the type of relationship about which the expert will testify." Hanks, 817 N.W.2d at 668.

Here, L.F. testified that Ezeobi had assaulted her multiple times and that her own assaults of Ezeobi were defensive or reactive. She also testified that Ezeobi had asked her to kill him with a knife, cut up his own Green Card and blamed it on her, expressed disapproval of L.F.'s desire to spend time with her parents, punished L.F. when she was defiant, damaged electronic devices so that L.F. had "no contact with anything outside," and prevented L.F. from accessing her car keys. On the date of Ezeobi's alleged crimes, L.F. was the mother of an infant and another young child and was pregnant with a third child. She had some degree of financial dependence on Ezeobi and knew that she could be arrested for violating the DANCO.

Ezeobi attacked L.F.'s credibility on the basis of her domestic-assault and DANCO-violation arrests, her lies to her parents and to police, and inconsistencies in her descriptions of events. The attacks on L.F.'s credibility created a need for the state to offer a potential explanation for L.F.'s otherwise counterintuitive or questionable behavior. See Hanks, 817 N.W.2d at 667; Obeta, 796 N.W.2d at 291. L.F.'s testimony showed her potential vulnerability to battering and depicted a relationship with the battering characteristics that Miller described—one's "attempt to, through use of coercion, violence, [and] threats, . . . dominate" another. On these facts, the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting Miller's testimony to aid the jury in evaluating evidence and resolving factual issues.

Even if the district court abused its discretion by admitting Miller's testimony, the testimony was limited and harmless. Miller testified only generally about battering, its perpetrators, and its victims. He acknowledged that he knew neither L.F. nor Ezeobi and had no familiarity with the case "other than it's a heterosexual couple in a domestic violence case." Miller did not opine that L.F. had been battered or that Ezeobi was a batterer and acknowledged that men can be battered and women can be batterers. During closing argument, the state referred only briefly to Miller's testimony, stating that it "provided [the jury] a lens to view this evidence through, to view this relationship through, to look at the decisions that [L.F.] made and how those could affect the relationship and her role." And the court instructed the jury that expert "evidence is entitled to neither more nor less consideration by [the jury] than any other evidence." We conclude that any error in the court's admission of the testimony was harmless and warrants no relief because noreasonable possibility exists that Miller's testimony substantially influenced the jury's decision. See Taylor, 869 N.W.2d at 14 ("An error is harmless if there is no reasonable possibility that it substantially influenced the jury's decision." (quotation omitted)).

Sufficiency of the evidence

Ezeobi argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction of terroristic threats. "When assessing the sufficiency of the evidence, [appellate courts] make a painstaking review of the record to determine whether the evidence and reasonable inferences drawn therefrom, viewed in a light most favorable to the verdict, were sufficient to allow the jury to reach its verdict." State v. Vang, 847...