State v. Falkenberg

• Citation: 2021 S.D. 59
• Decision Date: 06 October 2021
• Docket Number: 29287-JMK
• Parties: STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. STEPHEN ROBERT FALKENBERG, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Supreme Court of South Dakota

2021 S.D. 59

STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. STEPHEN ROBERT FALKENBERG, Defendant and Appellant.

No. 29287-JMK

Supreme Court of South Dakota

October 6, 2021

ARGUED JANUARY 12, 2021

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE FIRST JUDICIAL CIRCUIT YANKTON COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA THE HONORABLE CHERYLE GERING Judge

RALEIGH HANSMAN CLINT SARGENT of Meierhenry Sargent, LLP Attorneys for defendant and appellant.

JASON R. RAVNSBORG Attorney General

CHELSEA WENZEL Assistant Attorney General Pierre, South Dakota Attorneys for plaintiff and appellee.

KERN Justice

[¶1.] A Yankton County jury found Stephen Falkenberg (Falkenberg) guilty of second-degree murder in connection with the death of Tamara LaFramboise (Tamara). The circuit court imposed a mandatory sentence of life in prison, costs of prosecution and restitution. Falkenberg appeals his conviction, claiming that the court erred by denying his motion for judgment of acquittal. He also contends the court abused its discretion by denying his motion to exclude certain photographs and testimony regarding the post-mortem concealment and dismemberment of Tamara's body. He further claims the court erred in fashioning its order of restitution requiring him to pay future counseling costs and other expenses incurred by the victim's family members. We affirm the conviction but reverse the court's restitution order in part and remand for a new restitution hearing.

Background

[¶2.] We set forth the facts admitted into evidence in the light most favorable to the jury's verdict. State v Huber, 2010 S.D. 63, ¶ 2, 789 N.W.2d 283, 286. Tamara was the only child of Mary LaFramboise and the mother of two adult children. Tamara moved to Yankton, South Dakota from New Mexico in 2016 to make a fresh start after struggling with an addiction to methamphetamine.^[1] After she arrived in Yankton, Tamara met Falkenberg, and they began a romantic relationship.

[¶3.] Falkenberg, who was described by his step-daughter, Merissa Luetjen, as a six-foot tall, "physically powerful" construction worker, ^[2] had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury from a car accident in 1993 when he was 19 years old. He recovered from the accident and operated his own successful construction business. Falkenberg did not use drugs. Tamara, however, was convicted of ingestion of methamphetamine in 2016 and placed on probation. She was required, as a condition of her supervision, to submit to regular and random urinalysis to ensure her ongoing sobriety.

[¶4.] The parties' relationship was tumultuous. Falkenberg claimed this was the result of Tamara's methamphetamine use, which caused her to become irrational and violent on occasion.^[3] Conversely, Falkenberg portrayed himself as passive and non-violent when reacting to Tamara's physical assaults against him. Falkenberg, however, had a brief encounter in 2017 with his former wife, Jennifer Becker, which was hostile enough that a law enforcement officer had to intervene and physically separate the two.

[¶5.] On March 1, 2019, the day of her disappearance, Tamara was scheduled to finish her shift at work as a machine operator at a local manufacturing company in Yankton at 2:00 a.m. Just before midnight, Tamara gave her debit card to Javier Gonzalez, a coworker who was at the end of his shift and asked him to purchase beer for her from Walmart before liquor sales ended for the evening. Gonzalez ran the errand and placed the beer, the sales receipt, and Tamara's debit card in a male coworker's pickup. Because her phone was inoperable, Tamara borrowed a friend's phone around 1:30 a.m. to call her mother in New Mexico. Tamara and her mother were close and spoke on the phone nearly every day. Falkenberg arrived at 2:00 a.m. in his Ford F-250 pickup to take Tamara to her apartment across town, because her vehicle was in the shop. First, however, Falkenberg drove to Walmart at Tamara's request so that she could purchase an alarm clock. Walmart's surveillance video showed Tamara exiting the store and Falkenberg's pickup with an open truck bed driving by.

[¶6.] Falkenberg dropped Tamara off at her apartment during the early morning hours and admitted to returning to her apartment several times that morning.^[4] On his first trip to her apartment, he arrived at about 6 a.m. Falkenberg later explained to law enforcement that he knocked on the door and heard an alarm clock ringing. After receiving no answer, he left without making contact with her. Falkenberg returned a second time at approximately 8:15 a.m., and, this time, Tamara answered the door and had coffee with him in her apartment. However, Falkenberg told law enforcement that Tamara became angry at him and demanded that he leave, which he did. Falkenberg claimed that this was the last time that he had contact with her. Randy Neuharth, Tamara's supervisor and the plant manager, testified that Tamara left work at 2:00 a.m. and never returned. He also obtained surveillance footage from the plant at the request of law enforcement, which showed Tamara getting into a pickup, later identified as Falkenberg's, at the end of her shift. Later on that same day, Friday, March 1, Tamara did not appear at the Humane Society, where she was scheduled to work.

[¶7.] Cindy Roberts, a convenience store clerk who knew both Falkenberg and Tamara, testified that Falkenberg filled his truck with fuel at the store on March 1 in the early afternoon. Roberts noticed that the truck bed was covered, which was unusual because Falkenberg normally had his dogs in the truck bed. Roberts also noticed that Falkenberg had a swollen right hand. When Roberts asked Falkenberg about his hand, he told her that he injured it by punching an icicle. Roberts's interaction with Falkenberg was recorded on a surveillance video and introduced into evidence. Falkenberg left Yankton and started driving towards Menominee, Michigan, where he had lived for a time. His half-brother, Paul Bramschreiber, still lived in the area and owned a farm nearby. Falkenberg's mother also lived in Menominee.

[¶8.] Later that evening, Falkenberg checked into a hotel in Tomah, Wisconsin, which is along the direct route from Yankton to Menominee. The road conditions were poor that night, with ice, snow, and wind. The hotel clerk who checked Falkenberg into his room noticed that Falkenberg used his left hand to sign the paperwork because of his swollen right hand. Falkenberg had food delivered and was in the hot tub when it arrived.^[5] The following morning, March 2, Falkenberg continued from Tomah towards Michigan.

[¶9.] Later that day, after arriving in Michigan, Falkenberg sought medical assistance for his hand injury. During his first visit, medical records indicate that Falkenberg attributed his injury to punching an icicle. Falkenberg saw a second medical provider on March 4. During this second appointment, Falkenberg reported that he injured his hand when he braced for a fall on ice with a clenched fist. Ultimately, Falkenberg was seen by two physicians and an occupational therapist and had several x-rays taken of his hand before it was placed in a cast.

[¶10.] Meanwhile, efforts to locate Tamara proved fruitless. Mary had unsuccessfully attempted to call Tamara on March 2. After that, she began text messaging Falkenberg in an effort to contact her daughter because she knew Falkenberg and Tamara were in a dating relationship. Falkenberg denied knowing where she was but explained that he and Tamara had a verbal disagreement at her apartment the morning of March 1 after he went to Tamara's apartment to tell her that "she didn't have to test[, ]" but she told him to leave. Falkenberg blamed Tamara's actions on her "lack of sleep."

[¶11.] Still unable to contact her daughter, Mary texted Falkenberg again on March 4 to ask if he had seen her. Falkenberg responded that he had not seen her and that he had "[b]een dealing with doctors all day. Feel [sic] the other day and my finger hurt. It got swollen the hand so bad I had to go to the doctor. End up breaking two fingers so now I dealt with not a surgeon but bone doctor today." Mary understood the word "feel" to mean "fell." Mary subsequently asked, "[I]s she alive?" Falkenberg replied, "She was w[he]n I left" and asked Mary to keep him informed of where Tamara was.

[¶12.] Shortly after Tamara's disappearance, Mary contacted Tamara's son, Ronald Sedillo, Jr. (Ron), to check in on Tamara as Mary was becoming increasingly worried about Tamara's well-being. Ron had a spare key to his mother's apartment and searched for her there but could not find her. Ron continued to check her apartment twice per day and observed that a bag that Tamara routinely carried with her when she went out was still in her apartment.

[¶13.] Michael Leverich, a manager for an automotive sales and repair business in Menominee, testified that on March 4, Falkenberg came to his place of work. Leverich, who knew Falkenberg because he saw him a couple of times each year, talked to Falkenberg who said he was driving his mother's car. Leverich testified that Falkenberg was nervous and asked to use the business's garbage dumpster for a small amount of garbage that had accumulated in his mother's car while he had been using it for a few days. Reluctantly, Leverich allowed it, but did not observe what Falkenberg placed in the dumpster. At some point, Leverich contacted the Menominee County Sheriff's department about the incident.

[¶14.] Mary reported Tamara missing to Yankton-area law enforcement on March 5, 2019, because she had been unable to reach her by phone since March 1, 2019. The following day, Deputy Darren Moser interviewed Falkenberg, who had returned from Michigan and was working at his shop, to inquire about his last contact with Tamara. Deputy Moser noticed...