State v. Florine
| Decision Date | 07 February 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 44633,44633 |
| Citation | 303 Minn. 103,226 N.W.2d 609 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. James A. FLORINE, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
David J. Twa, Mankato, for appellant.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., Peter W. Sipkins, Sol. Gen., Thomas J. Foley, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., and W. M. Gustafson, County Atty., St. Paul, for respondent.
Considered and decided by the court without oral argument.
Defendant, having been found guilty by the district court of unlawful possession of cocaine, Minn.St. 152.09, subd. 1(2), and acquitted of a charge of unlawful possession of marijuana, also § 152.09, subd. 1(2), appeals from an order denying his post-trial motions. The main issue raised by defendant is whether there was sufficient evidence to convict him of the cocaine charge. We believe that there was and accordingly affirm.
On November 22, 1972, Officer Donald Schmidt of the Nicollet County sheriff's office, acting lawfully, found the cocaine and marijuana in question in an unlocked abandoned vehicle parked crosswise on a township road in Nicollet County. Schmidt found the cocaine in a small packet on top of an open notebook on the back seat. At this time, Officer Schmidt impounded the car and had it towed to the sheriff's office. After securing a search warrant, Officer Schmidt found the marijuana in a wooden crate containing clothing and $235 in cash. On the floor of the front seat Schmidt found a bill from Northern States Power Company addressed to defendant, a receipt from a bank money order naming defendant as the remitter, and a Christmas seal letter addressed to defendant. On the front seat Schmidt found a billfold containing $17 and defendant's driver's license. The notebook on which Schmidt found the cocaine packet contained a biology quiz that bore defendant's name. Both the notebook and the quiz apparently were in the same handwriting as a note on a slip of paper found in defendant's billfold. Defendant did not own the vehicle in question, but the owner had left it with defendant and friends of defendant in the hope that defendant or his friends would be able to sell it for him.
1. In analyzing defendant's contention that this evidence was insufficient to justify a finding of guilt on the cocaine possession charge, we start with the basic proposition that, in order to convict a defendant of unlawful possession of a controlled substance, the state must prove that defendant consciously possessed, either physically or constructively, the substance and that defendant had actual knowledge of the nature of the substance. LaFave & Scott, Criminal Law, § 25, p. 182.
In this case the question of whether there was sufficient evidence of guilt centers on the first part of the state's proof--i.e., whether there was proof of conscious possession of the substance--because if defendant consciously possessed the substance, either constructively or physically, then the judge could easily infer from that and from the nature of the substance that defendant had knowledge of the substance's nature. Clearly, there was no evidence of actual or physical possession by defendant when arrested, so what we are...
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State v. Harris
...the item in a place under the defendant's exclusive control to which other people normally did not have access. State v. Florine , 303 Minn. 103, 226 N.W.2d 609, 611 (1975). Alternatively, if police found the item in a place to which others had access, the State must show that there is a st......
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...in the substance but rather continued to exercise dominion and control over it up to the time of the arrest." State v. Florine, 303 Minn. 103, 226 N.W.2d 609, 610-611 (1975) (emphasis To argue that the defendant in this case possessed the subject drugs is to expand the meaning of the term "......
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...Practice—Jury Instruction Guides, Criminal, CRIMJIG 32.21 (5th ed.2006). 27. See id., CRIMJIG 32.42 (citing to State v. Florine, 303 Minn. 103, 105, 226 N.W.2d 609, 611 (1975), which states: "[I]n order to prove constructive possession the state should have to show (a) that the police found......
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State v. Bradshaw
...law from Wisconsin, a state that infers knowledge into its possession statute. Id. at 125, 713 P.2d 71; see also State v. Florine, 303 Minn. 103, 104, 226 N.W.2d 609 (1975). The State has the burden of proving the elements of unlawful possession of a controlled substance as defined in the s......
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"actual" and "constructive" Possession in Alaska: Clarifying the Doctrine
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