State v. Gaitan, C8-94-1178

• Decision Date: 18 August 1995
• Docket Number: No. C8-94-1178,C8-94-1178
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Israel Ray GAITAN, Jr., Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 11

536 N.W.2d 11

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Israel Ray GAITAN, Jr., Appellant.

No. C8-94-1178.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Aug. 18, 1995.

Syllabus by the Court

Defendant received a fair trial by a fairly-selected jury and was properly found guilty of first-degree felony murder.

John M. Stuart, State Public Defender, Minneapolis, and John S. Lind, Sp. Asst. State Public Defender, Duluth, for appellant.

Israel Ray Gaitan, Oak Park Heights, pro se.

Hubert H. Humphrey, III, Atty. Gen., Mary J. Thiesen, Asst. Atty. Gen., St. Paul, and Kathryn M. Keena, Lyon County Atty., Marshall, for respondent.

Heard, considered and decided by the court en banc.

OPINION

KEITH, Chief Justice.

Defendant, Israel Ray Gaitan, Jr., directly appeals his conviction of first-degree felony murder (and included offenses under Minn.Stat. § 609.04 (1994)), for which he is serving a sentence of life in prison. Defendant argues he is entitled to outright reversal of his conviction on the ground the evidence of his participation in the crime was legally insufficient. Alternatively, he seeks a new trial on either or both of two grounds: (a) the prosecutor had a racially discriminatory intent in peremptorily striking a Mexican-American woman from the jury panel, and (b) the prosecutor committed prejudicial misconduct during opening statement, direct examination of a state's witness, cross-examination of defendant, and closing argument. We affirm.

This prosecution arises from the July 17, 1993, killing of 56-year-old Ramon Guardiola in Tracy, Minnesota. The state's theory of the case was that defendant, Julio Rodriguez, and Gilberto Arredondo ¹--who were coworkers of the victim at Heartland Foods and were from the same town in Texas as the victim--aided and abetted each other in the crime.

1. Defendant seeks outright reversal of his conviction on the ground the evidence was insufficient to connect him to the crime. Specifically, defendant argues that the conviction

rests on uncorroborated accomplice testimony.

Minn.Stat. § 634.04 (1994) provides:

A conviction cannot be had upon the testimony of an accomplice, unless it is corroborated by such other evidence as tends to convict the defendant of the commission of the offense, and the corroboration is not sufficient if it merely shows the commission of the offense or the circumstances thereof.

Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty to second-degree felony murder and received an 8-year prison term for his role in the murder, testified at defendant's trial that he and his roommate, Arredondo, spent the night in question drinking beer at the house shared by defendant and his roommate, Juan Orduna, both of whom were present. Rodriguez and Orduna were also sniffing paint, and Rodriguez was also smoking marijuana. Rodriguez testified that three teenagers arrived and asked him to buy them alcohol. Rodriguez rode with them to a liquor store, where he bought them a bottle of schnapps. When Rodriguez returned to the house, he was asked by defendant to buy beer. Rodriguez rode with the teenagers back to the liquor store. There he ran into the victim, a neighborhood acquaintance. Together they walked back toward defendant's residence and the residence where the victim lived.

When they reached defendant's residence, Rodriguez invited the victim to join them in drinking beer. The victim, explaining that defendant did not like him, was reluctant to join the party; he accepted the invitation after Rodriguez said he did not think there would be a problem.

While the victim was there drinking with them, Arredondo conceived of a plan to rob the victim--who was known to carry a sizeable amount of cash on his person--after first "spiking" his drink with Tegretol, a drug that Rodriguez was taking for seizures, which they believed would make the victim fall asleep. The victim drank some of the tainted liquor but did not fall asleep. Defendant then began to physically assault the victim. Arredondo and Rodriguez quickly joined in the assault. During the beating, Rodriguez took the victim's wallet, removed five $20 bills and returned the wallet to the victim's pants. At some point defendant said they had to "get rid of the problem" and got a shotgun. Orduna intervened, taking the gun from defendant. Arredondo then began walking the victim toward a nearby drainage ditch, where the water was waist high. Arredondo later returned to the house with mud on his face and said that as he and the victim fell into the ditch, the victim grabbed his neck, causing him to strike his head on the bottom of the ditch and twist his neck. Arredondo then left the house again. Rodriguez testified he subsequently went to the ditch to see what was happening and saw defendant and Arredondo standing in the water and the victim, who was dead, floating on his back. When Rodriguez asked if the victim was dead, defendant replied that he was "about as dead as they come." As he said this, defendant smacked the victim's exposed abdominal area twice. Rodriguez then jumped in the water and helped the men move the body. He testified he heard a dog barking from the area of a nearby warehouse as they did this.

The three men then returned to defendant's house, where they showered and changed into clean clothing. Afterward, defendant demonstrated how he had shoved the victim's head under water and he said that he would do the same to anyone who said anything. Rodriguez then gave defendant the $20 bills, and defendant gave each man one of them.

Rodriguez testified that he then went with Arredondo to Arredondo's residence, where they put some household trash in with a bag containing their dirty clothes, then threw the bag in a nearby dumpster.

Rodriguez then sold his car to Arredondo's girlfriend, with whom he and Arredondo spent the night. Rodriguez and Arredondo thereafter caught a bus from Worthington to Texas, where they were eventually apprehended.

The victim's body was discovered on July 19. An area pathologist, Dr. Brad Randall, who examined the body, testified that there were three possible causes of death: skull fracture, neck injury, or drowning. Dr. Michael McGee, who later examined the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) and autopsy reports, testified the most logical cause of the victim's death was drowning. Special testing done at St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center disclosed the presence of low amounts of Tegretol in the victim's blood.

Arredondo refused to testify. The trial court sustained defendant's objection to the admission of a taperecording and transcript of a statement Arredondo gave in Texas after his arrest, holding that under State v. Hansen, 312 N.W.2d 96 (Minn.1981), admission of the evidence would violate defendant's right to confront his accusers.

The state also tried to procure the testimony of Orduna, but he was unavailable. The state therefore sought the admission of testimony Orduna had given at Arredondo's trial, arguing that Orduna's unavailability resulted from threats by defendant. The trial court refused to admit the evidence, ruling that the state had failed to prove that Orduna's unavailability was caused by defendant and ruling further that the prior testimony was not so clearly reliable as to be admissible over defendant's Sixth Amendment objection.

The state also tried to procure the testimony of Maria Villarreal, who lived with Arredondo and Rodriguez, but learned that she had moved to Mexico. The trial court ruled that her grand jury testimony contained sufficient indicia of reliability and admitted it over defendant's Sixth Amendment objection. In her testimony before the grand jury, Villarreal said that she was awakened late on July 17 by noises in the kitchen, that Rodriguez and defendant were there with Arredondo, and that Rodriguez did something unusual: he collected trash in a large trash bag, then took it outside and dumped it.

Shelly Gilbertson, Arredondo's girlfriend, testified that she went to Arredondo's residence shortly after 11:00 p.m. on July 17 but no one answered the door. She testified that she went back 45 minutes later and found Arredondo and Rodriguez. She testified that defendant arrived later, saying to Arredondo and Rodriguez, "If one goes down, we'll all go down, right?" She testified that she also bought Rodriguez' car from him and drove Arredondo and Rodriguez to Worthington on July 19 to catch a bus headed for Texas.

Two of the three teenagers referred to by Rodriguez also testified, saying that on the night in question Rodriguez had bought liquor for them and that they had driven him back to the liquor store at his request. They testified that Rodriguez got out and spoke with a Hispanic male (presumably the victim) and said he would walk back with him.

The state also presented testimony concerning police investigation of a complaint at 11:18 p.m. on July 17 of a barking dog a quarter of a block from where the victim's body was found.

Defendant, who testified in his own behalf, denied he was with the men on the night in question and denied involvement in the murder.

Defendant argues that in determining sufficiency of the corroboration of the accomplice testimony by Rodriguez, we should not consider the grand jury testimony of Villarreal. He argues that this testimony was admitted in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to confront his accuser. We do not believe it was error to admit the grand jury testimony of Villarreal. In any event, even if it were deemed to have been erroneously admitted, we still would consider the evidence in reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence claim. As Justice Yetka said in State v. Kraushaar, 470 N.W.2d 509, 513, n. 3 (Minn.1991), "In reviewing sufficiency of evidence, courts should include any erroneously admitted evidence; otherwise the state would have an incentive to 'over-try' cases." See, among other cases explaining this, Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U.S. 33, 109 S.Ct. 285, 102 L.Ed.2d 265 (1988).

Apart from the...