State v. Gianakos

• Decision Date: 23 May 2002
• Docket Number: No. C6-00-1691.,C6-00-1691.
• Citation: 644 N.W.2d 409
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Michael Sean GIANAKOS, Appellant.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

644 N.W.2d 409

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Michael Sean GIANAKOS, Appellant.

No. C6-00-1691.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

May 23, 2002.

John M. Stuart, Minnesota State Public Defender, Melissa Sheridan, Assistant State Public Defender, St. Paul, for Appellant's.

Mike Hatch, Minnesota Attorney General, Natalie E. Hudson, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul, Lisa Borgen, Clay County Attorney, Moorhead, for Respondent's.

Heard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.

OPINION

STRINGER, Justice.

On May 7, 1997, the body of Anne Marie Camp (Camp), the victim of an apparent homicide, was discovered on an abandoned farmstead in Clay County, Minnesota. A lengthy investigation eventually led authorities to suspect appellant and his wife, Jamie Dennis-Gianakos. The couple had married on February 14, 1997, at least in part for the purpose of invoking the marital privilege if charged in a motel robbery they had staged 18 days earlier. Approximately two weeks after their marriage, appellant and Jamie were charged in the robbery; appellant confessed, but Jamie pleaded not guilty. Appellant and Jamie learned that Camp was the state's key witness, and on May 1, 1997, Camp disappeared. Her body was found six days later.

On October 28, 1999, appellant and Jamie were indicted on charges of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and aiding first-degree murder¹ in Camp's death. Jamie pleaded guilty as part of a plea bargain agreement and, over appellant's marital privilege objection,² testified for the state at appellant's trial. Following a jury trial, appellant was convicted on all counts and sentenced to life in prison. The issues presented on appeal are whether the trial court erred in allowing appellant's wife Jamie to testify against him despite his request that her testimony be excluded based on the marital privilege set forth in Minn.Stat.§ 595.02, subd. 1(a), whether there is sufficient evidence to support his conviction, and whether the trial court erred in failing to instruct the jury sua sponte that a conviction cannot rest on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. We reverse and remand.

At the time of her death, Camp was a friend of appellant and his wife Jamie. Camp also babysat for the couple's children³ on occasion, including the night of January 27, 1997, when Jamie and appellant staged a robbery at a nearby motel where appellant was employed. Appellant confessed to the robbery, minimizing Jamie's role in the crime.

On February 14, 1997, following a 17-month courtship, Jamie and appellant married. There is a discrepancy in the record regarding the motivation for and timing of their marriage: in appellant's initial statement to authorities he indicated that the reason they got married when they did was so that they could not be forced to testify against one another; he later clarified his statement by claiming that what he meant was that avoiding adverse testimony was part of his reason for marrying Jamie, but that he also married her because he loved her. Jamie was more consistent in her testimony, acknowledging the marriage was a "sham" and claiming that the purpose of their marriage was to prevent her and appellant from having to testify against each other. The evidence also indicated that their marriage had been contemplated a year earlier when the couple began attending premarital classes at church, but the idea was dropped when Jamie became pregnant. Appellant said Jamie told him she "didn't want to be fat in a dress" and that "it was just a piece of paper anyway."

In any event, both admitted the marriage was at least partially motivated by their desire to take advantage of the privilege against adverse spousal testimony with respect to their anticipated robbery charges, ultimately filed against them on February 27, 1997. Jamie pleaded not guilty, and as her trial for the robbery approached, she and appellant became aware that Camp had made various statements to police regarding Jamie's activities the night of the robbery. In fact, Camp was the only person who knew that Jamie had left her apartment on the night of the robbery. Jamie was ultimately convicted of robbery.

Initially, appellant and Jamie were not suspects in Camp's murder and did not become the focus of the investigation until September 1998, more than a year later, when appellant's family contacted authorities indicating that they had information regarding the Camp murder. In their recorded statements to police and in subsequent trial testimony, appellant's parents explained how appellant had called them on the telephone crying and upset, purportedly having just read an entry in one of Jamie's journals detailing the murder of Camp. Appellant's mother claimed that appellant told her he was living with a murderer and that he thought his wife shot Camp. Appellant's father testified that appellant, seemingly reading directly from an account of Camp's murder written by Jamie, conveyed statements about giving Camp some pills that did not kill her, not being able to shoot her because she was stumbling around "woozy," noting that her throat was slashed, and indicating that Jamie wore latex gloves while putting a butcher knife with appellant's prints on it into a plastic bag and burying it.⁴ Appellant's father encouraged appellant to save the book and go to the police with it.

Based on this information appellant's home was searched and although some journals belonging to Jamie were seized, including one that made reference to Camp "haunting" her, none contained the specific statements appellant had shared with his parents.⁵ Nonetheless, authorities found appellant's statements significant because at this time in the investigation, the only information that had been released to the public regarding Camp's murder was that she was killed on or about May 1, 1997, and that she had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Investigators knew that any additional information about Camp's death, such as the fact that her throat had been slashed, would only be known to those somehow involved in the murder. But appellant's statements regarding the pills confused investigators and prompted them to order a more in-depth lab analysis than that originally performed in conjunction with the autopsy.⁶ The results of this subsequent analysis revealed a concentration of doxylamine succinate in Camp's system—a drug common in sleep aids—equal to approximately 85 times the normal prescribed dosage. Experts testified that such high quantities would have significantly debilitated Camp, physically and mentally, making walking very difficult and perhaps even causing death.

On June 11, 1999, Jamie began serving her sentence at the Shakopee correctional facility for a probation violation. Investigators obtained permission to monitor Jamie's calls and those coming in and out of the Gianakos home, hoping they might reveal new potential witnesses or other information helpful in solving the case. Investigators also interviewed Jamie but she remained silent on the advice of appellant. Eventually however, with the news that appellant's parents had made statements to authorities implicating her and that a grand jury was being convened to seek a first-degree murder indictment against her and appellant, Jamie testified that she could no longer take the pressure. On October 21, 1999, Jamie confided in a fellow inmate about Camp's murder, and the inmate subsequently contacted investigators and reported the details of the Camp murder as conveyed to her by Jamie.

On October 28,1999, a grand jury indicted appellant and Jamie for first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and aiding first-degree murder. Appellant pleaded not guilty and opposed the state's motion to prohibit him from invoking the marital privilege. The trial court ultimately ruled that Jamie could testify against appellant relying principally on federal case law recognizing exceptions to the marital privilege on grounds that the marriage was not entered into in good faith and that the couple was engaged in joint criminal activity.⁷

At appellant's trial, Jamie testified against him as part of a plea agreement. According to Jamie, Camp's potentially damaging statements to police regarding the motel robbery motivated them to take Camp out to an old farmstead appellant was familiar with on May 1, 1997, to scare her into changing her story. In preparation for the trip, Jamie testified that she purchased wine coolers she knew Camp liked hoping to "lighten the mood." Jamie claimed she later saw appellant crushing sleeping pills into one of the wine cooler bottles to help "confuse" Camp during the planned confrontation, and that Jamie and appellant discussed how they could offer the bottle to Camp, already opened, so she would not be suspicious of the cap's broken seal. Store records also indicate appellant purchased a .12 gauge shotgun on May 1, 1997, although Jamie claimed she was not aware of any gun until she saw appellant with it at the farmstead.

Jamie testified in detail as to what happened on the evening of May 1, 1997, when she, appellant and their two children drove Camp out to the farmstead under the pretense of showing Camp some property appellant and Jamie were thinking of buying. Jamie explained that she gave Camp the drugged wine cooler to drink during the drive and that appellant pretended to be lost so the drugs and alcohol would have time to take effect. Jamie claimed that they arrived around 8:30 p.m., just as it was getting dark, and that Jamie, Camp, and the children went into the abandoned farmhouse to look around until appellant eventually called for them to leave. Camp was walking very slowly by this time. As Jamie reached the car, she saw appellant come up behind Camp from the back of the house with a shotgun in his hand. Jamie then heard the gun go off and saw Camp fall. According to Jamie, appellant proceeded to put on some...