State v. Griller

• Decision Date: 30 July 1998
• Docket Number: No. C2-96-1665,C2-96-1665
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, petitioner, Appellant, v. George Edward GRILLER, petitioner, Respondent.

Page 736

583 N.W.2d 736

STATE of Minnesota, petitioner, Appellant, v. George Edward GRILLER, petitioner, Respondent.

No. C2-96-1665.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

July 30, 1998.

Syllabus by the Court

1. A defendant is not entitled to a new trial based on an erroneous jury instruction when the defendant did not object to the instruction at trial and the fairness and integrity of judicial proceedings would be adversely affected by granting a new trial.

2. The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of the defendant's relationship to the only eyewitness to the crime or in admitting evidence of the events that triggered the police investigation of the defendant.

3. The district court did not abuse its discretion when it departed upward from the presumptive sentence based on the defendant's concealment of the victim's body, use of particular cruelty in committing the crime, and lack of remorse.

Hubert H. Humphrey III, Attorney General, St. Paul, Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Donna J. Wolfson, Assistant County Attorney, Minneapolis, for Appellant.

John M. Stuart, State Public Defender, Sharon E. Jacks, Assistant Public Defender, Minneapolis, for Respondent.

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

OPINION

BLATZ, Chief Justice.

The State of Minnesota appeals from a court of appeals decision reversing the conviction of respondent George Griller for second-degree intentional murder and second-degree felony murder. The court of appeals concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion in its evidentiary rulings, but held that the district court had given an erroneous instruction on defense-of-dwelling, which entitled him to a new trial. We agree that the district court did not abuse its discretion in its evidentiary rulings, but conclude that Griller is not entitled to a new trial based on the erroneous defense-of-dwelling instruction given. We also conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion when it departed upward from the presumptive sentence.

In September 1994, the Sioux Falls, South Dakota Sheriff's Department received a letter, asking it to investigate possible financial fraud committed against 94-year-old William Sawyer and the disappearance of Sawyer's brother-in-law, 76-year-old Louis Michael. This investigation ultimately led the police to George Griller, who in the late 1980s began to care for Sawyer and Michael in a house that Griller owned in northeast Minneapolis. While caring for these men, Griller owned a house at 426 Pierce Street and the house immediately behind it at 425 Fillmore Street. Griller stated that Sawyer and Michael lived at the Pierce Street house, while Griller lived part-time at both houses depending on where he was needed. By 1994, however, the Pierce Street house had been sold. Nevertheless, the Sioux Falls police, along with an agent from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, tracked Griller down at his work in January 1995. When they questioned Griller about Michael's disappearance, he told them that Michael had moved to Chicago.

However, when the police interviewed Griller's Pierce Street neighbors, one neighbor stated that he had seen Griller several years earlier in his backyard digging a hole. The neighbor believed that Griller was burying an elderly person in his backyard. Therefore, the police asked Griller whether he had buried Michael dead or alive, to which Griller responded that he came home one day and found Michael dead in the rocking chair. Griller said that he was shocked by Michael's death and could not afford a funeral, so he buried Michael in the backyard. Griller agreed to show the police where he had buried Michael and took them to an area of the backyard. The police then began to dig in that area.

On the second day of digging, the police unearthed a torso and a set of arm and hand bones that were covered with lime. Anthropologists arrived at the scene and determined that these bones did not come from an elderly man, but rather from a man in his late 20s to early 50s. Later that day, they unearthed the remains of Michael, intact and fully clothed. The excavation continued, and they discovered a human skull and a set of leg and foot bones. Together, the dismembered remains constituted a complete human skeleton.

The police then received a message from Griller asking to speak to them. After the police read Griller his Miranda rights, Griller confessed to the killing of James Keen whose dismembered body parts were buried in the Pierce Street house backyard. But Griller claimed that the killing was in defense of himself and Michael.

Keen was a big man, about 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighing between 260 and 270 pounds. According to Griller, Keen was a heavy abuser of crack cocaine and alcohol, and he was taking Antabuse, a medical drug prescribed to help him stop drinking. Griller claimed that Michael had invited Keen to the Pierce Street house, but stated that when Griller walked into the house, Michael was on the floor crying. Griller told Keen to leave, but Keen pushed Griller against the refrigerator, put his hands on Griller's ears, and pushed his thumbs into Griller's eyes. Griller believed that Keen was going to kill him, so he grabbed a hatchet that was laying on the counter and hit Keen on the head. After Keen went to the sink and vomited up blood, he came back at Griller. In defense, Griller grabbed Keen's bottle of whiskey and hit him over the head again.

Griller stated that Michael then took over and told Griller to take Keen's body to the basement. Together, Michael and Griller transported Keen's body to the basement. Subsequently, without Griller's knowledge, Michael cut off Keen's extremities. When Griller discovered this, he and Michael then brought the body parts upstairs to bury in the backyard, and Michael told Griller to put lime on the parts so that the neighbor dogs would not be able to smell the body.

Based on this confession and the bodies found in the backyard of the Pierce Street house, the Hennepin County Attorney charged Griller for the murder of Keen with one count of second-degree intentional murder ¹ and one count of second-degree felony murder. ² Because Michael's cause of death was never determined, Griller was not charged in connection with the death of Michael.

Through discovery, some negative aspects of Griller's life with Sawyer and Michael were revealed, and the district court considered a number of motions regarding the admissibility of these details into evidence. In March 1996, the state filed a letter of intent to introduce such evidence of other crimes and bad acts, including the circumstances of Michael's death and burial; fraudulent financial transactions between Griller and his elderly charges, Sawyer and Michael; and Griller's abandonment of Sawyer. ³ Griller filed a motion to exclude this evidence.

The district court ruled that evidence of Michael's death was "inextricably intertwined" with the crime, that the state could not prove its case without some of the financial information because it explained why the police first contacted Griller, and that the abandonment of Sawyer was "sufficiently intertwined" with the case. Therefore, the court allowed the financial evidence only "to the extent that it is absolutely necessary," and cautioned the state not to use the evidence "to inflame the jury."

The trial lasted for eight days before the case was submitted to the jury. On the following day, the jury returned its verdict, finding Griller guilty of second-degree intentional murder and second-degree felony murder. The state then informed the court that it would seek an upward departure from the presumptive sentence. While the presumptive sentence for second-degree intentional murder is 306 months, the court sentenced Griller to 480 months, the maximum sentence allowed.

Griller appealed, arguing that the district court erred by admitting irrelevant and prejudicial evidence and by giving a misleading and erroneous instruction on defense-of-dwelling. He also contended that the district court abused its discretion by imposing a sentence greater than the presumptive sentence. The court of appeals held that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting certain evidence against Griller because the evidence was necessary to explain how the investigation against Griller began. The court of appeals concluded, however, that the district court's jury instruction on defense-of-dwelling was a material misstatement of the law under State v. Pendleton, ⁴ and that the instruction was not harmless. Thus, the court of appeals concluded that Griller was entitled to a new trial. The court did not reach the sentencing issue.

The state petitioned this court for review, contending that Griller was not entitled to a defense-of-dwelling instruction and that the instruction did not substantially affect the verdict. Griller filed a conditional petition for review, arguing that the district court erred by admitting irrelevant and prejudicial evidence and that the district court abused its discretion by imposing a sentence greater than the presumptive sentence. We accepted both petitions for review.

I.

Griller's primary argument on appeal was that the district court erred when it instructed the jury on defense-of-dwelling. The court of appeals agreed, granting Griller a new trial because the instruction given was in error. The state appeals that ruling.

In its instructions, the district court told the jury that it had to conclude that three factors were present for it to find that the killing was justified because of self-defense or defense-of-dwelling, including that "the killing must have been done in the belief that it was necessary to avert death or great bodily harm." At the time of trial, this appeared to be a correct statement of the law under CRIMJIG 705 ⁵ and State v. Boyce. ⁶ Therefore, the defense did not object...