State v. Hassan

• Citation: 977 N.W.2d 633
• Decision Date: 13 July 2022
• Docket Number: A21-0453
• Parties: STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Omar Nur HASSAN, Appellant.
• Court: Supreme Court of Minnesota (US)

977 N.W.2d 633

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent,

v.Omar Nur HASSAN, Appellant.

A21-0453

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Filed: July 13, 2022

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Jonathan P. Schmidt, Assistant County Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for respondent.

Andrew C. Wilson, Charles S. Clas, Jr., Wilson & Clas, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for appellant.

OPINION

ANDERSON, Justice.

Following a jury trial, 21-year-old appellant Omar Nur Hassan was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder. The district court imposed a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of release. On appeal, Hassan makes two arguments. First, he argues that the State presented insufficient evidence to support his conviction. Second, he argues that a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of release imposed on a 21-year-old defendant is unconstitutionally cruel under Article I, Section 5, of the Minnesota Constitution. Because the State presented sufficient evidence and the sentence imposed on Hassan is not unconstitutionally cruel, we affirm.

FACTS

On March 1, 2019, Abdilahi Ibrahim and another person fired over 20 bullets into a Toyota Camry parked behind a Minneapolis restaurant, killing one of the four occupants, paralyzing another, and hospitalizing a third. The State alleged that Hassan was the second shooter. A grand jury indicted Hassan with several offenses, including first-degree premeditated murder under Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a)(1) (2020).¹ Authorities tried Hassan and Ibrahim together. On the first day of trial, Ibrahim pleaded guilty to second-degree murder with intent—not premeditated, as a crime committed for the benefit of a gang.² Hassan pleaded not guilty to first-degree premeditated murder, demanded a jury trial, and proceeded alone.

During the jury trial, Lieutenant Molly Fischer testified that, on the night of the murder, she drove to Hennepin County Medical Center where one of the surviving victims of the shooting was receiving medical attention. Arriving at approximately 1 a.m., Fischer spoke with members of the gang investigation team. Fischer was informed by the team that, earlier that same evening, a suspected gang member had been shot at a Minneapolis mall and transported to the same hospital as the restaurant shooting victim. The team suspected that the restaurant shooting might be retaliation for the mall shooting earlier that evening.

Fischer testified that, shortly after she arrived at the hospital, she learned that both the restaurant and an adjacent café had video surveillance of the alley where the shooting occurred. The same night as the shooting, Fischer arranged to download the surveillance video from the restaurant and the adjacent café, and these videos clearly depicted the shooting as it occurred, as well as the shooters.

Two days after the murder, Fischer returned to Hennepin County Medical Center to interview the victim of the mall shooting. After interviewing the mall shooting victim, Fischer suspected that the restaurant shooting could have been retaliation for the mall shooting earlier that same evening. Accordingly, a week after the murder, Fischer obtained video evidence from Hennepin County Medical Center showing the events that transpired after the victim of the mall shooting arrived at the hospital. During a 1-hour time period around 10 p.m., several people entered the emergency room. Two hospital visitors and a shooter depicted in the crime scene surveillance footage were dressed almost identically. Contemporaneous body camera footage from an officer at Hennepin County Medical Center included audio in which one of these similarly dressed individuals gave his name as Omar Nur Hassan and identified himself as the cousin of the mall shooting victim. Fischer later labeled the other similarly dressed visitor, who was never identified, as "individual number five" (Person No. 5).

Fischer testified that she began searching for Hassan, eventually identifying Hassan as the man in the hospital video. Fischer concluded that the other similarly dressed man, Person No. 5, was not the second shooter because he had a "large Adidas symbol on the left-hand side of his pants," which she "believed that we would be able to see ... to some degree" in the shooting video had Person No. 5 been the second shooter. Because police "were never able to see the Adidas symbol" in the shooting-scene video, she concluded that Person No. 5 was not the second shooter.

After identifying Hassan, Fischer testified that she obtained a warrant for his cell phone records. Hassan's cell phone information revealed that Hassan's phone account had been deactivated 4 days after the restaurant shooting. Fischer later obtained a warrant for Hassan's social media accounts and consequently learned that he was in Kenya. Federal authorities confirmed that Hassan had flown to Kenya 5 days after the murder and was still there. Following issuance of a criminal complaint against Hassan, Hassan was arrested in Kenya and extradited to the United States.

Fischer also testified that because Hassan's cousin (the victim of the mall shooting) had been shot earlier the same evening in a suspected gang attack, Hassan had a motive to commit the restaurant shootings, which targeted members of the gang believed to have shot his cousin. Fischer walked the jury through video evidence of Hassan arriving at the hospital after the shooting of his cousin. The footage shows Hassan arriving at the hospital with others shortly after Hassan's cousin was admitted. The video depicts many of those who arrived at the hospital together consoling a distraught Hassan as they wait in the emergency room foyer.

Fischer also explained the similarities between Hassan's clothing and the unidentified shooter's clothing on the night of the murder, again walking the jury through side-by-side images of Hassan at the hospital and the second shooter in the crime scene video.

The State also called Ali Murray, a forensic video analyst for the City of Minneapolis who spent over 100 hours analyzing footage from the hospital and crime scene. Murray testified that the hospital footage images of Hassan were consistent with the crime-scene footage of the second shooter. Although Murray conceded that specific components of Hassan's clothing from the hospital footage (a tufted pattern on Hassan's jacket, a small white Nike logo on Hassan's pants, and a possible design on Hassan's shoes) did not appear in the crime scene footage, she testified that the resolution and lighting were such that she would not expect these characteristics to be visible. Murray also noted, however, that the crime scene footage did not have sufficient resolution to "confirm or eliminate" Hassan as the second shooter.

In addition to the details the State highlighted at trial, the unidentified shooter in the crime scene footage resembles the hospital footage of Hassan in other respects. Specifically, the posture of Hassan and the unidentified shooter do not match the posture of Person No. 5. Moreover, the unidentified shooter in the crime scene footage appears to fumble with his firearm before shooting it, compared with Ibrahim, a known gang member who discharges his weapon without issue. And the unidentified shooter's uncoordinated handling of his gun is consistent with a person who lacks experience in gang-related crime, such as Hassan.³

Witnesses for the State also suggested that Hassan might have acquired a gun while at the hospital. Fischer directed the jury to a moment in the hospital footage when Hassan left the hospital, entered a parked car for approximately 15 seconds, and then returned to the hospital lobby. After leaving the car, Fischer testified, Hassan began to cradle the right pocket of his jacket "with some frequency that [she] did not observe prior to ... him getting into that vehicle." Fischer testified that, "[f]rom [her] experience of being a police officer for 18 years, when people are carrying handguns where they don't have holsters[,] ... they tend to keep checking that particular area where they have it ... to make sure that it's there and secure."

The State also introduced testimony analyzing DNA evidence from the crime scene. During the investigation, a bullet found at the scene produced a DNA profile that did not match Hassan or Ibrahim, a fact the defense characterized as supporting Hassan's innocence. To explain this evidence, the State called Amber Folsum, a forensic scientist. Folsum testified that she examined swabs of a fired bullet found in the back seat of the Camry as well as the discharged cartridge casings found on the snow-packed parking lot. She explained that, although the swab of the bullet found in the back seat of the Camry produced "a single source male DNA profile that does not match Abdilahi Ibrahim or Omar Hassan," a bullet passing through a person—for example a shooting victim—would produce a DNA profile that matches that person, rather than the shooter. Folsum also testified that the swabs of the discharged cartridge casings contained insufficient DNA to conduct any scientific testing but clarified that a lack of sufficient DNA is very common when dealing with discharged cartridge casings. On cross-examination, Folsum conceded that she did not personally know whether the bullet that was found in the back seat of the Camry had passed through a person.

The State also introduced testimony regarding Hassan's cell phone records. Specifically, Richard Fennern, a special agent with the FBI Cellular Analysis Survey Team, testified that he and his colleagues were able to use cell towers to "determine where the defendant's phone ... was during the time frame in question." Fennern testified that at 11:52 p.m. (approximately 2 minutes before the murder), Hassan's cell phone pinged a tower that served an area "that would include" the restaurant where the shooting occurred.

Finally, the State introduced...