State v. Jennings
| Decision Date | 15 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. S-18-1186.,S-18-1186. |
| Citation | 305 Neb. 809,942 N.W.2d 753 |
| Parties | STATE of Nebraska, appellee, v. Leandre R. JENNINGS III, appellant. |
| Court | Nebraska Supreme Court |
Thomas C. Riley, Douglas County Public Defender, for appellant.
Douglas J. Peterson, Attorney General, and Austin N. Relph, Lincoln, for appellee.
Heavican , C.J., Miller-Lerman , Cassel , Stacy , Funke , Papik , and Freudenberg , JJ.
Leandre R. Jennings III was convicted of first degree murder, use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony, and possession of a deadly weapon by a prohibited person. The district court sentenced Jennings to consecutive terms of imprisonment for life, 30 to 40 years, and 40 to 45 years, respectively. Before trial, Jennings made two motions to suppress evidence obtained from searches of cell phone records and his residence. The first motion to suppress was based on cell phone records obtained pursuant to a provision within the federal Stored Communications Act, which has since been ruled unconstitutional. In the second motion to suppress, Jennings challenges the language of several paragraphs in the warrant as violating the particularity requirements of the Fourth Amendment. The district court denied these motions, and Jennings renewed the objections at trial. He now appeals.
Michael Brinkman was fatally shot during a home invasion in Omaha, Nebraska. Michael’s wife, Kimberly Milius (Kimberly), and their son, Seth Brinkman, were home during the invasion. After the investigation led law enforcement to suspect Jennings, he was arrested. The State charged Jennings with first degree murder under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-303 (Reissue 2016), a Class IA felony; use of a deadly weapon (firearm) to commit a felony under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-1205 (Reissue 2016), a Class IC felony; and possession of a deadly weapon (firearm) by a prohibited person under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28-1206 (Reissue 2016), a Class ID felony. Jennings was found guilty in a trial by jury.
At trial, Kimberly and Seth testified to what they witnessed during the home invasion that lead to Michael’s death. Kimberly testified that during the early evening of December 23, 2016, Michael, Kimberly, and Seth were at home getting ready to go out to dinner. Both Michael and Seth were showering in their respective bathrooms. As Michael was getting out of the shower, he asked Kimberly to answer the front door. Kimberly looked out a window and did not see anyone, though she did see a white sport utility vehicle parked in their driveway.
Kimberly opened the front door, and two men with guns, wearing masks and what appeared to be surgical gloves, forced their way into the home at gunpoint. One of the men was wearing a "[S]anta" hat. Kimberly asked the men what they wanted, and they answered, "Money." Kimberly offered to get her purse, but one of the men put a gun to her head and backed her into a corner of the living room. The other man, who was wearing the Santa hat, went down the hallway toward Michael’s room. Kimberly heard a gunshot, then scuffling sounds and another gunshot. After the gunshots, the first assailant ordered Kimberly into the master bedroom. As she entered the room, she saw Seth strike the second assailant with a shower rod. Kimberly testified that the second assailant was the same size as Jennings.
Seth’s testimony described the intruders in a similar fashion. He testified that he was in the shower when he heard his mother scream. He turned off the shower after he heard "rustling" sounds in the hallway. Seth peeked out of the shower and then heard a gunshot from the master bedroom. At that point, Seth grabbed the shower rod off the wall and went into the master bedroom, where he encountered and attacked the second assailant. During the scuffle, the Santa hat fell off the second assailant’s head. When the first assailant subsequently entered the room with Kimberly, he punched Seth and wrestled the shower rod away from him. The first assailant ordered Kimberly and Seth "to get down and to shut up." The second assailant left the room and returned a short time later with what appeared to be a white "money bag." Seth testified that the second assailant said something to the first and that they then left, taking Kimberly’s cell phone with them.
After they left, Kimberly ran to lock the front door and Seth went to look for Michael. Seth first went to the bathroom where he had showered, in order to put on his clothes. When doing so, he noticed that his shorts had some sort of sauce on them and that there were fast food items on the floor. The items included a partially eaten piece of "Texas toast," some "fries," and a container of sauce from a Raising Cane’s restaurant. Seth testified that none of those items were present before the intruders arrived.
Seth then went to an upstairs bedroom and found the door was difficult to open. Seth forced the door open and discovered the door had been blocked by Michael, who was lying on the floor. Seth called for Kimberly, and she used Seth’s cell phone to call the 911 emergency dispatch service while Seth tried to aid Michael.
The first officer on the scene entered the home and found Michael with Seth, and the officer then requested medical assistance. An ambulance rushed Michael to the hospital, but he did not survive. Michael’s autopsy established that the cause of death was a gunshot wound
to the chest.
Kimberly and Seth provided descriptions of the intruders to law enforcement. During a canvassing of the neighborhood, law enforcement obtained surveillance video from a neighbor which showed a white sport utility vehicle driving by the Brinkman residence several times around the time of the attack. The lead detective viewed the videos and recognized the vehicle as a Dodge Durango. Police also released a photograph and description of the vehicle to the media seeking the public’s help in locating the vehicle or suspects.
Members of the forensics team came and collected evidence, including DNA swabs from the Texas toast, the Raising Cane’s sauce container, the shower rod, and the Santa hat. Police also collected three spent shell casings from the residence, later determined to be .380 caliber.
On January 2, 2017, law enforcement received an anonymous telephone call indicating the caller had seen the Durango in the lot of an apartment complex several days before the murder. The caller claimed to have observed two black males exit the vehicle and go to an apartment on the third floor of an adjoining building. The caller provided the license plate number on the vehicle.
Police determined that the vehicle belonged to a car rental company. The records provided by the rental company showed that from December 13 through 27, 2016, the vehicle was rented to Carnell Watt. The owner of the rental company office told police that Watt regularly rents vehicles from that location and that she frequently came in with Jennings, whom she would introduce as her husband.
Police recovered the vehicle from a car rental office in Detroit, Michigan, and conducted a digital forensics examination. The Durango was equipped to keep a time-stamped list of all cell phones which have previously had a Bluetooth connection to the vehicle. Cell phones associated with Watt, her sister, and Jennings were connected to the Durango during the dates Watt rented the vehicle. During an interview with Omaha police, Watt indicated that she lent the Durango to Jennings during the rental period.
On February 13, 2017, law enforcement personnel received a response from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s national DNA database commonly referred to as "CODIS" informing them that the DNA swab of the Texas toast included Jennings as a probable match. Law enforcement then sought permission from the court to obtain Jennings’ cell site location information (CSLI) pursuant to a provision within the Stored Communications Act. Law enforcement sought records from cell service companies for Jennings. Only the records obtained from one such company are challenged on appeal. That company provided Jennings’ cell phone records and CSLI in response to a court order which showed that Jennings’ cell phone was in the area of the crime around the relevant times.
Police also obtained Watt’s cell phone records, which showed that on the day of the homicide, her cell phone was located in the area of her place of employment, which is not close to the location of the homicide. However, the records also showed that at around 3 p.m. on December 23, 2016, Watt’s cell phone was briefly in the area of a Raising Cane’s restaurant located in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
On February 16, 2017, law enforcement viewed the surveillance video for December 23, 2016, from the Council Bluffs Raising Cane’s restaurant in question and observed a white sport utility vehicle in the drive-through lane of the restaurant between 3:17 and 3:23 p.m. The video displayed two unidentifiable occupants and a particular item of clothing worn by the driver. The item worn by the driver was described as a dark shirt with light stripes.
Using all of the aforementioned information, a detective applied for a search warrant for a specific address on North 60th Street. The affidavit detailed the description of the intruders as wearing gloves and masks, noted the various clothing items described during the intrusion and seen on the Raising Cane’s surveillance video, indicated that the CSLI data placed Jennings’ phone near the Brinkman residence before and after the time of the murder, and specified that the Nebraska State Patrol had notified Omaha police of a possible CODIS match to Jennings from one of the items recovered at the scene. The affidavit also noted that the address Jennings had provided to his probation officer was on Sprague Street, but that Jennings also had a vehicle registered in Nebraska with a North 60th Street address and that a utilities district’s records showed Watt and Jennings listed as...
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