State v. Jones
| Decision Date | 31 October 1996 |
| Docket Number | No. C3-95-1101,C3-95-1101 |
| Citation | 556 N.W.2d 903 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Marlow Devette JONES, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court
Any error engendered by the admission of a stipulation summarizing a co-defendant's testimony was harmless. The trial court did not abuse its discretion when it paraphrased the standard jury charge or when it directed the jury to continue deliberating, after the jury indicated it was deadlocked. A pretrial identification procedure was impermissible, but the resulting error was harmless. The evidence was sufficient to support defendant's conviction.
Michael F. Cromett, St. Paul, for Appellant.
Hubert H. Humphrey, III, St. Paul, Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Donna J. Wolfson, Minneapolis, for Respondent.
Heard, considered and decided by the court en banc.
In this case, appellant Marlow Devette Jones, contests his conviction of first-degree murder, Minn.Stat. § 609.185, and attempted first-degree murder, Minn.Stat. § 609.17. The trial court sentenced appellant to life imprisonment for the murder conviction and a concurrent sentence of 180 months for the attempted murder conviction.
Appellant raises four issues on appeal: 1) whether the trial court's decision to admit a stipulated summary of a co-defendant's statements was error requiring a new trial; 2) whether the trial court's jury instructions, including directions to keep deliberating on two occasions, constituted an abuse of discretion; 3) whether a suggestive pretrial identification procedure so prejudiced the trial as to warrant a new one; and 4) whether the evidence was sufficient to support the conviction.
Appellant, who is also known as "Levi," lived periodically in a Minneapolis house located at 2817 Bryant Avenue North. The victims, Tavarian McDonald and Darren McKnight, sold crack cocaine from the house. According to testimony at trial, on January 9, 1993, appellant and co-defendant Jamie Pearson, entered the home, located McDonald and McKnight in the kitchen and pointed handguns at them. Pearson then moved through the house, directing others in the home, including Earline Donaldson (who apparently owned or rented the home), Houston Moorman, and Kenosha Larkin, into the kitchen. Pearson and appellant indicated that the house was their drug selling turf. McDonald and McKnight offered to leave, but Pearson and appellant instead demanded that they empty their pockets; the pair produced about $1,800 in cash. Appellant ordered Larkin and Donaldson to leave, and, shortly thereafter, fired at McDonald and McKnight. Outside, Larkin and Donaldson heard gunshots and both women hid in nearby bushes. From this vantage point, they observed Pearson, Moorman, and appellant leave the house and drive away. McDonald survived the shooting, but McKnight did not.
Initial police interviews yielded only general descriptions of the two men involved in the shooting: a heavy-set black male and a taller, light-skinned black male. Neither Larkin nor Donaldson identified anyone by name after the shooting. Several weeks after the crimes, police detained Larkin on a juvenile arrest warrant to "develop" more information concerning the crime. During questioning, one of the officers, sitting close to Larkin in an interrogation room, was reading an interdepartmental memo concerning possible suspects in the shooting when Larkin stated "That's him." The memo contained photocopied pictures of appellant under the name "Levi." When Larkin asked to see the photo, the officer complied, and she identified appellant as "Levi." The officer testified at trial that, while he had no intention of showing Larkin the memo, she was able to see the picture through the paper, which he was holding facing himself.
Larkin, however, testified at trial that she was not able to see through the paper that the officer held. Instead, she recalled that he simply laid the memo photo out for her to view. Summarizing the officer's actions, Larkin testified that the officer said, "[H]e thinks this is the man, do he look familiar?" At trial the prosecution did not ask Larkin to identify defendant during direct examination. During cross examination, defense counsel elicited testimony that she chose his photo because "from that booklet that's the closest I could get from the way he looked." She also stated that she wasn't "for sure if that's him or not because I really didn't get a good look at his face."
Appellant presented an alibi defense at trial. Three individuals acquainted with appellant, his wife, a family friend, and an Illinois businessman and former police officer, testified that appellant was in Illinois during January and/or February 1993. None, however, could recall seeing appellant on January 9, 1993.
During trial, the prosecution subpoenaed Pearson, who had previously been convicted of second-degree murder in this matter, to testify. Despite an offer of immunity from further prosecution, Pearson refused to testify. The prosecution then sought to introduce Pearson's testimony regarding the crime he was convicted of from his own trial. 1 The trial court, however, granted a defense motion, made under Williamson v. United States, 512 U.S. 594, 114 S.Ct. 2431, 129 L.Ed.2d 476 (1994), to exclude this testimony because of its "blame-shifting" nature. The prosecution then moved the trial court either to reconsider its ruling or to allow "testimony or a stipulation that Mr. Pearson * * * agrees that he was at 2817 [Bryant]," arguing that such a summary would capture the elements of Pearson's testimony that truly inculpated him. The defense opposed this motion, but the trial court ruled that, under Williamson, a statement that Pearson was present at 2817 Bryant "has some [indicia] of reliability and that would be only that the co-defendant was present at the address" and, therefore, allowed "just that statement."
Because Pearson did not testify specifically that he was at the scene of the crime, the trial court, the prosecution, and defense counsel conferred regarding a stipulated statement. Pursuant to that agreement, the trial court read the following to the jury:
Members of the jury panel, I'm going to read to you a stipulation that has been entered into by the parties, and you should consider this as evidence in the case: The parties stipulate that Jamie Pearson, also known as Heavy, has admitted that he was present at 2817 Bryant Avenue North at approximately 7:30 p.m. on the evening of January 9th, 1993.
In addition to the Pearson stipulation, there was extensive testimony. Three eyewitnesses, Donaldson, Moorman, and the surviving victim, McDonald, testified that appellant had been the man with Pearson, who entered 2817 Bryant, threatened, and shot McDonald and McKnight. Larkin's testimony, though not as consistent, supported the testimony of these other witnesses. The murder weapon was not recovered, but forensic scientists testified that only one weapon was used to injure McDonald and kill McKnight, probably a .44 caliber revolver. The eyewitnesses testified that both Pearson and appellant were armed, appellant with a revolver. The motive for the murder appeared to be a conflict over drug-selling territory. Several witnesses testified that McKnight and McDonald sold drugs from 2817 Bryant; some of these same witnesses, as well as appellant's wife, testified that appellant, who had previously lived at 2817 Bryant, had been involved in selling drugs as well. The trial lasted some four and one-half days.
After testimony, the trial court charged the jury. CRIMJIG 3.04 2 is the standard jury charge regarding unanimous verdicts in criminal cases; in this instance, however, the trial court opted to paraphrase CRIMJIG 3.04, rather than read it verbatim. The CRIMJIG includes the following language: The trial court, however, told the jury:
There are 12 of you on this jury and all of you must agree to a verdict. Some of you may have been on juries in civil matters where you were permitted after so many hours of deliberation to return a so-called fractional verdict, in other words, some of you, not all of you could return a verdict in a civil case. But there are no fractional verdicts in a criminal case, and the jury's verdict must be unanimous.
After a full day of deliberation, the jury sent the trial court a note indicating it had reached an impasse. The trial court advised the jury to continue deliberating. After another day, the jury sent a note advising that:
We the jury have reached a point of 11 members who believe the defendant was at the scene. One who believes there is enough doubt to not believe that the defendant was present. That one jurist [sic] has concluded there is no reason or evidence to change that position.
The trial court denied a defense request for a mistrial and, as part of its instruction to the jury to continue, read CRIMJIG 3.04 to them. After a third day of deliberation, the jury returned with a guilty verdict.
Appellant first argues that the trial court erred when it admitted the stipulation summarizing the statements of a co-defendant. Arguing that the stipulation was not truly self-inculpatory as to the co-defendant, Pearson's, interest, but rather an attempt to serve his interest, appellant contends that the admission violates Williamson. Pearson's defense at his trial was that appellant was the triggerman and responsible for the actual killing and that he, Pearson, had no prior knowledge appellant planned to kill anyone. Because Pearson's testimony was blame-shifting, appellant contends, a predominantly self-inculpatory statement cannot be abstracted from it.
The introduction of hearsay statements of a nontestifying co-defendant implicates both the...
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