State v. Kendell
| Decision Date | 09 November 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. A05-0427.,A05-0427. |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Robert D. KENDELL, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Bridget Kearns Sabo, Asst. State Public Defender, Minneapolis, MN, for Appellant.
Mike Hatch, Attorney General, St. Paul, MN, Amy Klobuchar, Hennepin County Attorney, Jean E. Burdorf, Asst. County Attorney, Minneapolis, MN, for Respondent.
Heard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.
A jury found appellant Robert D. Kendell guilty of first-degree premeditated murder and second-degree intentional murder for the shooting death of Robert Hannah. The jury also found Kendell guilty of three counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of attempted second-degree murder, three counts of first-degree assault, and one count of child endangerment for the shootings of Mandie Coburn and her two children, Yasmeen Coburn-Bryant and Patrick Walker. The district court sentenced Kendell to life imprisonment for first-degree premeditated murder, 240 months for attempted first-degree murder of Coburn, 240 months for attempted first-degree murder of Yasmeen, and 240 months for attempted first-degree murder of Patrick, with the sentences to run consecutively. The district court also sentenced Kendell to a concurrent term of 365 days for child endangerment. Kendell appeals, arguing that: (1) the evidence was insufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he premeditated the murders of Hannah, Yasmeen, and Patrick; (2) the district court erred when it denied Kendell's motion to sever the charges relating to Hannah; (3) the district court erred when it submitted to the jury a special interrogatory regarding a fact used to enhance Kendell's sentence; (4) Kendell was denied due process because the state failed to provide adequate notice of its intent to seek an upward sentencing departure and failed to include the departure factor in the indictment; (5) the district court erred when it permitted witnesses to testify that, after the shootings, Kendell said, "I'm going to hell"; and (6) the district court erred when it permitted a recording of two 911 calls to be played during the state's closing argument. We affirm.
On December 17, 2003, Robert Hannah was found shot to death in the entryway of his apartment in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. On the same day, police also found Mandie Coburn and two of her children shot and seriously injured in the apartment next door. Coburn and her children survived the shootings.
In September 2002, Robert Kendell moved into apartment 304, Mandie Coburn's home, with Coburn and her two children, Yasmeen and Patrick. In 2003, Coburn became pregnant with Kendell's child and, on December 3, gave birth to a girl, Charess. After Charess was born, Coburn and Kendell began arguing about Charess's care. At trial, Kendell's cousin testified that prior to the shootings Kendell had said that he loved Coburn and her children but that he would kill all three of them if Coburn "kept playing with him about his baby."
At approximately five o'clock in the evening on December 17, 2003, Coburn and Kendell got into an argument about who was to watch Charess that evening. Coburn testified that Kendell began swearing at her and that she eventually told him to leave. Kendell agreed to leave and called his friend, Marques Bates, who agreed to pick up Kendell and his belongings at the apartment. After assisting Kendell with his packing, Coburn left the apartment to visit her friend, Erica McClellan, who lived nearby.
At approximately 8:30 p.m., Kendell went to McClellan's apartment building and told McClellan that his ride had arrived and that Coburn should come home so the children would not be alone. Coburn, angry that Kendell had left Charess alone, returned to her apartment with Kendell. On the way back from McClellan's apartment, Coburn told Kendell that she was going to call the police and report that he had left her children unattended.1
Once back at the apartment, Kendell asked Coburn if she "wanted to be with him," and Coburn said no. According to Coburn, Kendell then said that the only way Coburn "was going to leave him was in a body bag." At that point, Coburn called 911. While she was on the phone in the kitchen, Kendell shot her once in the chest. After the first shot, Kendell's gun jammed, and Coburn hung up the phone, hoping that doing so would calm Kendell down. As Kendell attempted to fix the gun, Coburn called 911 a second time. While Coburn was on the second call, Kendell shot her two more times.
After shooting Coburn, Kendell left the kitchen and walked toward the back bedroom where the children were. Coburn heard gunshots coming from the back bedroom. Coburn then saw Kendell head toward the apartment door, throw his jacket hood over his head, and leave the apartment. After his departure, Coburn remained on the telephone with the 911 dispatcher. A recording of the 911 calls was played at trial and corroborates significant portions of Coburn's testimony.
Police officers arrived and proceeded to the third floor, where they noticed that the door to apartment 303 was open and a man, Robert Hannah, the resident of apartment 303, was lying in the entryway. Hannah was pronounced dead at the scene. The officers also observed wood from the door frame of apartment 303 strewn about the common area in front of the doorway. The door frame and the area around the door's molding were broken, and the dead-bolt was extended. At trial, Officer Aaron Albright testified that the door appeared to have been forced open.
Additional officers arrived on the scene, and several officers turned their attention to apartment 304.2 Upon finding the door to apartment 304 locked, Officer Michael Ploumen kicked in the door, and several officers entered the apartment. Inside, the officers found Coburn seated on the kitchen floor, conscious but bleeding from the chest. Two officers testified that Coburn told them that her boyfriend, Robert Kendell, had shot her. The officers also found Yasmeen, Patrick, and Charess on the bed in the back bedroom. Yasmeen and Patrick had been shot, but Charess was uninjured. The officer who attended to Yasmeen testified that, when asked who had shot her, Yasmeen replied, "It was daddy."3
At trial, Marques Bates testified that between 8:15 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on December 17 he arrived at Coburn's building and helped Kendell load his belongings into Bates's car. Bates then drove to another apartment building while Kendell went to get Coburn from McClellan's apartment. When Bates returned, Kendell got into Bates's car, and they drove off. Not long after Kendell got into the car, Bates and one of the passengers in the car heard Kendell say, "I'm going to hell." Bates drove Kendell to his aunt's house where he transferred a few garbage bags containing his belongings to another car, got into the car, and drove off. The next day, Kendell saw a photograph of himself on the news. On the evening of December 18, Kendell turned himself in to the police.
As a result of the shooting, Coburn suffered injures to her chest, left arm, right buttock, right leg, and left thigh. Yasmeen sustained a single gunshot to her right buttock. Patrick was hit by three separate gunshots and incurred injuries to his right hip and left leg. An emergency room physician who examined Coburn, Yasmeen, and Patrick after the shootings testified that all three had sustained life-threatening injuries.
An autopsy of Hannah's body revealed that he had been shot twice, first in the abdomen and then in the back. The medical examiner who performed the autopsy testified that the wound to Hannah's back was fatal and that Hannah could have lived only a couple of minutes after receiving it. The examiner also testified that Hannah's injuries were consistent with the door to his apartment opening, Hannah receiving the abdomen wound, and then turning and being shot in the back.
The state presented testimony of two of Hannah's neighbors from apartment 301 who testified that they visited Hannah at his apartment on the evening of December 17. One of the neighbors, Covetta Thaggard, stated that while she was at Hannah's apartment she heard a noise that sounded like a firecracker coming from apartment 304. Thaggard further testified that, five or six minutes after leaving Hannah's apartment at approximately 8:30 p.m., she heard noises in the hallway outside her apartment. She described the noises as sounding like an object banging against a wall or a door and then a "pop." The other neighbor also testified that she heard noises from the hallway that sounded like banging against a wall followed by three gunshots. Both women testified that Hannah was alive when they left his apartment. Thaggard also testified that she did not notice anything unusual about Hannah's door when she left his apartment.
Kurt Moline, a forensic scientist at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, examined the bullets and casings recovered from apartments 303 and 304. At trial, Moline testified that one of the bullets found in apartment 303 had features matching the bullets found in apartment 304, indicating that the bullets found in the two apartments were fired from the same gun. The gun used in the shootings was not recovered by police.
A grand jury returned an indictment charging Kendell with 12 counts arising out of the shootings — first- and second-degree murder for the death of Hannah, attempted first- and second-degree murder and first-degree assault for the shootings of Coburn, Yasmeen, and Patrick, and child endangerment with respect to Charess. Kendell moved to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that the offenses charged did not arise from a single behavioral incident. In the alternative, Kendell requested that the charges relating to Hannah be severed from the...
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