State v. Koehler
| Decision Date | 16 December 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 50996.,50996. |
| Citation | 312 NW 2d 108 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Patrick Byron KOEHLER, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, and J. Christopher Cuneo, Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, for appellant.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Alan L. Mitchell, County Atty., and Peter M. Banovetz, Asst. County Atty., Duluth, for respondent.
Considered and decided by the court en banc without oral argument.
Defendant Patrick Byron Koehler appeals from a conviction for murder in the first degree. We remand for a new trial.
Karen Wiita, the twelve-year-old sister of appellant's former woman companion, was murdered on February 27, 1978. Her badly beaten body was found in the late afternoon near Spirit Mountain Recreational Area in Duluth. Shortly thereafter, the investigation by Duluth police began to focus on appellant.
Appellant accounted for his whereabouts after approximately 9 a.m. on the day of the murder. The State therefore attempted to show that the murder took place sometime between 8 a.m. when Karen Wiita left home for school, and 9 a.m.
Members of appellant's family testified that they saw his car in front of the Koehler residence between 8 and 9 a.m. on the day of the murder. The State, however, called one Thomas Houle whose memory had recently been refreshed under hypnosis by Sergeant Ehle of the Duluth Police Department. Ehle had taken a course in hypnosis only two weeks earlier and was himself involved in the investigation. Houle testified that he had seen defendant's car on Beck's road near the crime scene at approximately 8:20 a.m. on the day of the murder.
Prior to hypnosis, Houle described seeing a young girl with a "blank expression" riding in the passenger seat of an off-green, mid-1960's compact car. After hypnosis, Houle recalled it as a four-door mid-1960's compact car of light brown color. He further remembered the number eight in the license plate, which coincided with appellant's plates. Immediately after hypnosis, Houle was taken to the police garage where he was shown only appellant's car and identified it as the car he saw on Beck's road. He so testified at trial. This was the State's only direct evidence linking appellant to the area of the crime.
Appellant raises issues concerning the sufficiency of the evidence, the unintentional loss of evidence by the State, the qualifications of an expert witness, the impropriety of the prosecution's closing arguments, and the admission of hypnotically influenced testimony. We address only the issues determinative of our decision, whether the loss by the State of potentially exculpatory evidence entitles defendant to a judgment of acquittal, and whether the trial court committed reversible error in admitting the testimony of the witness whose memory was refreshed by hypnosis.
During an autopsy performed the day after the murder the victim's stomach contents were removed. Although the contents may have had probative value in establishing the time of death, they were inadvertently lost before appellant had an opportunity to examine them.
In State v. Carlson, 267 N.W.2d 170 (Minn.1978) we noted that "other courts have drawn a sharp distinction between intentional destruction of evidence by the state and situations in which it is for some reason not possible for the state to retain the physical evidence for trial." Id. at 174. In this case, there is no suggestion that the State intentionally lost the victim's stomach contents "to avoid discovery of evidence beneficial to the defense." Lee v. State, 511 P.2d 1076, 1077 (Alaska 1973). Furthermore, it is doubtful whether the victim's stomach contents were exculpatory because she might have survived for several hours after sustaining the beating from which she died. Thus the extent of digestion as revealed by her stomach contents...
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