State v. Lindahl, 51481.
| Decision Date | 28 August 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 51481.,51481. |
| Citation | 309 NW 2d 763 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Robert Michael LINDAHL, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Collins, Buckley, Sauntry & Haugh, Theodore J. Collins and Thomas J. Germscheid, St. Paul, for appellant.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., Gary Hansen and Norman B. Coleman, Jr., Sp. Asst. Attys. Gen., St. Paul, John Leitner, County Atty., Aitkin, for respondent.
C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, and Elizabeth B. Davies, Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, amicus curiae.
Considered and decided by the court en banc without oral argument.
Defendant was found guilty by a district court jury of a charge of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree (nonconsensual penetration accomplished by force or coercion where actor causes personal injury to complainant), Minn.Stat. § 609.342(e)(i) (1978). The trial court sentenced defendant to a maximum term of 20 years in prison. On this appeal from judgment of conviction, defendant contends that his conviction should be reversed outright on the ground that the evidence of his guilt was legally insufficient or that he should be given a new trial on the grounds that the trial court erred in admitting eyewitness identification testimony and Spreigl evidence, erred in refusing to instruct the jury that defendant's intoxication could be considered in determining defendant's guilt of the charged crime, and improperly coerced a verdict. We affirm.
Complainant, an 18-year-old Crystal woman, accompanied her parents and other relatives to Aitkin on Saturday, July 7, 1979, to spend the weekend at an aunt's cottage. That evening she attended a beer party at a residence south of Aitkin on Highway 169. Several hours after midnight she met a young man, later identified as defendant, who eventually invited her to walk with him down a nearby dirt or gravel road. It was during this walk that the man, without warning, hit her, then pushed her down and, after forcing her to commit fellatio, forced her to have sexual intercourse with him. After completing the act, the man tied her to a barbed wire fence and left. Complainant then freed herself, and after walking a distance sought and obtained help.
Coincidentally, police, who were called to the party at 4:30 a. m. to investigate an unrelated matter, had copied down the license numbers of two cars. As part of their investigation of the rape, the police learned that one of these two cars was registered to defendant's girl friend in Brooklyn Park, who had loaned defendant the car. The officers traced defendant to the family lake cabin south of Aitkin where they talked with him, his father, and his friend, Mike Peterson. Defendant fit the description given by complainant of her assailant in a number of ways, the most significant being that defendant had long hair with a part down the middle and wore a silver necklace.
At the sheriff's office defendant said he had been so drunk that he did not know what happened. He claimed he and Mike each had about 30 beers. He said that he had also taken marijuana and possibly angel dust. Asked what he did for a living, defendant said he "used to be a carpenter or a carpet layer."
Mike Peterson, defendant's friend, testified for the state that he had drunk about 10 beers, not 30, and that when defendant was with him defendant did not outdrink him. He also testified that he had seen defendant walking away from the party with a girl who "somewhat" resembled complainant and that later he saw defendant returning by himself. Defendant told him that he had been out "four wheeling" in a cream-colored Ford. Peterson testified that defendant did not seem intoxicated to him and drove "straight as an arrow" back to the cottage.
There was evidence that there was only one cream-colored four-wheel drive vehicle at the party and that defendant did not go "four wheeling" in this vehicle.
Complainant identified defendant from pictures and then later in a confirmatory lineup. She also identified defendant at trial.
Semen left by complainant's assailant was that of a type O secretor; complainant and defendant both have type O blood but defendant, not complainant, is a secretor. Thus, the medical evidence could not rule out defendant as a source of the semen.
Spreigl evidence admitted to bolster the identification evidence revealed that early on December 24, 1978, when taking a 15-year-old Brooklyn Park girl home after an evening of group beer drinking, defendant stopped his car, hit her, forced her to remove her clothes, then forced her to commit fellatio and to submit to sexual intercourse. In other words, defendant used the same basic modus operandi on her as he did on complainant.
Defendant did not testify apparently because the trial court refused an advance defense request to instruct the jury that it could consider defendant's intoxication in determining defendant's guilt of the charged crime. The trial court did instruct the jury that it could consider intoxication in determining defendant's guilt of the lesser offense of simple assault. The court also submitted criminal sexual conduct in the third degree.
1. Most of the issues raised by defendant do not require detailed discussion.
(a) The evidence on identification was sufficient, consisting as it did of positive eyewitness identification testimony by the victim and strong corroborating evidence including (i) evidence that defendant fit the description, (ii) evidence that defendant's car was still at the scene of the party at the time of the rape, (iii) evidence that defendant's friend saw him walk off with a girl and return alone, (iv) the medical evidence that defendant is a type O secretor, and (v) the Spreigl evidence which showed that defendant had used the same basic modus operandi (assault followed by fellatio followed by intercourse) in raping another girl several months earlier.
(b) Defendant's contention concerning the admissibility of the in-court eyewitness identification testimony by complainant is based on the fact that (i) the photographic display contained two pictures of defendant and two of another person but one each of the rest and (ii) the fact that only defendant among the participants did not laugh when repeating the required words at the confirmatory lineup. Although we agree that the photographic display was suggestive, our analysis of all the relevant factors convinces us that this suggestiveness did not create a "very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification." See Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 107, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 2249, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977); Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 199, 93 S.Ct. 375, 382, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972). Complainant was with her assailant for over 45 minutes and had an adequate opportunity to see him. Her description of the assailant fit defendant in a number of key respects. She had no trouble identifying defendant and her initial identification of defendant was made shortly after the offense. She never wavered in her identification of defendant. In short, we believe the identification was reliable.
(c) Similarly, we are satisfied that the trial court properly admitted the Spreigl evidence. Defendant's contentions concerning this evidence are (i) that the trial court improperly...
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State v. Allensworth, A12-1796
...must establish that the physical contact to the victim was not accidental but instead was intentionally inflicted. State v. Lindahl, 309 N.W.2d 763, 767 (Minn. 1981). Intent is an inference drawn from the totality of the circumstances and a defendant's statements as to his or her intentions......