State v. Smith, A19-1101
| Decision Date | 22 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | A19-1101 |
| Parties | State of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Natausha Rae Smith, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Court of Appeals |
This opinion will be unpublished and may not be cited except as provided by Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).
Affirmed
St. Louis County District Court
Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Karen B. McGillic, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
Mark S. Rubin, St. Louis County Attorney, Duluth, Minnesota (for respondent)
Charles F. Clippert, Special Assistant Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Worke, Presiding Judge; Hooten, Judge; and Jesson, Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
In this direct appeal from the judgment of conviction for attempted first- and second-degree murder, third-degree assault, and kidnapping, appellant argues that: (1) the convictions for attempted first- and second-degree murder must be reversed because the district court failed to obtain a renewed jury trial waiver after the state amended its complaint to include these charges in the complaint, and (2) the case must be remanded for resentencing because the district court improperly allocated two criminal-history points to a foreign conviction. We affirm.
In March 2018, appellant Natausha Smith was charged with first-degree assault and kidnapping following an attack on her roommate. A few days later, the state amended its complaint the first time to include charges for aiding and abetting attempted first-degree murder-premeditated (Count I), aiding and abetting first-degree assault (Count II), and aiding and abetting kidnapping (Count III). The state amended the complaint again in June 2018 to modify Count II from aiding and abetting first-degree assault to aiding and abetting third-degree assault.
In October 2018, Smith appeared before the district court for a pre-trial hearing and waived her right to a jury trial. Two weeks after this waiver, the state sought to amend the complaint for a third time. The state moved the district court to allow an amendment of Count I from attempted first-degree murder-premediated to aiding and abetting attempted first-degree murder while committing a kidnapping, which removed the premeditation element, and requested an additional count, aiding and abetting attempted second-degree murder (Count IV).
Smith opposed the state's third amended complaint, arguing that removing the premeditation requirement from the first-degree murder charge would alter her defense strategy. The district court, however, granted the motion. But in consideration of thediminished legal standard caused by the removal of the premeditation element, the district court granted Smith a continuance and scheduled trial for January 2019. Smith did not renew her jury trial waiver after the state amended the complaint for the third time.
The district court found Smith guilty on all four counts following a three-day trial. During the sentencing phase, law enforcement discovered that Smith had a 2009 federal conviction for conspiracy to distribute and sell cocaine and had been sentenced to 15 months with three years of supervised release. Because of this conviction, Smith's sentencing worksheet included two criminal-history points for the offense, resulting in a total criminal-history score of two. The district court adopted the sentencing recommendations and sentenced Smith concurrently to 210 months for aiding and abetting attempted first-degree murder; 18 months for third-degree assault; and 122 months for kidnapping. The district court did not impose a sentence on the second-degree murder conviction. Smith appeals.
Smith challenges her attempted first- and second-degree murder convictions, arguing that the district court erred by failing to renew her jury trial waiver following the state's third amended complaint. She argues that the district court's failure to obtain a renewed waiver was a structural error. Whether a defendant has been denied the constitutional right to a jury trial is a question of law that this court reviews de novo. State v. Kuhlmann, 806 N.W.2d 844, 848-49 (Minn. 2011).
Under both the United States and Minnesota Constitutions, a defendant is entitled to a jury trial. U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 3; U.S. Const. amend. VI; Minn. Const. art. I, §§ 4, 6. A defendant may waive his or her right to a jury trial, provided that such waiver is: (1) personal, (2) written or on the record in open court, (3) the district court advised the defendant "of the right to trial by jury," and (4) the defendant had an opportunity to consult with counsel. Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 1(2)(a). A jury trial waiver must be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 748, 90 S. Ct. 1463, 1469 (1970); State v. Little, 851 N.W.2d 878, 882 (Minn. 2014). "[A] jury-trial waiver only applies to issues formed at the time of the waiver and not to issues added after the waiver." Little, 851 N.W.2d at 882. Therefore, "when the State amends the complaint after a defendant's jury trial waiver, the district court must obtain a renewed waiver of the defendant's right to a jury trial on the newly added charge." Id. at 883.
The state charged Smith in March 2018 and then amended the complaint twice before Smith waived her right to a jury trial in October 2018. The state amended its complaint a third time in October 2018 following Smith's waiver. The district court did not ask—and Smith did not indicate—whether she wished to renew her jury trial waiver with respect to the charges listed in the third amended complaint. Therefore, the district court's failure to obtain Smith's renewed jury trial waiver after the state amended its complaint constitutes error. See id. at 882-83 ().
Having determined that the district court erred, we next determine what standard of review to apply in reviewing the error. Smith contends that the denial of her right to a jury trial constitutes a structural error requiring automatic reversal, while the state argues that the decision should be reviewed for plain error.
Only a small class of constitutional errors are reviewed for structural error. Kuhlmann, 806 N.W.2d at 851; see also Arizona v. Fulminate, 499 U.S. 279, 306, 111 S. Ct. 1246, 1263 (1991) (). A structural error undermines the "structural integrity of the criminal tribunal itself" and therefore "is not amenable to harmless-error review." Vaszquez v. Hillery, 474 U.S. 254, 263-64, 106 S. Ct. 617, 623 (1986) (). Structural errors involve errors that affect the entire "framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than simply an error in the trial process itself." Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 8, 119 S. Ct. 1827, 1833 (1999). These errors "deprive defendants of 'basic protections' without which a 'criminal trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence . . . and no criminal punishment may be regarded as fundamentally fair.'" Id., 527 U.S. at 8-9, 119 S. Ct. at 1833.
When a structural error exists, the conviction must be automatically reversed. Id., 527 U.S. at 8, 119 S. Ct. at 1833. Trial errors, on the other hand, include errors "which occurred during the presentation of the case to the jury, and which may therefore be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented in order to determinewhether its admission was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." Kuhlmann, 806 N.W.2d at 851.
Our review of Minnesota caselaw indicates that our courts have addressed which standard of review applies when a district court fails to obtain a renewed jury trial waiver after the state amends its complaint.
First, in Kuhlmann, the defendant was charged with two counts of domestic assault and one count of test refusal, "both of which required the State to prove that Kuhlmann had certain qualifying previous convictions" in order to convict him. Id. at 847. At trial, Kuhlmann agreed to stipulate that he had the required previous convictions and the jury was not asked to find that the state had met its burden in proving that he had the qualifying convictions. Id. Following his conviction, Kuhlmann appealed and argued that the district court's failure to obtain his personal waiver of the right to a jury trial on the previous-conviction elements amounted to a structural error. Id.
The supreme court determined that although the district court erred by failing to obtain Kuhlmann's personal waiver, the error was not structural because "Kuhlmann received a jury trial on all of the elements of the charged offenses except for the previous-conviction elements" and "even if the trial court had obtained Kuhlmann's personal waiver, the trial would have proceeded in exactly the same manner as it did." Id. at 852. The supreme court further indicated that the district court's error amounted to a procedural error because "[t]he jury would have been presented with the same arguments and evidence" had the district court obtained Kuhlmann's personal waiver, and its failure to do so did not affect the outcome of the case. Id. The supreme court then analyzed the error under theplain error standard of review and determined that the error did not affect Kuhlmann's substantial rights. Id. at 852-53.
Similarly, in Little, the supreme court was presented with the issue of whether a district court must renew a defendant's waiver of his right to a jury trial...
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