State v. Walker
| Decision Date | 31 October 1975 |
| Docket Number | No. 42778,42778 |
| Citation | 306 Minn. 105,235 N.W.2d 810 |
| Parties | STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. Terence Bruce WALKER, Appellant. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court
1. The mandatory life sentence under Minn.St. 609.185 for first-degree murder does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, nor does it violate due process or equal protection provisions of the Minnesota and Federal Constitutions.
2. Under the circumstances in this case, the testimony of two fingerprint experts was proper rebuttal.
3. Collateral evidence concerning an accomplice was properly admitted at appellant's trial since it was of probative value in connecting him to the crime.
4. Testimony at trial concerning appellant's in-custody spontaneous statement violated his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, but was not prejudicial.
5. In this case the evidence supports the necessary elements of involvement and premeditation and the trial court did not err by not submitting sua sponte the lesser included offenses of homicide for the jury's consideration.
6. Under all of the circumstances in this case, defendant had a fair trial.
C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, Jerome E. Truhn, Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, Thomson, Wylde, Nordby, Friedberg & Rapoport and Jack S. Nordby, St. Paul, for appellant.
Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., St. Paul, Keith M. Brownell, County Atty., Julie A. Baumgarten, Asst. County Atty., Duluth, for respondent.
Heard before ROGOSHESKE, KELLY, and YETKA, JJ., and considered and decided by the court en banc.
Defendant appeals from a judgment of conviction of first- degree murder and the denial of his alternative post-trial motions. We affirm.
On July 4, 1969, Milton Richardson, the owner of the Club Rendezvous, was found beaten to death in his nightclub located in Duluth. There were no witnesses to the crime, which apparently occurred in the early morning hours when Richardson was alone in the club cleaning up and counting the previous day's receipts. The apparent motive was robbery, although the brutality of the way Richardson was bludgeoned to death was atypical of murder incidental to robbery. 1 On August 27--28, 1969, following an intensive police investigation, the defendant and one Richard Redd were arrested in connection with this case and charged with first-degree murder. Following a plea of not guilty, defendant was tried separately by a jury in Duluth.
At defendant's trial the state presented the following evidence in proof of defendant's guilt of the crime with which he was charged:
Testimony from Lee Wiley, a bartender at Club Rendezvous, revealed that appellant and Richard Redd were served drinks in the bar on the eventing of July 3, 1969. Wiley, who had known appellant for a number of years, was able to give a description of the clothes worn by both men. The other bartender supplied a physical description of each.
Appellant admitted he had access to a 1959 Cadillac, the color of which was a light red or pink. One Patrick Perfetti testified that while driving past the Rendezvous around 2:15 a.m. on July 4, 1969, he saw a black man fitting appellant's description running in the vicinity of the club and that the man seemed to come out of the doorway of the Club Rendezvous. The man proceeded east on Michigan Street and went into an empty parking lot. As Perfetti's car reached the edge of the lot, a 1959 4-door, hardtop Cadillac, light-colored, rusty and in shabby condition, and with no headlights on, shot out from the lot over the curb in front of Perfetti. Perfetti had to hit his brakes in order to avoid a collision. The car proceeded east at a high rate of speed, going through a stop sign one block away. Two black males were sitting in the front seat of the Cadillac. Perfetti identified photographs of the Cadillac to which appellant had access and which he had been seen driving about the date of the murder as appearing to be the same make, model, and in the same condition as the car he had seen.
Two prosecution experts testified that latent bloody palm prints found at the scene of the murder matched palm prints of appellant and Redd. The 1959 Cadillac used by appellant was purchased by the Duluth Police Department, taken to the St. Louis County garage, and searched. Blood stains of appellant's type, Type O, were found on the driveshaft hump on the rear floor and on the rear seatwell.
Also found in the car were several minute wood fragments. An expert witness for the state testified that the varnish-type substance on all the pieces was comparable in all microscopic aspects with those wood pieces found at the scene of the crime. He concluded that they could have had a common source of origin. Regarding the analysis of the wood itself, the state called Dr. B. F. Kukachka, a well-known expert in the analysis and identification of wood and an employee of the U.S. Forest Service. His tests revealed that the wood pieces found in the Cadillac, in the nightclub, and on the body of the deceased were all of Ramin, an extremely rare wood grown only in a certain area of Southeast Asia. Portions of the pool cues at Club Rendezvous were composed of Ramin wood.
Extensive testimony was received from many persons who had seen appellant, Redd, or both of them on July 3 and 4, 1969, either at the Rendezvous or at the Chicken Shack, an after-hours bar in Duluth. Finally, expert testimony regarding a yellow-or-ange piece of charred cloth taken from the stove at the Chicken Shack indicated that the fiber was comparable with a cardigan sweater and polo shirt set purchased by police, these articles being of a type and color which two witnesses had indicated was similar to clothing Redd was wearing. The weave of the fragment could qualify as the same weave as that found on the cuffs, waistband, and neck of the polo shirt.
At the close of the 7-week trial, the jury deliberated 2 days before returning a verdict finding defendant guilty of murder in the first degree. The presiding judge sentenced defendant to mandatory life imprisonment, as required by Minn.St. 609.185, and this appeal followed.
Defendant raises seven issues for this court to resolve:
(1) Whether the mandatory life sentence under Minn.St. 609.185 violates the state and Federal constitutional provisions against cruel and unusual punishment, due process, and equal protection of the law;
(2) whether the testimony of two fingerprint experts constituted proper rebuttal evidence;
(3) whether evidence which implicated Richard Redd as a participant in the crime with the defendant was properly admitted at defendant's trial;
(4) whether testimony regarding defendant's custodial statements violated his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination;
(5) whether there was sufficient evidence to establish involvement and premeditation beyond a reasonable doubt;
(6) whether the trial court erred in not submitting lesser included offenses for the jury's consideration;
(7) whether the totality of the circumstances leading up to defendant's conviction denied him a fair trial.
1. A life sentence for first-degree murder is mandated by Minn.St. 609.185. This section is supplemented by § 243.05, which provides for a person convicted under § 609.185(1) a 25-year minimum prison term, less time credited for good behavior, before he can be paroled. Defendant argues that this sentencing pattern violates substantive and procedural due process of law, denies equal protection, and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under the Minnesota and Federal Constitutions. Historically and up to this present day, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments 2 has only been applied to those situations presenting severely cruel elements 3 or a degree of severity out of all proportion to the offense. 4 The most recent example is the United States Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238, 92 S.Ct. 2726, 33 L.Ed.2d 346 (1972), holding the death penalty as then currently applied was unconstitutional. However, as applied to minimum mandatory sentences, no court has gone so far as to say that they are cruel and unusual punishments. 5
In our view, a 25-year minimum sentence, less time off for good behavior, prescribed in the wisdom of the legislature, is not excessive or out of proportion to the offense of first-degree murder. Such minimum sentences do serve a valid purpose in assuring that the offender will not return to society at too early a point after commission of the crime. Nor does the defendant have a right to a postconviction presentence hearing to show his susceptibility to rehabilitation. While Minn.St. 609.115 gives the trial judge the option of requiring a presentence investigation of persons convicted of felonies not carrying mandatory life sentences, and as part of such investigation requiring that an estimate be made of the prospects of the subject's rehabilitation, no defendant has an absolute right to demand that this procedure be employed. Thus, the contention of a procedural due process violation based on the lack of a hearing on defendant's prospects of rehabilitation is without merit. Likewise, we view the fact that all persons convicted of first-degree murder receive the same minimum sentence as persuasive that defendant's sentence does not violate substantive due process or deny those so sentenced equal protection of the laws. 6
Upon these bases we have no difficulty in holding that defendant's mandatory life sentence under Minn.St. 609.185, with a minimum imprisonment of 25-years less time credited for good behavior under § 243.05, does not violate his state or Federal constitutional rights.
2. During its case in chief, the state called two fingerprint experts who testified that latent palm prints found at the scene of the murder matched inked impressions obtained from Redd and the defendant. The defense called Dr. Vassislis C....
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