Welfare of M.D.S., Matter of

• Citation: 345 N.W.2d 723
• Decision Date: 24 February 1984
• Docket Number: No. C4-83-159,C4-83-159
• Parties: In the Matter of the WELFARE OF M.D.S. STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. M.D.S., Appellant.
• Court: Supreme Court of Minnesota (US)

Page 723

345 N.W.2d 723

In the Matter of the WELFARE OF M.D.S.

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent, v. M.D.S., Appellant.

No. C4-83-159.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Feb. 24, 1984.

Syllabus by the Court

1. Subjective intent of police officers to detain or not to detain defendant is irrelevant in determining if an arrest occurred. The test is whether a reasonable person would have believed there was no choice but to accompany the police officers.

2. Defendant's return trip to the station was made voluntarily and her second statement was given independently of the original trip to the police station. She voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waived her right to silence and her right to an attorney. Therefore, her second statement was clearly admissible at trial under the fourth and fifth amendments.

3. The indication by the police officers that cooperation would be beneficial did not constitute coercion or a promise of immunity.

4. An aider and adviser to a felony murder need not have pulled the trigger. Defendant was present at the offense. She directed her companions to the victim's home and told one of them to shoot at the windows. She also helped conceal the weapon. These activities are not mere inaction but are sufficient evidence of intent to aid and advise in the intentional criminal damage to property which resulted in the victim's death.

5. Statements of defendant were sufficiently corroborated by attendant acts and circumstances to be deemed trustworthy and admissible.

Alan D. Margoles, St. Paul, for appellant.

Thomas L. Johnson, County Atty., Minneapolis, for respondent.

Heard, considered, and decided by the court en banc.

AMDAHL, Chief Justice.

This appeal is from a conviction of a female juvenile in Hennepin County District Court on a charge of aiding and advising felony murder in violation of Minn.Stat. Secs. 609.195 and 609.19(2) (1982). The original petition by the State in July 1982 alleged aiding in the violation of Minn.Stat. Sec. 609.195 (1982) (murder in the third degree). An amended petition on August 6, 1982, alleged aiding and advising, under Minn.Stat. Sec. 609.05, criminal damage to property, under Minn.Stat. Sec. 609.595, which caused the death of the victim in violation of Minn.Stat. Sec. 609.19(2), second-degree felony murder. At the close of the State's case, defendant moved for acquittal. The motion was denied. On November 30, 1982, after a 4-day juvenile court proceeding, the presiding judge found the amended petition alleging murder in the second degree had been proven. At a dispositional hearing held on December 31, 1982, the juvenile was ordered committed to the Commissioner of Corrections at Sauk Centre. Defendant's motion to stay the execution of the commitment and place defendant in the St. Cloud Children's Home for psychiatric treatment was denied. Defendant's motion for amended findings pursuant to Rule 7.21 of the Hennepin County Juvenile Court Rules was also denied.

At the omnibus hearing held prior to trial, defendant moved for suppression of statements made by her companions against whom charges were pending. Judge Porter assumed the companions would assert their constitutional right to silence and refuse to testify. He found that the statements were not given under oath, were crucial to the State's case-in-chief, and were made during the course of police questioning. The statements were ruled inadmissible, since the unavailability of the declarants for cross-examination would violate defendant's constitutional right of confrontation.

Defendant appeals the findings at the omnibus hearing that the statements of the police officers did not constitute an arrest, a promise of immunity, a threat, or coercion; that defendant was fully and adequately informed of her constitutional rights; that defendant made a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary waiver of her right to remain silent; and that defendant's own inculpatory statements were voluntary and admissible at trial.

In addition to the appeal on the above-stated fourth and fifth amendment issues we are presented with the following questions: whether the State presented sufficient evidence to prove that the juvenile defendant intentionally aided and advised in the intentional criminal damage to property which resulted in the victim's death, and whether defendant's own inculpatory statements were sufficiently corroborated by independent evidence, in accordance with Minn.Stat. Sec. 634.03 (1982), that defendant committed a crime.

The defendant juvenile was 14 years of age on July 17, 1982, when she and two adults, James Croft and Ronald Back, allegedly participated in a shooting spree with a high-powered rifle. Four bullets were fired at the home of the victim. One of those bullets struck and killed her.

A. Events leading to the killing.

Defendant apparently spent most of July 16 and 17, 1982, at the apartment shared by James Croft, Ronald Back, and Adam Andazola, men whom she had known for some time. The amount of alcohol and marijuana she had consumed that day and evening is in dispute. She claims that she and her companions, Croft and Back, were intoxicated. Sometime during the evening defendant, Back, and Croft went for a ride, with defendant sitting in the front seat between the two men. All three smoked marijuana as they rode. Croft drove to the home of an ex-roommate whom he had a grudge against and smashed his car twice into the back end of his ex-roomate's car, which was parked in the driveway.

The three drove away and later returned to the scene but left immediately because the police had arrived. At approximately 11:30 p.m. the trio returned to the apartment and apparently resumed drinking and smoking marijuana.

Defendant claims to have been so intoxicated at this point that her memory was very foggy, but actually she recalls a fair amount of detail. The three then decided that they would go shooting in a field. Either Croft or Back put the cased rifle, which defendant recalls was either a .44 or a .45, and two boxes of ammunition into the back of the car. Defendant claims that she doesn't know how to shoot a gun and has never shot, loaded, or carried bullets for a gun. No evidence was presented to controvert this assertion. The trio took another car on the drive this time. Defendant recalls it was a light brown Buick, with a black top, about a '73, four-door, that "was pretty beat up." Once again she was seated in the front seat between Croft and Back, with Croft driving. The men then switched places so that Croft could fire the weapon and Croft began shooting at street signs, houses, and cars.

In neither of her two statements did defendant assert that she tried to restrain this behavior in any way or that she was upset by it. At trial she stated that she "didn't say anything to him [Croft] because [she] didn't want to make him mad or get him upset." No other evidence was presented to show she was afraid of Croft, and at trial she said that he had never shown any violence before or given her any reason to fear him. She also testified that she did not try to stop Croft because "I was just there for the ride and I didn't want to get involved in what was going on and I couldn't stop Croft from doing anything like that anyways."

At one point, while driving in Brooklyn Center, Croft got angry at a driver who "passed him or something" and he sideswiped the other car. Defendant remembered in her second statement that it was a dark blue or black El Camino pickup, that the incident happened near the Super America store, and that Croft hit the other car once or twice. She recalled that "some of [the sideswiping] was on a highway and some of it was on a street" and further that "the car chased them for awhile and then we lost him."

Shortly before 1 a.m. on July 17, 1982, someone (defendant doesn't remember who) suggested shooting at the victim's son's home. She stated: "I don't think I said anything like that" but then she also said "[m]aybe I did say it, I don't remember." Croft asked defendant where the victim's son lived. At trial defendant professed to have blacked out at that point and to have no idea how Croft found the victim's home. In her second statement, however, defendant stated that "Jim said something about where does that * * * kid live and then I told him and we went there." At the omnibus hearing she also admitted that she told them how to get there. All the evidence presented at trial indicated, as the State argues, that neither Croft nor Back had ever been to the victim's son's house or knew where he lived, whereas defendant had been there on a number of occasions.

The three drove to the home and Croft began shooting. In her first statement, defendant recalled that the car was moving when some of the shots were fired and was parked in the middle of the road "in the opposite way of the Dupont bridge" when the rest of the shots ("about 5") were fired. But at trial she claimed that she blacked out and was awakened by the sound of the gunshots. At that point, Croft was shooting at the door of the house and someone told Croft to shoot at the windows instead. Defendant, in her second statement, said, "some ... I think it was me, said shoot through the windows or something, not through the door." ¹

One of the shots mortally wounded the victim, a 32-year-old woman who had turned on the porch lights and had laid down to sleep on the porch in the front of her house to escape the heat. Neighbors witnessed an older model Buick idling outside the home. Then, three or four loud noises and flashes of light were heard and seen coming from the Buick.

The victim's husband heard shots or firecrackers and then a choking, gurgling sound. He ran to the living room and found his wife standing in the doorway between the porch and the living room, bleeding heavily from a bullet wound that had entered her back and exited through her shoulder. Glass fragments were found embedded in her back. The victim...