State v. Griffin

846 N.W.2d 93, 2014 WL 1875506, 2014 Minn. App. LEXIS 47
CourtCourt of Appeals of Minnesota
DecidedMay 12, 2014
DocketNo. A13-0400
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 846 N.W.2d 93 (State v. Griffin) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Griffin, 846 N.W.2d 93, 2014 WL 1875506, 2014 Minn. App. LEXIS 47 (Mich. Ct. App. 2014).

Opinion

OPINION

RODENBERG, Judge.

Appellant Melvin Antwon Griffin appeals from his convictions of first- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct in violation of Minn.Stat. §§ 609.342, subd. l(e)(i), .344, subd. 1(c) (2010). He argues that (1) his jury was not drawn from a fair cross-section of the community as required by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution and article 1, section 6 of the Minnesota Constitution, (2) the district court abused its discretion by admitting evidence of his prior felony convictions for impeachment purposes, and (3) the district court erred by misreading part of the jury instructions on the charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct. We affirm.

FACTS

On December 9, 2011, appellant and S.L.B. were living at a sober house. According to S.L.B., appellant followed her upstairs and forcibly raped her. According to appellant, the two had consensual sex. He claimed that they had previously had consensual intercourse, which was cor[97]*97roborated by a witness to the encounter. S.L.B.’s injuries on December 9 were consistent with both S.L.B.’s report of rape and with appellant’s testimony that the two had engaged in rough (though consensual) sexual intercourse. When questioned by police after the incident, appellant denied ever having sex with S.L.B. Appellant was impeached at trial by evidence of both his prior inconsistent statements to police and his three prior felony convictions, admitted by the district court over objection. S.L.B.’s credibility was also attacked through testimony of other witnesses and through evidence of her prior convictions. A jury found appellant guilty of first- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct in violation of Minn.Stat. §§ 609.342, subd l(e)(i), .344, subd. 1(c).

The jury panel

Immediately before trial, the court administrator distributed a jury list with demographic information concerning the prospective jurors. Appellant, a black male, challenged the panel’s racial composition. He argued that the presence of only one black person in the 30-person jury pool was an underrepresentation of black persons as compared to the percentage of self-identified black persons in the population of Olmsted County. The prosecutor, acknowledging that appellant’s counsel had received the demographic information on the morning of trial, argued that a challenge to the racial composition of the panel must be made in writing. When the district court asked appellant’s counsel whether he had “any evidence or something to present to say that there [had] been a departure from law in the way that [the] jury ha[d] been ... assembled or summoned,” counsel responded, “I do not.” The district court denied the motion.

Appellant renewed his challenge to the jury panel’s racial composition in a post-verdict motion for a new trial, relying on demographic data from the 2010 United States census concerning Olmsted County and on demographic data regarding the composition of juries in Olmsted County from 2010 through the first half of 2012 obtained from the court administrator’s office. The 2010 census data reflect that 4.8% of the Olmsted County population self-identifles as black persons, while the jury demographic data show that the percentage of black persons on Olmsted County jury lists has averaged from 1.29% to 1.72% over a period of two and one-half years. Mathematically, appellant’s panel consisted of 3.33% black persons. Appellant argued that these statistical data were sufficient to demonstrate underrepresentation resulting from “systematic exclusion” of black persons from the selection process.

Although the district court found that the underrepresentation of black persons on Olmsted County juries is “chronic and unacceptable,” it denied the postverdict motion. It reasoned that, “[w]ithout showing that there is not an alternative reason for the underrepresentation, [appellant] has failed to make a prima facie showing of a violation of the fair-cross-section requirement [of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution].” The district court noted that the 2010 census data were not strong evidence of underrepresentation because they failed to account for legal eligibility restrictions on jury service.

Admissibility of prior felony convictions to impeach appellant

The district court addressed the admissibility of appellant’s three prior convictions before trial. The three convictions, from oldest to most recent, include: (1) a controlled-substance conviction (in Illinois) from 1998, (2) a third-degree-assault conviction from 2006, and (3) a fourth-degree-criminal-sexual-conduct conviction from 2007. Appellant argued that use of the [98]*98convictions for impeachment would be more prejudicial than probative. The district court analyzed the admissibility of the prior convictions under the five factors set forth in State v. Jones, 271 N.W.2d 534, 538 (Minn.1978), and ruled that all three convictions were admissible. But due to the similarity of the prior sexual-assault conviction to the charges in this case, the district court required that conviction to be referenced only as an unspecified felony as set forth in State v. Hill, 801 N.W.2d 646, 651 (Minn.2011).

At trial, the first inquiry about appellant’s prior convictions was by his attorney during direct examination:

Q: Now ... you’ve been convicted of a felony from back in December of 2007, is that correct?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: You were also convicted of a felony assault in the third degree back in March of 2006?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And you were also convicted of a felony controlled-substance crime in 1998 out of Illinois, is that correct?
A: Yes, sir.

And the state’s only reference to the prior convictions was during cross-examination of appellant and was even more fleeting:

Q: You’ve been in trouble with law enforcement before, is that right?
A: Yes, I have.
Q: In fact, you have three prior convictions?
A: Yes, I have.

Before summations, the district court instructed the jury that it “must not consider any previous conviction ... as evidence of guilt of the offense for which the defendant is on trial.” The state made no reference to the convictions in its summation.

Appellant renewed his challenge to the admissibility of the prior convictions in his postverdict motion for new trial, arguing additionally that the reference to the unnamed felony allowed the jury to “assume the worst” regarding the nature of that felony. The district court denied the motion, noting that the manner in which the evidence was introduced at trial “did not call attention to the fact that the [unspecified] offense was not named.”

The district court’s misreading of the jury instructions

Before closing arguments, the district court instructed the jury on both first-degree and third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
846 N.W.2d 93, 2014 WL 1875506, 2014 Minn. App. LEXIS 47, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-griffin-minnctapp-2014.