Martin v. State

865 N.W.2d 282

LaMonte Rydell MARTIN, Appellant

v.STATE of Minnesota, Respondent.

No. A14–0084.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

June 17, 2015.

Michael McGlennen, Minneapolis, MN, for appellant.

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, Saint Paul, MN; and Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Lee W. Barry, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney, Minneapolis, MN, for respondent.

Considered and decided by the court without oral argument.

OPINION

DIETZEN, Justice.

Appellant LaMonte Rydell Martin was found guilty of first-degree murder committed for the benefit of a gang and first-degree premeditated murder. The district court entered judgment of conviction for first-degree premeditated murder, and imposed a sentence of life without the possibility of release (LWOR). The conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal. State v. Martin (Martin I), 773 N.W.2d 89 (Minn.2009).

In August 2011, Martin filed a petition for postconviction relief alleging, among other things, recantations by two witnesses. On appeal, we reversed in part, concluding that Martin was entitled to an evidentiary hearing on his witness recantation claim, but affirmed the denial of his other claims. Martin v. State (Martin II), 825 N.W.2d 734 (Minn.2013). We remanded the case to the postconviction court for an evidentiary hearing on the witness recantation claim. Id. at 743. Subsequently, Martin filed a second petition for postconviction relief, alleging that his life sentence is unconstitutional under the Federal and State Constitutions, and claiming he is entitled to the retroactive application of Miller v. Alabama, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012). On remand, the postconviction court consolidated both matters, conducted an evidentiary hearing, and then denied Martin's witness recantation claim from his first postconviction petition, and denied his second postconviction petition. We affirm.

Martin was charged by criminal complaint with aiding and abetting first-degree premeditated murder, Minn.Stat. § 609.185(a)(1) (2014), and committing a crime for the benefit of a gang, Minn.Stat. § 609.229, subd. 2 (2014), arising out of the execution-style homicide of Christopher Lynch on May 3, 2006. The murder occurred six weeks before Martin's eighteenth birthday. Pursuant to Minn.Stat. §§ 260B.007, subd. 6(b); 260B.101, subd. 2 (2014), Martin was automatically certified as an adult and indicted by a grand jury on both charges. The grand jury also indicted Cornelius Jackson and Jonard McDaniel for murder for their role in aiding Martin and for committing a crime for the benefit of a gang.

At trial the State presented evidence that Christopher Lynch was an innocent victim and that his murder was “collateral damage” in an on-going dispute between Martin's gang, the One–Nines, and a rival gang. The identity of the shooters was a highly contested issue at trial. Only two of the State's eyewitnesses, Jermaine Mack–Lynch and his older brother Charles Pettis, were able to provide direct evidence that Martin and Jackson shot Lynch. Ten-year-old S.H. witnessed the shooting from his back porch. He could not see the two shooters' faces, but he did observe that the shooters were black men wearing hats.¹

Following trial, the jury found Martin guilty of both offenses. At the sentencing hearing, Martin presented evidence in support of his argument that, due to his age and mental capacity, the imposition of a LWOR sentence constituted cruel and/or unusual punishment under both the Federal and State Constitutions. The district court disagreed, explaining that Martin was less than two months away from his eighteenth birthday when he committed the offense, and therefore his “age of 17 is not a factor that renders the punishment of life in prison without parole unconstitutional.” Martin was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder and the district court imposed a LWOR sentence.

On direct appeal, Martin asserted nine claims, including a claim that his LWOR sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment because he was a juvenile at the time of the crime. Martin I, 773 N.W.2d at 97.² We affirmed Martin's conviction and sentence, concluding, among other things, that the punishment of LWOR was not unconstitutional as applied to Martin. Id. at 99.

In August 2011, Martin filed a petition for postconviction relief pursuant to Minn.Stat. § 590.01, subd. 1 (2014). The petition alleged seven claims, including a claim that Martin was entitled to an evidentiary hearing and a new trial based on the recantations of Mack–Lynch and Pettis. The postconviction court concluded that Martin failed to satisfy the three-part test articulated in Larrison v. United States, 24 F.2d 82, 87–88 (7th Cir.1928), to establish his witness recantation claim, and therefore he was not entitled to an evidentiary hearing under Minn.Stat. § 590.04, subd. 1 (2014). The court denied Martin's other claims. On appeal, we reversed the summary denial of Martin's witness recantation claim, but affirmed the denial of Martin's other claims. Martin II, 825 N.W.2d at 746. We concluded that Martin presented competent material evidence that, if found to be true, could satisfy the Larrison test and warrant a new trial. Id. at 743. Therefore, we remanded for an evidentiary hearing “to assess the credibility of the recanting witnesses, and to determine whether Martin satisfies the Larrison factors, and therefore is entitled to a new trial.” Id. at 744.³

Subsequently, Martin filed a second petition for postconviction relief arguing that his LWOR sentence: (1) violates his substantive constitutional rights under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and Article I, Section 5 of the Minnesota Constitution, which prohibits cruel or unusual punishment, in light the United States Supreme Court's holding in Miller v. Alabama, ––– U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012) ; (2) violates his Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial; (3) violates his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection of the laws; and (4) should be modified in the interests of justice. The State opposed Martin's second petition, arguing that Martin's claims were procedurally barred, time-barred, and moot.

The postconviction court conducted an evidentiary hearing in September 2013. The court received into evidence the affidavits of Mack–Lynch and Pettis recanting their trial testimony. Martin subpoenaed Pettis to testify, but Pettis did not appear at the hearing. Instead, Pettis's attorney appeared and stated Pettis would invoke the protections of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article I, Section 7 of the Minnesota Constitution, and moved to quash the subpoena. The court granted the motion to quash the subpoena. Martin did not subpoena Mack–Lynch, did not call him as a witness, and rested without calling any further witnesses.

The State presented evidence that Mack–Lynch's and Pettis's recantations in their affidavits were false and were the product of Martin's concerted criminal activity with others to bribe, threaten, and coerce Mack–Lynch and Pettis to recant. Specifically, the State introduced the charging documents, guilty plea, and sentencing orders in a related witness tampering case, in which Martin pleaded guilty and was convicted of two counts of bribery for his conduct regarding witnesses Mack–Lynch and Pettis. At the plea hearing in the witness tampering case, Martin admitted that he, with the assistance of others, provided monetary payoffs to Mack–Lynch and Pettis to obtain their recanting affidavits. ⁴

Moreover, the state introduced into evidence Mack–Lynch's testimony given in the case of State v. Bobo . In that testimony, Mack–Lynch admitted that his affidavit for Martin in this case was completely false. Mack–Lynch explained that Martin and his “gang friends” threatened Mack–Lynch's family in order to coerce Mack–Lynch into signing the affidavit. Additionally, they later offered Mack–Lynch money to not talk to an investigator. The State also presented the testimony of other witnesses, including an investigator with the Department of Corrections who testified that she had investigated potential witness tampering involving members of the One–Nines gang, and had learned that Mack–Lynch and Pettis were being pressured to recant their testimony in Martin's trial. As part of the investigation, she recovered letters from Martin showing that he was implementing a plan to bribe, threaten, and coerce Mack–Lynch and Pettis to recant their trial testimony.

The postconviction court denied Martin's first petition, concluding that Martin had failed to establish the three prongs of the Larrison test for witness recantation claims. Specifically, the court found that the Mack–Lynch and Pettis affidavits were the product of threats, coercion, and bribes, and that Martin purposely and knowingly filed false documents and perverted the legitimate use of legal process in his fraudulent attempt to obtain a new trial. The court denied Martin's second petition, concluding that Martin was not entitled to the retroactive benefit of Miller, and therefore the petition was: (1) procedurally barred under State v. Knaffla, 309 Minn. 246, 243 N.W.2d 737 (1976) ; and (2) time-barred under Minn.Stat. § 590.01, subd. 4(a). The court also rejected Martin's Equal Protection and Sixth Amendment jury trial claims.

Martin argues in this appeal that the postconviction court erred by: (1) allowing Pettis to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination without requiring Pettis to testify at the evidentiary hearing; (2) concluding that the evidence was not sufficient to support Martin's first petition for postconviction relief; and (3) concluding Martin's sentence is constitutional and that he is not entitled to the retroactive benefit of Miller.

I.

We review a postconviction court's legal determinations de novo, and its factual findings for clear error. Riley v. State, 819...