State v. Woodard

942 N.W.2d 137

STATE of Minnesota, Respondent,

v. James Andre WOODARD , Appellant.

A18-1886

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Filed: April 22, 2020

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Jonathan P. Schmidt, Assistant County Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for respondent.

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Julie Loftus Nelson, Assistant Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for appellant.

OPINION

HUDSON, Justice.

A Hennepin County jury found appellant James Andre Woodard guilty of first-degree murder and the district court sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of release. Woodard appeals from the judgment of conviction and requests a new trial on two grounds. First, Woodard contends that the district court erred in denying his motion to present an alternative-perpetrator defense. Second, Woodard argues that the district court plainly erred in instructing the jury on the order in which to consider the charges against him. For the reasons addressed below, we affirm the district court.

FACTS

Thirty-two year old Divittin Hoskins was shot to death on July 28, 2017, while socializing with friends and family in the parking lot by his sister’s townhome in North Minneapolis. Police officers responded to the scene of the shooting, set up a perimeter around the parking lot, and began to identify potential witnesses. Police learned that Hoskins’s children and his niece witnessed the shooting. Officers went to the townhome of L.H., Hoskins’s sister, to interview the children. Inside the townhome, police spoke with K.H. and D.H., two of Hoskins’s children, as well as his niece. K.H. described the shooter as a fat black man with braided hair, wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, a white t-shirt, and jeans. D.H. told the officers that the shooter was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt with black pants and a black hat. Hoskins’s niece said the shooter was a light-skinned black man wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and black pants.

The day after the shooting, on July 29, 2017, L.H. began asking questions in the community about the murder and heard that Woodard may have been involved. She went online to look at Woodard’s Facebook profile, and found a picture of Woodard as well as a video of him. L.H. allowed the child witnesses to view the photo and the video of Woodard, and two of them identified Woodard as the man who shot and killed Divittin Hoskins. L.H. contacted one of the investigators, Sergeant Klund, to inform her of the children’s statements. Sergeant Klund asked L.H. to bring the children to CornerHouse for forensic interviews, to occur on August 2, 2017.

In addition to the eyewitnesses, the investigation into the shooting led officers to a surveillance video of the parking lot where the murder occurred. The video shows the shooter hiding along the side of a detached garage next to the parking lot. As the shooter stands by the side of the garage, a man later identified as E.R. is seen socializing in the parking lot and then walking over to talk to the shooter. After speaking with the shooter for a moment, E.R. walks around from the side of the garage and through the parking lot, stopping at the far end of the lot to look around. He then turns and walks back to the side of the garage. At the same time, the shooter walks behind the garage out of view of the camera. Both men disappear from view behind the garage for a moment, before E.R. returns to the party. A few minutes after E.R. returns to the parking lot, the shooter reappears from the back of the garage. He pulls out a gun, runs up to where Hoskins stands next to four children, and fires one shot into the back of Hoskins’s head at close range. The shooter then turns around and flees.

Sergeant Klund interviewed E.R. for the first time on July 30, 2017, two days after the murder. E.R. acknowledged that he was in the parking lot at the time of the murder, but claimed that his back was turned to Hoskins and he did not see the murder and had no knowledge of the shooter’s identity. Even after Sergeant Klund showed E.R. stills from the surveillance video that contradicted his story, E.R. refused to reveal the identity of the shooter. Sergeant Klund read E.R. his Miranda rights and continued the interview. E.R. then identified Woodard as the shooter after the police showed him a series of photographs of people who police believed were at the scene.

Based on the eyewitness identifications made by E.R. and the children, police took Woodard into custody on August 1, 2017. On August 3, 2017, E.R. was charged with the offense of first-degree murder under an aiding and abetting theory of liability and the offense of aiding an offender after the fact. E.R. later entered into a plea agreement¹ that dismissed the second-degree murder charge in exchange for his testimony against Woodard.

Police continued to investigate the Hoskins murder into September 2017. Sergeant Klund spoke with G.P., an acquaintance of Woodard and a friend of the Hoskins family, on September 20, 2017. G.P. told Sergeant Klund that he was at the home of a man named T.R. two days before the murder, where he witnessed T.R. give Woodard a handgun.

Pre-trial motions and preparation continued through the end of 2017 and the spring of 2018. Woodard filed a motion to introduce alternative-perpetrator evidence on July 5, 2018. The accompanying memorandum identified T.R. as the alleged alternative perpetrator. Woodard’s proffer identified several potential pieces of evidence as foundation for the motion, including: (1) a photo of T.R. that showed that he is a light-skinned black man of similar build to the shooter; (2) at the time of the Hoskins murder, T.R. lived two-and-a-half blocks from the location of the shooting; (3) T.R. might have had a motive to kill Hoskins based on T.R.’s friendship with a man referred to as Fernando because it was rumored that Hoskins’s brother was involved in a shooting of Fernando; (4) a witness saw T.R. give Woodard a gun two days before the murder; and (5) T.R. was suddenly absent from Minneapolis after the Hoskins murder. The district court denied Woodard’s motion to present an alternative-perpetrator defense on the grounds that Woodard had not presented evidence that inherently connected T.R. to the murder of Hoskins.

After the State and Woodard presented their cases to the jury, the court instructed it on the elements of first-degree murder and the lesser-included offense of second-degree murder. The court also instructed the jury that it should "only consider murder in the second degree if there’s a not guilty finding on murder in the first degree." The jury returned a verdict of guilty on the first-degree murder charge. The district court sentenced Woodard to life in prison without the possibility of release.

ANALYSIS

I.

We first address the district court’s ruling on Woodard’s motion to present alternative-perpetrator evidence. We review a district court’s denial of a motion to present alternative-perpetrator evidence for an abuse of discretion. Huff v. State , 698 N.W.2d 430, 435 (Minn. 2005).

A defendant’s constitutional right to a fair opportunity to defend against criminal charges "includes the right to present evidence that a third party (an ‘alternative perpetrator’) committed the crime for which the defendant was charged." Troxel v. State , 875 N.W.2d 302, 307 (Minn. 2016). This right, however, "is not absolute." State v. Jenkins , 782 N.W.2d 211, 224 (Minn. 2010). A defendant’s motion to present alternative-perpetrator evidence is still subject to the foundation and admissibility requirements outlined in State v. Hawkins , 260 N.W.2d 150, 159 (Minn. 1977).

We said in Hawkins that district courts should follow a two-step process to determine whether to admit alternative-perpetrator evidence upon a defendant’s motion. 260 N.W.2d at 159. First, the district court considers whether the defendant laid the proper foundation to admit alternative-perpetrator evidence by analyzing whether the proffered evidence has "an inherent tendency" to connect the alleged alternative perpetrator with the "actual commission of the crime." Id. (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). "This requirement avoids the use of bare suspicion and safeguards the third person from indiscriminate use of past differences with the deceased." Id. In considering whether the defendant has established the required foundation, a court must focus on "the evidence, not the assertions, contained in the proffer." State v. Nissalke , 801 N.W.2d 82, 102 (Minn. 2011) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).

We have previously held that "[e]vidence of motive alone does not have the inherent tendency to connect a third party to the commission of the crime." Troxel , 875 N.W.2d at 309 (quoting State v. Larson , 787 N.W.2d 592, 598 (Minn. 2010) ). Similarly, "[m]ere presence at the scene of the crime does not, by itself, create an inherent tendency to connect a person alleged to be the alternative perpetrator to the commission of the charged crime." State v. Atkinson , 774 N.W.2d 584, 590 (Minn. 2009). On the other hand, we have held that the foundational requirement was satisfied when the alternative perpetrator made a statement that "was, in essence, an admission ... that he was involved in [the victim’s] murder." State v. Vance , 714 N.W.2d 428, 439 (Minn. 2006).

If the defense does not lay the proper Hawkins foundation, the court need not move to the second step of the process outlined in Hawkins . See State v. Palubicki , 700 N.W.2d 476, 485 (Minn. 2005) ("If the defendant fails to lay a proper foundation, the alternative-perpetrator evidence is not admissible and the trial court need not consider any of the alternative perpetrator evidence further."). But if the defense does lay sufficient foundation, the court must move to the second step and consider the admissibility of the...