2006-M-01 Tyrone
James White, petitioner, Appellant, vs. State
of Minnesota, Respondent.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CRIME: White of Minneapolis had reportedly been defrauded by drug
pusher Milton Williams. White planned to rob Williams at the Duluth
apartment of Tami Carlson.
White and conspirators Whitson, King, and Jackson drove to Duluth
in 2001. In Carlson’s apartment, White started an argument with Williams,
and Whitson and King distracted Williams. Whitson shot Williams
repeatedly, killing him. Whitson then shot Carlson in the face, breaking
her jaw and neck and severing arteries. White robbed Williams’ corpse of
about $3,000 and 48 grams of crack cocaine.
In 2003, the district court imposed on White a sentence of life
imprisonment for the murder and a consecutive sentence of 180 months of
confinement for the attempted murder.
PRIOR APPEAL: On White’s direct appeal in 2004, the Supreme Court denied
his three claims on the basis that: 1) there was enough evidence to
support the verdict, 2) the jury instructions did not confuse the jury,
and 3) White did not prove that the prosecutor had a racial motivation when he
dismissed a potential juror.
THIS APPEAL: On his second appeal in 2006, White argued that: 1) his
trial lawyer provided ineffective assistance of counsel; 2) his appellate
lawyer provided ineffective assistance of counsel; 3) the district
court erred in admitting uncorroborated accomplice testimony; 4) the
court erred when it failed to excuse a juror who was unable to be impartial; 5)
the court erred when it engaged in improper ex parte communication with a
juror; and 6) racial discrimination in the Saint Louis County grand jury
selection process violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment.
THIS DECISION : Justice Gildea voted to support Justice Paul Anderson’s
majority opinion on all six claims.
First, Justice Gildea voted to uphold and renew the “only one bite
at the apple” rule from a prior case called Knaffla.
The Knaffla rule says that if an issue was raised or could
have been raised in an earlier appeal to the Supreme Court, it cannot be raised
in the latest appeal. There are two exceptions to the Knaffla
rule: (1) if a new legal issue is presented, or (2) if the interests of
justice require review.
Here, the Supreme Court rejected White’s restatement of his
earlier claim that the trial court had improperly admitted testimony of his
accomplice and that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the murder
conviction.
Here, the Supreme Court also held that because White had
failed to raise three claims in his first appeal, they would not be considered
in his second appeal because they did not raise new legal issues or present any
new evidence. These rejected claims involved challenges to
the grand jury process, communications between the judge and a juror, and
failure to dismiss a juror. They should have been raised on the first,
direct appeal.
Here, the Supreme Court also barred five claims that White’s
lawyer had been ineffective because White failed to raise these claims on his
first appeal. These included claims that his lawyer failed to (1) object
to or move for a mistrial based on the district court’s
communication with juror number four, (2) move for a mistrial based on a
witness’s admission at trial that the witness was not fully truthful when
he testified before the grand jury, (3) object to uncorroborated accomplice
testimony, (4) object to the jury instruction on accomplice liability, and (5)
that trial counsel admitted [White’s] guilt during closing argument
without [White’s] permission.
Furthermore, the Supreme Court rejected those five claims on the
separate ground that they lacked merit because they reflected tactical or
strategic trial decisions by the lawyer that fell within a standard of
reasonableness.
The Supreme Court also rejected White’s claim that his lawyer
admitted in his closing argument that White was “a robber and a drug dealer”
because the trial record showed that his lawyer did not say that.
The Supreme Court then reviewed the process for selecting a grand
jury on St. Louis County by selection of potential jurors from a list of all
persons in the county’s three districts who are registered to vote, licensed to
drive, and/or who hold a Minnesota state identification card. It repeated
holdings from similar past cases that this system is constitutional.
The Supreme Court then reviewed 55pages of transcripts from the
trial court’s interview of potential jurors and ruled that there was no
evidence that the jury foreman because the same prosecutor in this case had tried
someone for the murder of the foreperson’s brother and because the foreperson
denied knowing a roommate of victim Tami Carlson. No evidence was found
in the investigative or trial record that the roommate in fact had worked with
the jury foreman.
In summary, the Supreme Court upheld White’s convictions and
sentences.
DATE OF DECISION: March 23, 2006
RECORD NUMBER: 2006-051
DESCRIPTION: [MURDER] [DRUGS] [CRIME]
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