Home Invasion of Drug Dealers' Apartment in St. Paul

2006-M-15          State of Minnesota, Respondent, vs. Daniel James Valtierra, Appellant.

DESCRIPTION OF THE CRIME: Ron Glasgow and Andria Crosby were drug dealers in St. Paul. On January 22, 2004, their friend Wayne Costilla was asked to sell meth to Valtierra, Michael Medal-Mendoza, and James Green.  Glasgow and Crosby agreed to sell the meth to Costilla for $1,600.  Costilla sold the meth to Valtierra’s group for $1,800.

Shortly thereafter, Valtierra’s group returned to Costilla’s apartment to rob the drug dealers.  Medal-Mendoza started the shooting, and Crosby testified that the other two drug buyers may have been both armed and involved in the shooting.  Glasgow and Costilla were shot to death and Crosby was shot in her chest and left leg.

PRIOR PROCEEDINGS:    Following a jury trial in January 2005, appellant Daniel James Valtierra was convicted of two counts of first-degree felony murder and one count of attempted first-degree felony murder for the shooting deaths of Ron Glasgow and Wayne Costilla, and for the shooting of Andria Crosby.  The trial judge convicted and sentenced him on two counts of first-degree felony murder and one count of attempted first-degree felony murder, leading to this appeal. 

THIS PROCEEDING:  On this direct appeal, Valtierra makes five claims.  First and second, he argues that the district court’s jury instructions were improper both because the jury was instructed that guilt could be inferred from the fact that Valtierra fled the state and because the jury instruction on accomplice liability described an improper objective standard.  Valtierra contends that these improper instructions deprived him of his right to a fair trial. 

Third and fourth,  Valtierra also argues that the district court made evidentiary errors by allowing the state to introduce expert police testimony regarding “triangulation,” and by allowing the state to inquire into the underlying facts regarding Valtierra’s prior conviction. 

Fifth, Valtierra argues that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the shootings of Glasgow, Costilla, and Crosby were reasonably foreseeable as a probable consequence of committing aggravated robbery. 

“While we agree that the district court committed certain errors, we conclude that these errors did not deprive Valtierra of a fair trial, and that there was sufficient evidence to support Valtierra’s conviction.  We therefore affirm his convictions and sentences.”

THIS DECISION:  Justice Gildea joined the unanimous decision of Justice Helen Meyer to affirm Valtierra’s conviction and life sentence.  However, Justice Gildea offered an additional affirming decision which is discussed below.

First, the Majority rejected Valtierra’s claim that the district court erred by instructing the jury that evidence showing that Valtierra fled after the shooting could be used to infer that Valtierra possessed a guilty mind.  The Majority found that evidence of Valtierra’s sense of guilt of a potential for murder arising from a drug robbery also included Crosby’s testimony about Valtierra carrying a handgun into the robbery, and Crosby’s statement to the same effect to a police witness just after the shootings.   Finally, we note that the flight instruction in this case neither misstated substantive law nor improperly suggested that the jury was compelled to make the inference in question; instead, the fault of this instruction was merely to place undue emphasis on one among several permissible inferences.  Such undue emphasis may require reversal in some cases, but here Valtierra’s guilt was independently supported by strong evidence and the evidence of flight was partly supportive of Valtierra’s defense.  We conclude that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the jury instruction on flight did not have a significant impact on the verdict.   

Second, the Majority rejected Valtierra’s claim that the district court erred by giving the standard jury instruction on accomplice liability, which states that the underlying crime must have been “reasonably foreseeable,” not “reasonably foreseeable by the person,” which is the language of the accomplice liability statute.   The Majority held that is “reasonably foreseeable” that a murder may occur if a defendant and an accomplice engage in armed robbery.

Third, the Majority rejected Valtierra’s claim that the district court erred by allowing, over defense counsel’s objections, Sergeant Dunnom to testify that Valtierra, Green, and Medal-Mendoza used “triangulation.”  Dunnom, who testified primarily about her conversations with Crosby after the shooting, also gave some expert testimony regarding the generally dangerous nature of drug dealing and in particular about triangulation. 

Dunnom explained:  When taking narcotics class to prepare to be an undercover agent, you are taught that the most dangerous time of a drug deal is when the money and the drugs come together.  If you are buying or selling, it doesn’t matter; but as an undercover police officer, the term triangulation referred to multiple sellers or buyers that—and the triangulation just simply means shape of a triangle.  That means they split so that your attention can’t be on just one person, that they split and they are out of your line of sight.

Dunnom said that when there is triangulation, “at best, [the triangulators] are there to rob you,” and “[a]t worst, they are there to kill you and take the drugs and money.”  Dunnom then testified that in her opinion triangulation was a part of Valtierra’s case.  Valtierra argues that Dunnom’s testimony amounted to impermissible expert testimony on the ultimate issue of guilt since Dunnom testified (1) that triangulation occurred, and (2) that triangulation means that the triangulators are either going to rob or kill someone.

Though the expert testimony on triangulation was erroneous and unnecessary, it appears that the jury was well-positioned to judge it for its minimal worth.  The jury heard that the officer’s experience with the case was based on her conversations with Crosby, and heard that the basis of the officer’s experience was her police training.  Therefore, unlike in many expert witness situations, the reasoning behind Dunnom’s expert testimony was not mysterious to the jury.  Further, as noted above, because this case hinged on Crosby’s testimony that Valtierra had wielded a gun at Costilla’s apartment, the triangulation testimony was unlikely to substantially influence the jury’s decision.  We conclude that Dunnom’s erroneously admitted testimony about triangulation was harmless error.

Fourth, the Majority rejected Valtierra’s claim that the district court erred by allowing the state to ask him on cross-examination about the specific facts underlying his prior conviction for aggravated robbery.  At trial, evidence of Valtierra’s prior conviction was introduced, without objection, as impeachment evidence.  Valtierra then objected to inquiry into the underlying facts of this prior crime, but the district court ruled that Valtierra’s own testimony had essentially “opened the door” to underlying-facts evidence. 

Here, all the errors are harmless in the aggregate for the same reasons they are harmless individually.  Principally, this is because the errors did not significantly impact the jury’s evaluation of Crosby’s critical testimony that Valtierra wielded a gun along with Medal-Mendoza and Green when the shootings occurred.

Fifth, the Majority rejected Valtierra’s claim that even if evidence established that he was armed with a gun and intended to commit robbery, there was not sufficient evidence to show that it was “reasonably foreseeable” to him that murder would be a “probable consequence” of that robbery, as required by the accomplice liability statute. 

This court has held that “[w]hether the defendant could reasonably foresee that the victim would be murdered is a question of fact for the jury.”  “Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury’s verdict, the jury had more than sufficient evidence to conclude that [the victim’s] murder was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of aggravated robbery.”).  Therefore, we hold that the evidence that Valtierra intended to commit an aggravated drug robbery was sufficient to permit a jury to find that it was reasonably foreseeable to Valtierra that murder would be a probable consequence of that robbery.

JUSTICE GILDEA’S AFFIRMING OPINION:  I write separately to express my view on two issues. 

The first issue relates to the flight instruction.  I agree that the district court erred in giving the flight instruction as worded in this case.  But in my view our opinion should not be read as prohibiting a properly worded flight instruction in every case.   When the proof is sufficient the trial court may instruct the jury that inference of guilt from the evidence of flight, in connection with other proof, may form the basis from which guilt may be inferred, but this should be qualified by a general statement of the countervailing conditions incidental to a comprehensive view of the question.

The second issue relates to the majority’s conclusion that the district court erred in allowing the state to inquire on cross-examination about circumstances of Valtierra’s conviction in 2000 for aggravated robbery.  I disagree with the conclusion that the district court erred.  In my view, the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that Valtierra “opened the door” to the state’s cross-examination as quoted in the majority opinion.

DATE OF DECISION:  July 27, 2006

RECORD NUMBER:  2006-125

FULL OPINION:  A05-919

DESCRIPTION:  [MURDER]  [DRUGS] [ROBBERY]  [GILDEA] [AFFIRM]