2006-M-16 Roger
Lindbo Schleicher, petitioner, Appellant, v. State
of Minnesota, Respondent.
SUMMARY: Justice Gildea joined the decision written by Chief Justice
Russell Anderson which upheld the conviction and life sentence of Schleicher
for the pre-meditated first-degree murder by ambush of his best friend Jack
Johansen.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CRIME: On December 29, 2000, Schleicher called the Steele County
Sheriff’s Office to report that his friend Jack Johannsen had been killed on
Schleicher’s elk farm near Owatonna.
Aware of Schleicher’s history of imbalance, law enforcement
officers approached his farm behind a road-grader. Schleicher had shot
Johansen five times in the torso, then re-loaded his gun and shot him a sixth
time “to put him out of his misery.” While being transported to jail,
Schleicher, referring to Johannsen, commented that, “I can’t believe a Vietnam
veteran fell for that trap.”
TRIAL: After extensive mental examinations, Schleicher went
to trial in 2002. Schleicher waived his right to a jury trial and had a
bifurcated judge trial with a “guilt phase” and a ”sanity” phase. In the first
phase, the judge found Schleicher guilty because of his confessions, all the
physical evidence, and Schleicher’s decision to provide no evidence or
testimony.
After the “sanity” phase, the trial court rejected Schleicher’s
defense and reaffirmed the guilty verdict. Schleicher was sentenced to
life in prison.
Both doctors also testified that Schleicher knew the nature of his
acts at the time of the shooting. The two doctors’ opinions diverged with
respect to whether Schleicher knew that the act of killing Johannsen was
wrong. When asked why, in her opinion, Schleicher murdered Johannsen, Dr.
Bruggemeyer referred to her report in which she wrote, “Jack Johannsen is dead
because he kicked a table and threatened to kick Roger Schleicher’s ass.”
Thus, it was Dr. Bruggemeyer’s opinion that Schleicher did not meet the
statutory test for legal insanity.
The trial court went on to find that Schleicher had not met his
burden of persuasion to “show that the mental illness caused him either to be unaware
of the nature of his act or to not know it was wrong.” As a result, the
court found that Schleicher was not excused from criminal liability under “the
legal insanity defense” rule and therefore was guilty of first-degree
murder.
In support of its finding that Schleicher knew his actions were
wrong, the trial court relied on background evidence indicating Schleicher’s
awareness of his legal obligations and his level of rationality, including
Schleicher’s decision to insure his son’s car on December 24 or 25 and a
conversation Schleicher had with the chief of police on the morning of the
murder regarding another matter.
The trial court also relied on what it considered “traditional”
reasons for murder offered by Schleicher in his interview with the BCA
agent. Among these reasons were Schleicher’s claims that: (1)
Johannsen was stealing from him; (2) Johannsen was a drug dealer;
(3) Johannsen had bugged his house; and (4) Johannsen may have been armed,
which suggests the killing may have been an act of self-defense.
According to the trial court, “the primary sense is that Defendant
was casting about for an excuse or an explanation that would tell both [the BCA
agent] and the Defendant himself why he had done the terrible deed of killing
his best friend.”
Finally, the trial court noted that Schleicher told Dr.
Bruggemeyer he was afraid of Johannsen because Johannsen threatened to
physically assault him and then informed Dr. McCafferty that this statement was
a lie he told her to make it appear as though the killing was an act of
self-defense. As the trial court stated, “Again, it appears that this
story is more consistent with an attempt by the Defendant to excuse or explain
acts that he knew were wrong rather than a reference to an act which he did not
understand was morally wrong.”
DIRECT APPEAL: In 2003, Justice Alan Page wrote an opinion for the
unanimous Supreme Court. Schleicher
The narrow basis of this opinion was that Schleicher failed to
claim at trial that Minnesota’s version of the “insanity defense” was
unconstitutionally vague. The law is called “the M’Nachten test” which
holds that a person cannot be held guilty of a crime if he “did not know at the
time of the murder that his actions were wrong.”
The Supreme Court held that the M’Nachten rule of “knowing the
difference between right and wrong” was not unconstitutionally vague.
THIS DECISION: In 2006, Justice Gildea joined a majority opinion by Chief
Justice Russell Anderson which upheld Schleicher’s conviction and sentence.
This was Schliecher’s appeal from the Court of Appeals’ denials of his first
and second post-conviction appeals.
First to seventh, the Supreme Court rejected over seven claims offered by
Schleicher in his briefs that he did not raise in his direct appeal or in his petitions
to file his first and or second post-conviction appeals. Such claims are
barred from Supreme Court review unless the Supreme Court finds that “justice
requires” such a review in the case at hand. Here, the Supreme Court found
that there was no such evidence.
The Supreme Court also found that Schleicher failed to respond to
the prosecutors’ argument that he had waived all of these claims at trial.
On the arguments, the Supreme Court rejected Schleicher’s claims
that: (1) he did not raise in his post-conviction petitions, including
sufficiency of the evidence; (2) double jeopardy; (3) admission of statements
obtained in violation of his Miranda rights; (4) denial of his right to
participate in his defense; (5) ineffective assistance of appellate counsel for
raising only a single issue on appeal; (6) several ineffective assistance of
trial counsel claims; and (7) the unconstitutionality of the mental illness
defense statute.
Eighth, the Supreme Court rejected Schleicher’s claim of “ineffective
assistance of post-conviction counsel. Although this claim was not raised
in his Direct Appeal or his first petition for post-conviction appeal, the
Supreme Court gave it closer scrutiny than the claims listed above because it
could not have been claimed in those prior proceedings.
The Supreme Court rejected this claim because defendants do not
have a right to court appointed counsel after the trial, conviction, and the
completion of the first round of appeals. Without that right to counsel
on his first and second post-conviction appeals after he had a lawyer on his
first appeal to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court found he could not claim
“ineffective assistance of counsel” during his third and fourth bites at the
apple as an excuse for his murder by ambush and execution of his best friend.
Ninth, the Supreme Court rejected Schleicher’s claim that
post-conviction counsel was ineffective for failing to pursue the ineffective
assistance of trial counsel claims at the evidentiary hearing, failing to
properly prepare for the hearing, and failing to adequately communicate with
Schleicher.
“The United States Supreme Court has held that a criminal
defendant has “no constitutional right to an attorney in state post-conviction
proceedings.” Because the constitutional right to counsel provides the
basis for the right to effective assistance of counsel, the Court has stated
that “a petitioner [in a state post-conviction proceeding] cannot claim
constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel in such
proceedings.” Consequently, Schleicher’s claims of ineffective assistance
of post-conviction counsel fail.”
Tenth, the Supreme Court rejected Schleicher’s claim that his
post-conviction counsel should have requested substitute counsel because she
was the same attorney who pursued Schleicher’s direct appeal, and raising a
claim of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel thus required her to argue
that her own performance on direct appeal was ineffective.”
The Supreme Court held that “Schleicher couched this claim in
terms of a due process violation. However, Schleicher cites no authority
for the proposition that an attorney’s representation of a defendant both on
direct appeal and in post-conviction proceedings violates the defendant’s due
process rights when the post-conviction petition claims ineffective assistance
of appellate counsel, nor have we found any such authority.”
“In addition, Schleicher has not demonstrated that he was denied a
fair post-conviction proceeding due to his counsel’s alleged conflict.
The alleged conflict does not appear to have affected post-conviction counsel’s
performance. Post-conviction counsel actively raised the ineffective
assistance of appellate counsel claim in Schleicher’s first petition, and,
while that claim was not specifically addressed at the evidentiary hearing,
post-conviction counsel vigorously explored the issues underlying that claim at
the hearing. Moreover, the petition focused primarily on the performance
of trial counsel, rather than on appellate counsel’s performance, minimizing
the risk of prejudice to Schleicher.
Eleventh to thirteenth, the Supreme Court rejected three claims made in Schleicher’s
first petition for post-conviction relief. These were claims that (1)
trial counsel was ineffective for failing to elicit testimony regarding
Schleicher’s ability to know that his actions at the time of the murder were wrong,
(2) for failing to challenge the constitutionality of the mental illness
defense statute; and (3) appellate counsel was ineffective for failing to move
to stay the direct appeal and seek post-conviction relief based on ineffective
assistance of trial counsel.
The Supreme Court held that these claims were barred because they
were not raised inSchleicher’s direct appeal when they should have been known
to Schleicher.
The Supreme Court also rejected these claims because Schleicher’s
“ineffective assistance of trial counsel” claims can be decided on the basis of
the trial record without additional fact finding and thus should have been
brought on direct appeal. It is evident from the trial record that these
claims fail because they focus on matters of trial strategy—what testimony to
elicit from witnesses and what defenses to present—which we generally do not review
for competence. Even if these claims were not Knaffla-barred, they
would fail on the merits.
Fourteenth to twenty-first, the Supreme Court rejected eight claims made in Schleicher’s
second petition for post-conviction relief.
These were claims that (1) he was denied his right to testify; (2)
he was denied a mental illness evaluation by Dr. Carl Malmquist; (3) he
was denied the right to self-representation; (4) he was denied substitute
private counsel; (5) he was denied the right to a jury trial; (6) he was not
competent to proceed with trial; (7) trial counsel was ineffective for
inadequately examining the expert witnesses, failing “to inform himself as to
the contents of the psychiatric manual DSM-IV,” failing to challenge the
constitutionality of the mental illness defense statute, and performing an
inadequate pretrial investigation; and (8) appellate counsel was ineffective
for failing to seek a stay of the direct appeal to pursue post-conviction
relief. The post-conviction court denied the petition without a
hearing.
The Supreme Court held that: “All of the claims raised in
Schleicher’s second petition are procedurally barred by the Knaffla
rule. We have said that claims asserted in a second or subsequent
post-conviction petition are procedurally barred if they could have been raised
on direct appeal or in the first post-conviction petition. Each of
Schleicher’s claims, except his claim of ineffective assistance of appellate
counsel, could have been raised on direct appeal. The factual basis for
each of these claims is readily apparent from the district court record, and
Schleicher thus knew or should have known of these claims at the time of his
direct appeal and when he filed his first post-conviction petition.
Schleicher’s claim of ineffective assistance of appellate counsel
is also procedurally barred because he could have raised it in his first
post-conviction petition. Moreover, this claim was properly denied
because it was previously raised in Schleicher’s first petition. A post-conviction
court “may summarily deny a second or successive petition for similar relief on
behalf of the same petitioner.” This summary denial provision also
applies to the claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel raised in Schleicher’s
second petition that were previously raised in his first petition.
DATE OF DECISION: July 27, 2006
RECORD NUMBER: 2006-128
DESCRIPTION: [MURDER] [INSANIY DEFENSE]
No comments:
Post a Comment