2013-M-235            State of Minnesota, Respondent, vs. Nidjia Dean Nicks, Appellant.

MAJORITY:  Following trial, Nicks filed a direct appeal with our court.  While the direct appeal was pending, Nicks’s appellate counsel retained a forensic expert to conduct an examination of Hollis’s cellphone.  Nicks alleges that this forensic examination revealed that Hollis could not have received the alleged threatening phone calls from his cellphone.  After obtaining this information, Nicks’s appellate counsel sought a stay of the direct appeal and petitioned for post-conviction relief.  The post-conviction court denied Nicks’s petition without an evidentiary hearing, and Nicks now brings both the direct appeal and the post-conviction appeal to our court. 

On appeal, Nicks primarily alleges is that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance because counsel failed to obtain Hollis’s cellphone records and failed to conduct a forensic examination of Hollis’s cellphone.  Because we conclude that Nicks has met the threshold showing required to receive an evidentiary hearing on his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, we reverse the post-conviction court and remand for an evidentiary hearing.

HELD:  First, a defendant seeking an evidentiary hearing on a petition for post-conviction relief based on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel must allege facts that, if proven by a fair preponderance of the evidence, would satisfy the two-prong test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).

Second, the Minnesota Legislature has established the threshold a defendant must meet for a post-conviction court to grant an evidentiary hearing.  See Minn. Stat § 590.04 (2012).

Third, under Minn. Stat. § 590.04, a post-conviction court must grant an evidentiary hearing unless, after the facts are considered in the light most favorable to a defendant, the court concludes that the defendant is conclusively entitled to no relief.

Fourth, a post-conviction court’s denial of a petition for relief is reviewed for an abuse of discretion; and a post-conviction court abuses its discretion when its decision is based on an erroneous view of the law or is against logic and the facts in the record.

Fifth, claims of ineffective assistance of counsel in a petition for post-conviction relief present mixed questions of law and fact and the court’s decision whether to grant relief is reviewed de novo.  Therefore, the court’s denial of relief on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel is reviewed to determine whether the court’s factual findings are clearly erroneous and we then conduct a de novo review of the ineffective-assistance claim.

Sixth, the post-conviction court abused its discretion when it denied defendant’s petition without a hearing because the defendant alleged sufficient facts to warrant an evidentiary hearing.

DISSENT:  Justices Gildea and Dietzen opined: “I respectfully dissent.  The majority remands this case to the post-conviction court for an evidentiary hearing on Appellant Nidjia Nicks’s ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim.  In doing so, the majority fails to apply well-established law regarding post-conviction evidentiary hearings and claims of ineffective assistance of trial counsel. 

Applying our well-established law to the facts of this case, I conclude that (1) there is no need to grant a post-conviction evidentiary hearing because Nicks’s claim is based entirely on the trial record, and (2) when the post-conviction court’s factual findings are afforded the required deference, the matters about which Nicks complains plainly involve trial strategy that is beyond the scope of our review. 

Based on these conclusions, I would affirm the post-conviction court’s summary denial of Nicks’s ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim.

Paul Anderson (Page, Barry Anderson, Stras, and Wright)

Dissent:  Gildea and Dietzen

[MURDER]

A09-1641, A12-348,