If three is a crowd, what is four?

2016-M-306         Keith Richard Rossberg, Appellant, vs. State of Minnesota, Respondent.

From 2006 to 2011, Rossberg was in a “love quadrangle” with D.T., victim Devan Hawkinson, and D.T.’s ex-husband.  The affair centered around Hawkinson’s trailer in Annandale.  Rossberg had beaten Hawkinson several times, and had sought a machete from a friend to settle the matter.  On March 25, 2011, Hawkinson was found in his trailer with six bullet wounds in his head, and with his body partially burned in a stack of newspaper ashes.  A candle had been left with the gas burners open, but the candle had blown out before enough gases had accumulated.  Earlier that evening, police had performed a welfare check on Rossberg after a gunshot was heard, and found him angry and in possession of a .22 pistol.

Rossberg was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.  On his direct appeal of this conviction in 2014, the Supreme Court held that the trial court had not erred in admitting Spriegl evidence of many of Rossberg’s prior bad acts against Hawkinson, or in one case, the admission of such evidence was harmless to the fairness of his trial.

Here, the Supreme Court rejected Rossberg’s first post-conviction appeal on three grounds.  First, because it is undisputed that appellant's post-conviction petition was submitted to the court without factual support, the post-conviction court did not abuse its discretion by denying both appellant's request for additional time to file an addendum to the petition and appellant's petition.   Second, the failure to refer appellant's disqualification motion to the chief judge was harmless in this case because the motion lacked merit.  Third, although the post-conviction judge erred by ruling on appellant's motion to disqualify the post-conviction judge for cause rather than referring the motion to the chief judge of the judicial district.

               Wright (Gildea, Anderson, Dietzen, Stras, Lillehaug, and Hudson)

               [CRIME] [MURDER] [FIRST-DEGREE]

Date: February 10, 2016