Don't give the murder weapon, your bloody clothes, and all the other needed evidence to your "friends" and expect good results to last!

2016-M-316         Jason Lee Bolstad, Appellant, vs. State of Minnesota, Respondent. 

THE FACTS:  On April 2, 1996, Gary Bolstad was found dead outside of his home on Devil’s Lake in Kanabec County. The victim had been shot several times with a .32 caliber pistol, but none of the gunshot wounds were life-threatening. The victim was then severely beaten with a blunt object. The medical examiner determined that the victim’s head was struck at least 24 times with substantial force, although the extent of his injuries made it impossible to know exactly how many blows the victim received. The repeated blows to the victim’s head fractured his skull and caused substantial damage to his brain. The medical examiner determined that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

The investigation focused on Bolstad’s son Jason Bolstad. But Jason Bolstad provided solid alibi testimony from a male acquaintance and the sister of his girlfriend.  After six years, the witnesses recanted their alibis and produced Jason Bolstad’s bloody clothes, his blood-stained pistol which matched bullets at the murder scene, and other evidence.

After a jury trial in 2003, the trial judge convicted Jason Bolstad of premeditated first-degree murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.  In 2004, the Supreme Court rejected Bolstad’s direct appeal.

Bolstad filed his first petition for post-conviction relief in 2007. The petition claimed, among other things, that Bolstad had discovered evidence that substantiated the story of an alibi witness who was known at the time of trial, but who did not testify because of a lack of corroborating evidence. After a hearing, the post-conviction court denied Bolstad’s first petition in 2011.

THIS APPEAL:  Bolstad filed the current petition for post-conviction relief, his second, on October 2, 2014.  The Supreme Court held that the post-conviction court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that appellant's second petition for post-conviction relief was untimely. The Supreme Court also held that the facts of this case do not warrant granting appellant a new trial in the interests of justice.

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

               Took No Part:  Chutich.

               [CRIME] [MURDER] [PREMEDITATED] [FIRST-DEGREE]

Date: March 23, 2016