2006-M-04 Mwati
P. Mckenzie, petitioner, Appellant, vs. State
of Minnesota, Respondent.
DESCRIPTION OF THE CRIME: On September 25, 1992, Mwati McKenzie and Shannon Bowles
murdered Minneapolis Police Officer Jerry Haaf, shooting him four times in the
back while he drank coffee in a Lake Street restaurant. McKenzie and
Bowles were members of the Vice Lords criminal gang, seeking “revenge” for the
alleged beating of a blind, elderly, black man on a bus by Metropolitan
Transportation Police. Also convicted in the murder were Vice Lords A.C. Ford
Jr. (Adl El-Shabazz) and Montery Willis.
PRIOR HISTORY: In 1993, Mwati Pepi Mckenzie was convicted in Hennepin
County District Court of first-degree murder of a peace officer. The
district court imposed the mandatory life sentence.
The Supreme Court denied his direct appeal in 1995. The
Supreme Court denied his first post-conviction appeal in 1998. The
Minnesota Court of Appeals rejected his second post-conviction appeal in
2001. The Supreme Court rejected his third post-conviction appeal in
2004. The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected his fourth post-conviction
appeal in 2005.
THIS APPEAL: On his fifth post-conviction appeal, alleging that (1) his
sentence was imposed in violation of Blakely; and (2) the Department of
Corrections’ withholding of inmate wages for contribution to the Crime Victims
Reparations Board violates due process.
The post-conviction court denied this fifth petition for relief,
concluding that (1) Blakely did not apply retroactively to Mckenzie’s case,
and regardless, Mckenzie’s mandatory life sentence did not violate the rule of Blakely;
and (2) the authority of the Department of Corrections to withhold inmate
earnings for contribution to the Crime Victims Reparations Board is not
properly raised in a post-conviction petition.
THIS DECISION: Justice Gildea voted to support Justice Paul Anderson’s
unanimous opinion to affirm McKenzie’s sentence to spend the rest of his life
in prison.
First, the Supreme Court rejected McKenzie’s claim that a U.S.
Supreme Court decision on the role of juries should be applied retroactively to
his case. McKenzie argued that the federal Blakely
decision would have required a new trial for McKenzie because the jury that
convicted him was not asked to make a specific finding beyond a reasonable
doubt whether he used a firearm in the commission of the crime.
The Blakely decision was issued in2004.
To be applied retroactively to McKenzie’s case, McKenzie’s first appeal had to
still be active in 2004. However, it had expired no later than August,
1995, so the Minnesota Supreme Court held that the Minnesota Court of Appeals
had properly declined to apply the Blakely rule
retroactively for McKenzie.
Second, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that another reason the Blakely
rule did not apply to McKenzie because the Blakely rule
only applies to cases where a sentence exceeds the normal limit on the length
of punishment for the specific criminal law which was violated. Since the
maximum penalty allowed for the first-degree intentional murder of a police
officer is a mandatory life sentence, the Blakely rule did
not apply to McKenzie’s case.
Third, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected McKenzie’s claim that
a 2004 law that allowed the Department of Corrections to deduct funds from
McKenzie’s prison wages to help reimburse the Crime Victims Reparations Board
violates due process. The Court applied a prior decision which held that
such a due-process claim had to be brought in a different kind of appeal, and
not as part of a claim that an original sentence was inappropriate.
DATE OF DECISION: May 11, 2006
RECORD NUMBER: 2006-085
DESCRIPTION: [MURDER] [POLICE] [LAW ENFORCEMENT]
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