This opinion will be unpublished and 

may not be cited except as provided by 

Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2014). 

STATE OF MINNESOTA 

IN COURT OF APPEALS 

A15-1426 

State of Minnesota, 

Respondent, 

vs. 

Daniel Lee Kruse, 

Appellant. 

Filed June 27, 2016 

Affirmed 

Connolly, Judge 

Hennepin County District Court 

File No. 27-CR-14-27853 

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and 

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Lee W. Barry, Assistant County 

Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent) 

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Lydia Villalva Lijo, Assistant 

Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant) 

 Considered and decided by Larkin, Presiding Judge; Connolly, Judge; and Kirk, 

Judge. 
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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N 

CONNOLLY, Judge 

 Appellant challenges his conviction of felony possession of burglary or theft tools, 

arguing that the district court abused its discretion and committed reversible error in 

instructing a deadlocked jury. Because the jury instruction was not an abuse of discretion, 

we affirm. 

FACTS 

On March 3, 2015, appellant Daniel Kruse had a jury trial on a charge of felony 

possession of burglary or theft tools. Before the jury retired on March 3, the district court 

read 10 Minnesota Practice CRIMJIG 3.04 (2014) as part of the instructions. The jury 

deliberated for an hour and a half, until 4:30 p.m., during which time it sent two notes to 

the district court, one concerning a witness’s testimony and the other about the “weight of 

eyewitness testimony.” 

About an hour after the jury reconvened the next morning, it sent the district court 

another note. This note said, “Your Honor, at this point we struggle for a unanimous 

decision. After [choosing] to sleep on it, we find for various reasons we are divided sixsix.” The district court read the note aloud to the attorneys and remarked that the jurors 

“haven’t really been deliberating awfully long . . . [I]t was only an hour [this morning and] 

an hour-and-a-half last night.” Both attorneys agreed that deliberations should continue. 

 The district court then repeated to the jury some of the instructions it had heard the 

previous day: 
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Your job will be to find what the facts are in this case by 

considering the evidence. Your best guide is your own good 

judgment, experience and common sense. You must decide 

what testimony to believe and how much weight to give it. 

You must decide the facts. You and only you can decide the 

facts. Do not take anything I say or do as a sign of what the 

verdict should be. 

 Once facts are decided you must follow the law. You 

must follow the law, even if you don’t agree with it. It is your 

duty to decide the questions of fact in this case. It is my duty 

to give you the rules of law you must apply in arriving at your 

verdict. You must follow and apply the rules of law as I give 

them to you, even if you believe the law is or should be 

different. Deciding questions of fact is your exclusive 

responsibility. 

 Finally, in order for you to return a verdict, whether 

guilty or not guilty, each juror must agree with that verdict. 

Your verdict must be unanimous. 

 You should discuss the case with one another and 

deliberate with a view toward reaching agreement if you can 

do so without violating your individual judgment. You should 

decide the case for yourself, but only after you have discussed 

the case with your fellow jurors and have carefully considered 

their views. You should not hesitate to reexamine your views 

and change your opinion[s] if you become convinced they are 

erroneous, but you should not surrender your honest opinion 

simply because other jurors disagree or merely to reach a 

verdict. 

 So I’ll ask you to go back and deliberate again, and 

obviously the deputy will take you to lunch if it gets to be 

lunchtime. 

Appellant did not object to these instructions, which are verbatim renderings of parts of 10 

Minnesota Practice CRIMJIG 1.02 (2014) and of CRIMJIG 3.04. 

The jury returned with a guilty verdict; the verdict form indicated that the time was 

12:43 p.m. Appellant challenges his conviction on the ground that the instruction in 

response to the deadlocked jury’s note was an abuse of discretion. 
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D E C I S I O N 

 “We apply our abuse of discretion standard when reviewing a district court’s charge 

to a jury to continue deliberating after the jury has indicated it was deadlocked.” State v. 

Cox, 820 N.W.2d 540, 550 (Minn. 2012). 

 Appellant argues that the instructions repeated after the jury reported a deadlock 

were coercive and that the district court “instructed jurors in such a way that jurors 

concluded that they were required to reach a verdict or that a deadlock was not an option.” 

But the district court specifically told the jurors to “deliberate with a view toward reaching 

agreement if you can do so without violating your individual judgment,” thus 

acknowledging the possibility that the jurors would not be able to come to an agreement if 

doing so would violate the individual judgment of even one juror. 

 Appellant relies on State v. Jones, 556 N.W.2d 903 (Minn. 1996) to argue that 

“simply reinstructing the jury on CRIMJIG 3.04 after instructions using the mandatory 

language of CRIMJIG 1.02 was not a cure-all.” His reliance is misplaced: the language to 

which he refers in the Jones instruction, “giving the proper charge, CRIMJIG 3.04, when 

the jury reache[s] a deadlock . . . is not a panacea,” was given as part of a direction to 

district courts to give jury instructions verbatim rather than to paraphrase them. Jones, 556 

N.W.2d at 911. “Having earlier paraphrased CRIMJIG 3.04, the trial court properly 

responded to the jury’s impasse by reading 3.04 verbatim.” Id. at 912. Here, the district 

court read CRIMJIG 3.04 verbatim to the jury before it retired, then read CRIMJIG 3.04 

verbatim again after the jury reported an impasse, so the problem of paraphrasing did not 

arise. 
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Moreover, here as in Jones, the amount of time the jury spent deliberating was not 

excessive, and instructing it to keep deliberating did not coerce it and did result in a verdict. 

There was no abuse of discretion in the jury instructions. Indeed, this was a textbook 

response by the district court to a deadlocked jury and we commend the district court for 

its handling of this case. 

Affirmed.