Opinion ID: 2994719
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: I told him he--asked him what I could

Text: do with it, yeah. I was turning in some evidence here on a murder case. Yeah, I’d like to get the time reduction out of it. I didn’t know that Mr. Vaudreuil was the prosecuting attorney. R. 316 at 122. Meyer’s counsel later attempted to clarify whether Gaines, in his earlier reference to murder cases, was suggesting that Meyer had claimed that Rock was getting back at him because he gave information about a murder case[.] R.316 at 123. Gaines did not understand the question, however, and after an unsuccessful attempt to rephrase it, Judge Shabaz summoned the attorneys to a bench conference. There he warned Meyer’s counsel that he was exploring a troublesome subject. R. 316 at 124. Meyer’s attorney agreed, but felt he had little choice given that Gaines had already broached the subject of murder. Id. At that point, Judge Shabaz asked Meyer’s counsel whether he wanted a special instruction directing the jury to ignore that part of Gaines’ testimony. R. 316 at 125. Meyer’s attorney declined the offer and let the subject drop. The subject of murder was not mentioned again during the trial. After Meyer was convicted a second time, Gaines returned to testify at the sentencing hearing on the subject of Fenner’s murder. According to Gaines, Meyer said that he, Hoff, and Rock had agreed that they needed to get rid of Fenner because he knew too much about a murder in Oklahoma and had already been questioned by the FBI in that regard. R. 318 at 59. As a ruse to lure Fenner out to Rock’s Osseo farm, Hoff approached Fenner and told him that Rock had been arrested and that they needed to clean out the safe in Rock’s farmhouse before the feds got to it. R. 318 at 59. Meanwhile, Meyer and Rock drove to the farm and chose hiding places from which they could shoot Fenner. R. 318 at 60. Meyer told Gaines that he was armed with a nine-millimeter pistol and that when Fenner and Hoff arrived, he took a shot at Fenner. R. 318 at 60-61. Gaines asked Meyer whether he was the one who killed Fenner, and Meyer purportedly replied [Y]eah, but I just can’t tell them that. R. 318 at 61. Meyer added that they did not burn Fenner’s body near the farmhouse, as Rock had claimed; instead they had taken the body in the Blazer to a nearby creek, river, or lake and burned it there. R. 318 at 61. Not surprisingly, Gaines’ testimony had its vulnerable points. Gaines acknowledged that his own sentence for fraud was reduced from thirty-three to twenty-three months after he testified on the government’s behalf at Meyer’s second trial. R. 318 at 57. Another person who had been an inmate at the Dane County Jail, Garland Lightfoot, Jr., testified that Gaines had admitted lying to the government about Meyer’s responsibility for the murder. R. 318 at 49-50, 55. The Fenner murder had a substantial impact on Meyer’s sentence. Following Meyer’s first conviction, Judge Crabb found that Meyer had murdered Fenner in the course of the narcotics conspiracy. R. 198 at 188. Accordingly, she cross- referenced the murder guideline in establishing Meyer’s offense level, which resulted in a mandatory term of life imprisonment. See U.S.S.G. sec. 2D1.1(d)(1). After Meyer was convicted the second time on remand, Judge Shabaz also determined that Meyer was responsible for Fenner’s murder. Judge Shabaz’s determination rested in part upon Judge Crabb’s finding, which he believed to be the law of the case, but additionally and independently on his own review of the pertinent evidence on this subject. R. 303 at 6. This included the testimony that Rock had given at the August 1996 evidentiary hearing (R. 303 at 6, R. 318 at 97-101), as corroborated by other credible evidence by witnesses who . . . previously testified as to the circumstances of the murder (R. 303 at 6), and the testimony of Chance Gaines, whom Judge Shabaz specifically found to be credible (R. 303 at 6, R. 318 at 101).