Opinion ID: 2137352
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Heading: Conviction of Drug Offense

Text: Naylor asks this court to apply Minn.Stat. § 609.035 (1990) to vacate his conviction for the use of drugs to injure or facilitate the commission of a crime if we affirm his conviction for first degree murder. Section 609.035 provides that, with certain enumerated exceptions, if a person's conduct constitutes more than one offense under the laws of this state, the person may be punished for only one of the offenses and a conviction or acquittal of any one of them is a bar to prosecution for any other of them. Our cases applying Minn.Stat. § 609.035 examine the facts relating to the conduct of a defendant convicted of multiple offenses to determine whether the convictions indeed arose from conduct [that] constitutes more than one offense or whether they arose from a divisible series of incidents. State v. Krampotich, 282 Minn. 182, 187, 163 N.W.2d 772, 776 (1968). Although this factual distinction is not easily made on the record of most criminal convictions, in Naylor's case it appears to us that the jury found that Naylor carried out a single criminal objective in first drugging and later participating in the stabbing of Lange. Under State v. Johnson, 273 Minn. 394, 404, 141 N.W.2d 517, 525 (1966), when separate charges arise from such a single criminal objective, conviction of multiple offenses is not permitted. We distinguish State v. Stevenson, 286 N.W.2d 719, 720 (Minn.1979) as a case in which a single criminal objective was achieved in the first charged offense, and then an identical criminal objective was achieved against the same victim a few hours later. Naylor, by contrast, could reasonably be found to have drugged Lange as a preparatory stage in a plan to assault or murder Lange. We therefore vacate the concurrent sentence of imprisonment imposed on Naylor because of his conviction for use of drugs to injure or facilitate crime. Affirmed; sentence vacated in part. TOMLJANOVICH, dissents and files an opinion.