Opinion ID: 2114044
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Dangerous offender statute

Text: Smallwood was sentenced to 20 years of confinement under Minnesota's dangerous offender statute, Minn.Stat. § 609.152 (1998). [8] Section 609.152 allows courts to impose the statutory maximum sentence if the defendant (1) had two or more prior convictions for violent crimes; and (2) was a danger to public safety. Id. at subd. 2. A violent crime means a violation of or an attempt or conspiracy to violate any of the following laws of this state or any similar laws of the United States or any other state (including section 609.222, second-degree assault). Minn.Stat. § 609.152, subd. 2. The trial court found that Smallwood had two or more prior convictions for violent crimes and posed a danger to public safety. In finding that Smallwood's 1981 assault and battery conviction from Maryland constituted a violent crime, the trial court determined that the Maryland offense fit the definition of second-degree assault in Minnesota. See Minn.Stat. § 609.222. Under Minnesota's criminal code, second-degree assault occurs when a person assaults another with a dangerous weapon. Id. The trial court reached its conclusion after receiving evidence of the underlying facts of Smallwood's Maryland conviction. The evidence reveals that in 1981 Smallwood drove to a trailer park with a shotgun in his vehicle. He then pointed the shotgun out the window of the vehicle and fired toward a group of people. Smallwood testified that he fired the shots as a warning to others to leave him alone. Smallwood received a 36-month sentence in Maryland. These facts support the trial court's ruling that the 1981 crime constituted second-degree assault in Minnesota. See State v. Hough, 585 N.W.2d 393 (Minn. 1998) (upholding six convictions for second-degree assault after defendant fired shots at principal's home and defendant stated his intention was only to scare principal). The three-year sentence imposed also denotes the crime as a felony-level offense in Minnesota. See Minn.Stat. § 609.02 (1998) (defining felony as crime for which imprisonment of more than one year may be imposed). Smallwood argues that the trial court should not have gone beyond the statutory definition of the Maryland offense to consider the underlying facts. The trial court relied upon Hill v. State, 483 N.W.2d 57, 61 (Minn.1992) (stating, in context of sentencing guidelines, that sentencing court should consider the nature of the offense for purposes of determining the equivalent Minnesota offense). Smallwood contends that Hill should only be applied to sentencing guidelines and not the dangerous offender statute. The dangerous offender statute does not have the same nature of the offense language as the sentencing guidelines; instead, the dangerous offender statute instructs courts to look to the following laws of this state or any similar laws of the United States or any other state. Minn.Stat. § 609.152, subd. 1(d) (emphasis added). The rationale of Hill, which allows an inquiry into the underlying facts based on the statute's language allowing courts to look at the nature of the offense, can be applied when a court is looking for similar crimes before sentencing under the dangerous offender statute. A sentencing court may have to determine when an offense from a foreign jurisdiction is similar to an offense in Minnesota. It is apparent from a review of Maryland's statutes and case law that a common law jurisdiction's definition of a crime might not translate to a jurisdiction such as Minnesota, which has a complex criminal statutory system. Because of the differences between the systems in Maryland and Minnesota and because the dangerous offender statute instructs courts to look at similar laws from other jurisdictions, the trial court properly reviewed the facts underlying Smallwood's 1981 conviction for assault and battery in Maryland. Furthermore, we agree with the trial court's determination that the Maryland conviction fits the definition of second-degree assault in Minnesota. Therefore, we affirm the trial court's sentence under Minnesota's dangerous offender statute.