Court Opinion

ID: 9786723
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:01:37.004406+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:47.888689
License: Public Domain

Beier, J.,
concurring in part: I write separately only to clarify the route by which I arrive at my fellow justices’ conclusion that defendant gets no reversal on the first or second issues raised in his petition for review.
In essence, the defense argues that the district judge ultimately believed that he permitted the State to reopen its case to put on evidence of an element of the crime it had failed to prove before the motion for judgment of acquittal, and that this decision was reversible error. In fact, no matter what the judge may have believed he was doing, the record demonstrates that he did not allow the improper introduction of evidence on an element about which the State had been silent during its case in chief.
The district judge properly denied the defense motion for judgment of acquittal in the first instance. As the majority observes, the evidence already introduced that defendant had used brass knuckles when he struck the victim was circumstantial, but it was entirely adequate to support a rational factfinder’s guilty verdict.
This means there was no need to reopen the State’s case for additional evidence, whether we review that decision de novo as a matter of law or deferentially for abuse of discretion. It also means that no legal prejudice resulted from either (a) the district judge allowing the State to reopen its case to call a witness to testify to something already in evidence, or (b) defense counsel’s motion calling the prosecution’s or the court’s attention to a nonexistent failure of the State’s proof in its case in chief.
In short, there was no real problem to solve. The parties’ and the district court’s reactions to an imagined problem did not hurt defendant’s case.