Court Opinion

ID: 9520731
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:48:17.368434+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:46:46.499344
License: Public Domain

PAGE, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. An obvious problem presented by this case is the fact that the testimony of Jenkins, Lamar, and Williams is as untrustworthy, and unreliable as that of an obvious accomplice. Jenkins, Lamar, and Williams all had a motive to testify against Jackson in the hope of avoiding criminal liability for any role they may have played in Bluntson’s death. Thus, I believe that the purpose underlying our requirement that a conviction not rest on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice should also apply with equal force to situations in which the only direct evidence of the defendant’s actual involvement in the charged crime comes from witnesses who were present when the crime took place, had a motive to commit the crime, and whose testimony is not only the only testimony incriminating the defendant but is also the only evidence exculpating the witness.
“Accomplice testimony is inherently untrustworthy because the accomplice may testify against the defendant in the hopes of obtaining clemency for himself.” State v. Reed, 737 N.W.2d 572, 582 (Minn.2007). Therefore, a conviction cannot rest on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice. Minn.Stat. § 634.04 (2006); State v. Clements, 82 Minn. 434, 443, 85 N.W. 229, 232 (1901). As a result, “ ‘trial courts have a duty to instruct juries on accomplice testimony in any criminal ease in which it is reasonable to consider any witness against the defendant to be an accomplice.’ ” Reed 737 N.W.2d at 582 (quoting State v. Strommen, 648 N.W.2d 681, 689 (Minn.2002)). Generally, a witness will be considered an accomplice if the witness “could have been indicted and convicted for the crime with which the accused is charged.” State v. Lee, 683 N.W.2d 309, 314 (Minn.2004). The court concludes that, because Jenkins and Lamar were merely present at the time Bluntson was shot, they could not have been indicted and convicted of the shooting and therefore were not accomplices. As a result, the court concludes that the trial court did not err when it declined to give the accomplice instruction. The court also concludes that any error in the trial court’s failure to give an accomplice instruction as to Williams was harmless because the record contains sufficient evidence from Lamar and Jenkins’s testimony to corroborate Williams’s testimony.
While the court’s conclusion that Jenkins and Lamar were not accomplices because there is no evidence that they intentionally aided, advised, hired, counseled, conspired with or otherwise procured Jackson to murder Bluntson is arguably technically correct, our analysis should not end there. The fact that the State may have lacked sufficient evidence to charge and convict Williams, Jenkins, and Lamar of aiding and abetting Jackson, or of committing the murder independent of Jackson’s involvement, does not overcome the inherent untrustworthiness of statements made and testimony given by these three *901obvious suspects. While it is true that there was no evidence offered at trial that Jenkins and Lamar were anything other than merely present when Bluntson was killed, it is also true that the only evidence establishing that they were merely present came from Jenkins, Lamar, and Williams. Absent their testimony, there are no facts in the record detailing Jackson’s involvement in the shooting. Their testimony, like that of an accomplice, is inherently untrustworthy because they had a strong incentive to shift the blame away from themselves and on Jackson. By shifting the blame to Jackson, they took the spotlight off of their involvement. Because their testimony is inherently untrustworthy, it should receive the same scrutiny that the legislature has required for accomplice testimony.1 Therefore, we should hold that Jackson’s conviction cannot rest on their testimony absent sufficient corroboration of that testimony.
Here, the record suggests that Jenkins, Lamar, and Williams may well have been highly motivated to engage in shifting the blame to Jackson. On the afternoon of February 24, 2006, Williams was shot while standing outside a North Minneapolis convenience store. Williams survived the shooting. Later that afternoon, one or more members of a group of people, including Williams, Jenkins, Lamar, and Radcliffe, were involved in an argument with Bluntson at the same store where Williams had been shot. The group left the store at 6:27 p.m. in Radcliffe’s vehicle and drove to a house where Jackson joined them. At some point the group, now including Jackson, drove away from the house in Radcliffe’s vehicle and encountered Bluntson, at which point, according to the testimony of Jenkins, Lamar, and Williams, Jackson got out of the vehicle and without provocation shot Bluntson. Further, according to Jenkins, Lamar, and Williams, they had no reason to know that Jackson was going to shoot Bluntson. Jenkins’s, Lamar’s, and Williams’s version of events is entirely self-serving. Their self-serving testimony is completely uncorroborated except by one another. Based on the uncorroborated testimony of three obvious suspects, no reasonable jury could have found that the State had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Jackson shot Bluntson. Therefore, I would reverse Jackson’s conviction.

. The legislature may wish to consider whether the policy considerations underlying Minn. Stat. § 634.04 apply equally to suspects as well as accomplices.