Court Opinion

ID: 9704181
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:26:09.352823+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:58.363871
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. For the reasons stated in the decision of the court of appeals, I would find the evidence insufficient to establish Cusick’s knowing possession of cocaine.
The state has not proved beyond a reasonable doubt, as it must, that the defendant consciously possessed the cocaine either physically or constructively and that he had actual knowledge of its nature. State v. Florine, 303 Minn. 103, 104, 226 *182N.W.2d 609, 610 (1975). Cusick did not actually possess the substance at the time of his arrest; nor is the inference strong, as Florine requires, that he at one time physically possessed the substance and had not abandoned his possessory interest in it but continued to exercise dominion and control over it up to the time of his .arrest. Id.
The facts in this case require a result different from that reached in Florine. There, the cocaine in question was found in a small packet on top of an open notebook on the back seat of an unlocked vehicle abandoned on a country road. Although the vehicle did not belong to Florine, it had been left with him by its owner in the hope that he or his friends could sell it. The notebook on which the cocaine packet was found contained a biology quiz with Florine’s name on it. The handwriting in the notebook and quiz was the same handwriting as that on a note in a billfold found on the front seat that contained Florine’s driver license. On the floor of the front seat, police officers also found a bill addressed to Florine from Northern States Power Company, a receipt from a bank money order naming Florine as remitter, and a Christmas Seal letter to him. Such evidence was held sufficiently strong to support an inference that Florine at one time had had physical possession of the cocaine and, although not in physical possession at the time the police found it, had continued to consciously exercise dominion and control over it.
In the case before us, the evidence is undisputed that, although Cusick borrowed the automobile shortly before the accident, the automobile was owned by Jodie Crawford, his girlfriend, and was full of Crawford’s papers, clothing and other personal property. In fact there was no evidence that any property in the car except the wallet belonged to Cusick. Many items in the car fell out and were scattered in a 25-foot area when the car went off the ramp and turned over. Officer Pott was unable to say which items had been in the car or where in the car those items had been. There was evidence that Crawford was chemically dependent on cocaine and that she used it by injection. She testified that the brown vinyl case and the cocaine in it was hers. Cusick introduced expert testimony that his physical condition, as observed by the officer at the accident scene, was inconsistent with the use of cocaine. This evidence, in addition to Officer Pott’s specific testimony that the brown vinyl case was found “among some other things” on the ground near the wallet, is just not strong enough to support an inference that Cusick physically possessed the cocaine before the accident and was continuing to exercise dominion and control over it when it was found by Officer Pott.