Court Opinion

ID: 9883854
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:23:17.438934+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:32.416859
License: Public Domain

RANDALL, Judge,
concurring specially
I concur in the majority’s conclusion that the erroneous introduction of the Spreigl incident did not, on this set of facts, mandate a new trial. However, to the majority’s reasoning that the Spreigl incident was not proved by clear and convincing evidence, I would add that I believe a fair extension of State v. Wakefield, 278 N.W.2d 307 (Minn.1979) dictates that this Spreigl incident should not have come in under any circumstances.
In Wakefiled, the defendant was faced, during a trial for criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, with Spreigl evidence elicited from a woman at a previous trial where Wakefield was charged with rape but acquitted. The Minnesota Supreme Court held that even though evidence of crimes from which a defendant has been acquitted can still, theoretically, “meet the [State v.] Billstrom [, 276 Minn. 174, 149 N.W.2d 281 (1967) ] standard of being clear and convincing,” the “interests of fairness and finality” dictate that the defendant should not have to answer for any alleged crime for which he stood trial and was acquitted. Id., 278 N.W.2d at 308.
The supreme court said:
Even so, it is a basic tenet of our jurisprudence that once the state has mustered its evidence against a defendant and failed, the matter is done. In the eyes of the law the acquitted defendant is to be treated as innocent and in the interests of fairness and finality made no more to answer for his alleged crime. It is our view that the admission into a trial of evidence of crimes of which the defendant has been acquitted prejudices and burdens the defendant in contravention of this basic principle and is fundamentally unfair. Therefore, we conclude that under no circumstances is evidence of a crime other than that for which a defendant is on trial admissible when the defendant has been acquitted of that other offense.
Wakefield, 278 N.W.2d at 308, 309.
In other words, if a defendant stands trial on a charge and is acquitted, no matter how strong the evidence may have been, the defendant is done with that set of allegations and need not answer to them again. It would belabor the obvious to go into the reasoning and the fundamental fairness of this holding.
Applying the rationale of Wakefield to the Spreigl evidence in this case, we have a parallel. Here the evidence of appellant’s participation in the previous Spreigl incident was so weak the assistant county attorney refused to even charge the case out. She wrote in her report:
I recommend denying a complaint for Criminal Sexual Conduct in this matter because there is insufficient evidence to show that the potential defendant [Kas-per] used force or coercion to accomplish the sexual contact.
Pursuant to this recommendation, the case was never charged. Ironically, because the evidence was so weak, appellant never went to trial on it, thus could never be *545“acquitted.” Therefore the State now claims the right to use the incident against appellant at a later trial.
Comparing Wakefield to this case, we have the situation in Wakefield where the facts of the Spreigl incident were strong enough that a prosecutor was able to get a criminal complaint signed by a judge, proceed through trial, and get to a jury. The supreme court held, nevertheless, that the incident, because of the acquittal, could not be used later as Spreigl evidence. Here, the evidence was not even strong enough to get to trial. Yet the evidence, according to the” trial court, could be introduced if “clear and convincing.” The logic and reasoning of Wakefield dictates differently. It would seem that if a prosecutor cannot use evidence from a trial in which a defendant was acquitted, the prosecution should not be able to use evidence from a bare allegation in a case not deemed worthy to bring to trial.