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State v. Adkins11/22/2005
Appellant challenges his conviction of first-degree burglary, arguing that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress identification evidence. He also asserts that the district court erroneously sentenced him as a career offender in violation of his right to a jury determination of aggravating sentencing factors. Because the totality of the circumstances demonstrates that the identification had adequate independent origin and was reliable, the district court did not err by denying appellant's motion to suppress, and we affirm the conviction. Because sentencing under the career-offender statute violated appellant's Sixth Amendment rights, we reverse the sentence imposed and remand for resentencing consistent with this opinion.
FACTS
Fifteen-year-old K.L. was home from school with a sore throat, sleeping in his attic bedroom. He woke up when he heard a loud noise and went downstairs to investigate. He pried apart slats of a door that separated the stairs from the living room and saw an African-American man walking around. K.L. watched the man walk into the kitchen, re-enter the living room, and walk to the picture window where he unzipped a hockey-referee bag owned by K.L.'s father and looked inside. The man then walked down the hall toward a bedroom, returned to K.L.'s view, and approached the door K.L. was behind. As the man came toward K.L., K.L. pushed the door open. K.L. and the man stood face-to-face for a couple of seconds, then the man ran out of the house. K.L. called his father who called the police.
Officers Prust and Molina responded to the call of "interrupted burglary." On their way to the residence, the officers received information from a dispatcher that the suspect was an older African-American man who had "larger lips and larger ears," and who was wearing a large coat. The officers saw only one pedestrian in the area, an African-American man in a dark coat. Prust thought that the man they saw was probably the intruder.
The officers discovered that the back door of K.L.'s home had been kicked in and part of the frame had fallen down. There was a footprint on the door and footprints in the snow leading to the residence. Twenty-five minutes later, Officer Nelson radioed that he had stopped a suspect (appellant) about a mile from the residence. Prust and Molina took K.L. to the scene of the stop for a "show-up" identification. They told K.L. that they had stopped someone, and they wanted K.L. to look at the person to see if K.L. could identify him. They parked 50 to 120 feet from the squad car in which the suspect was seated and used a P.A. system to ask Nelson to remove appellant from Nelson's squad car. Appellant, who was handcuffed, was taken out of the car and ordered to turn around slowly. K.L., who viewed appellant through a window in the squad car in which he was seated with Prust and Molina, immediately identified appellant as the intruder. Prust and Molina recognized appellant as the man they had seen on their way to K.L.'s residence.
Appellant was charged with first-degree burglary. Appellant moved to suppress K.L.'s identification as unreliable, pointing out some variations in K.L.'s description of the intruder before and after the show-up identification. The district court denied the motion, finding that although the show-up identification was unnecessarily suggestive, under the totality of the circumstances there was no substantial likelihood of misidentification.
A jury found appellant guilty. The state moved for an upward sentencing departure under Minn. Stat. ยง 609.1095, subd. 4 (2004). Based on appellant's prior felony convictions, including eight burglary-related convictions, the distr
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