State of Minnesota v. Jesse Davis Holloman ( 2015 )

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2014).
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A14-1539
State of Minnesota,
Respondent,
vs.
Jesse Davis Holloman,
Appellant
Filed August 17, 2015
Reversed
Ross, Judge
Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CR-11-10084
Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
John J. Choi, Ramsey County Attorney, Elizabeth Lamin, Assistant County Attorney, St.
Paul, Minnesota (for respondent)
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Rachel F. Bond, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Cleary, Chief Judge; and
Johnson, Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
ROSS, Judge
The district court found Jesse Holloman guilty of reckless discharge of a firearm
within a municipality after it determined that he possessed a loaded gun in a bedroom
across the hall from an in-home daycare and that this same gun fired and wounded a
woman in the arm. Because the circumstances proved by the state do not rule out the
reasonable possibility that the gun discharged as a result of an accidental or unintentional
act, we reverse Holloman’s conviction.
FACTS
Police received a call in the early afternoon of December 19, 2011, that a woman
had been shot in the arm at a residence on Albemarle Street in St. Paul. The house served
as both a residence and a daycare where the injured woman, M.A., was caring for three
small children.
M.A. told police that she did not know who shot her or where the shot originated.
Police found that the only other adult present during the shooting was Jesse Holloman,
the homeowner’s son. Police arrested Holloman, and the state charged him with reckless
discharge of a firearm within a municipality and with two fifth-degree controlled-
substance crimes. A jury found Holloman not guilty of the controlled-substance crimes
and could not reach a verdict on the reckless-discharge count. Holloman waived his right
to a jury for the retrial on that count and was tried before the district court in April 2014.
M.A. testified. She explained that the daycare was run out of a space in the
basement, where there were also two bedrooms and a bathroom. She said that she knew
that Holloman was in the southwest basement bedroom. At one point after she served
lunch to the daycare children, M.A. entered the basement hallway to throw something
away. She said she felt a “nudge” and heard a noise, but she could not determine what the
noise was. She explained how she discovered that she had been shot: “And then I looked
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at my arm, and my arm was messed up. And then I seen a hole in my arm where it was
bleeding.” M.A. recalled that the door to the bedroom where she had seen Holloman was
closed.
M.A. was shot in the arm just above her left elbow. She sat on the steps and called
her husband. She testified that she saw Holloman while she was sitting and that she
thought Holloman called for emergency help. The recording of the emergency call
confirmed that Holloman did make the call.
The state introduced overwhelming evidence that the gunshot originated inside the
house. St. Paul Police Sergeant Kenneth Jensen testified that he investigated the shooting.
He said that Holloman had asserted that the bullet entered the home through a window in
the southwest basement bedroom. But the sergeant found that, although the window was
broken, the screen covering the window had no hole, and glass from the broken window
was lying outside rather than inside. Officer Michael Polski testified that when he arrived
he noticed that Holloman’s hand was bleeding. Holloman had told him that he cut
himself on the broken window where the bullet supposedly entered, but, like Sergeant
Jensen, Officer Polski testified that he found no hole in the screen. St. Paul crime lab
sergeant Shay Shackle testified that he determined the bullet’s trajectory based on a bullet
hole in the bedroom door. It had certainly not passed from the outside through the
bedroom window. Sergeant Shackle concluded instead that the “approximate origination
point of the firearm . . . would have been on the -- near the floor by the box spring and the
mattress” in the bedroom.
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Although police did not find the gun that shot Adams, video footage apparently
explains why. The home’s surveillance camera recorded Holloman going to the garage
with a backpack near the time of the shooting. The footage shows that, about five minutes
later, Holloman retrieved the backpack and gave it to the driver of a van that appeared in
front of the house. Holloman reentered the home without the backpack just before police
arrived.
Holloman testified in his defense. He offered a version of events that had him in
the southwest basement bedroom waiting for a ride to the hospital to visit his brother. He
claimed that he went to the garage with items he intended to return to the person who was
coming to drive him to the hospital. He said that he then went upstairs to a different
bedroom and got dressed to leave. He told the court that, while he was dressing, he heard
“one, maybe two shots” and then heard M.A. scream. He found M.A. in the basement
with the daycare children, saw that she had been shot, and dialed 9-1-1. Holloman
testified that the driver arrived to pick him up, at which point Holloman went outside and
told him what had happened. According to Holloman, the driver wanted his possessions,
so Holloman directed him to the garage to retrieve them.
Holloman denied handling any gun that day. He testified that the bullet hole in the
door to the southwest basement bedroom was from a previous shooting one or two years
prior to M.A.’s shooting. He acknowledged that he knew that M.A. was a substitute
daycare provider that day and that children were in the basement.
Based on this evidence, the district court found Holloman guilty of reckless
discharge of a firearm within a municipality. It did not believe Holloman’s claim to have
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been upstairs when the shot occurred. It found that he was instead in the southwest
basement bedroom and that the firearm was discharged inside that room. The court
further found that, after the shooting, Holloman took the gun to the garage. It found that
the discharge was reckless based on the following reasoning:
Defendant knew that the southwest bedroom was
across the hall from a room where day care was operating,
caring for small children who were present. Defendant also
knew [M.A.] was present at the day care across the hallway.
Defendant’s actions in connection with the discharge
of the firearm in the southwest bedroom of the home were
reckless in that they created a substantial and unjustifiable
risk that Defendant was aware of and disregarded.
Holloman appeals his conviction.
DECISION
Holloman argues that his conviction cannot stand because the state did not prove
that he acted recklessly in discharging the firearm. Holloman’s conviction rests on
circumstantial evidence. We assess the sufficiency of circumstantial evidence supporting
a conviction in two stages. We first identify the circumstances proved, “defer[ring] to the
fact-finder’s acceptance of the proof of these circumstances,” and rejecting evidence
contrary to the circumstances proved. State v. Hokanson, 821 N.W.2d 340, 354 (Minn.
2012), cert. denied, 133 S. Ct. 1741 (2013). We next independently examine “the
reasonableness of all inferences that might be drawn from the circumstances proved,”
including any inferences that support hypotheses other than guilt. State v. Andersen, 784
N.W.2d 320, 329 (Minn. 2010) (quotation omitted). We will affirm the conviction only if
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the circumstances proved are consistent with guilt and inconsistent with any other
rational hypothesis. State v. Fairbanks, 842 N.W.2d 297, 307 (Minn. 2014).
The legislature has criminalized the reckless discharge of a firearm within a
municipality. Minn. Stat. § 609.66, subd. 1a(a)(3) (2014). To act recklessly within the
meaning of the statute, a person must create a “substantial and unjustifiable risk” that he
is aware of and disregards. State v. Engle, 743 N.W.2d 592, 595 (Minn. 2008). The
accused does not need to intend to discharge a firearm to be convicted of this crime, but
he must commit “a conscious or intentional act in connection with the discharge of a
firearm that creates a substantial and unjustifiable risk that he is aware of and disregards.”
Id. at 596. In other words, the statute criminalizes intentional acts “that increase the
likelihood that the gun will discharge accidentally, involuntarily, or reflexively.” Id.
The circumstances proved, as found by the district court, are that Holloman
discharged the gun in the southwest bedroom “from a location on or just off the bed.” It
also found that Holloman knew “that the southwest bedroom was across the hall from a
room where a day care was operating” and that M.A. was caring for the daycare children.
And the court determined that, after the discharge, Holloman moved the gun from the
bedroom to the garage. Again, the court concluded that Holloman’s actions “were
reckless in that they created a substantial and unjustifiable risk that Defendant was aware
of and disregarded.” Its memorandum explained how it concluded that Holloman had
participated somehow in the gun’s discharge: “Guns simply do not load themselves and
discharge without human intervention. [Holloman] created a substantial and unjustifiable
risk with the loaded firearm in proximity to M.A. and an operating day care where
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[Holloman] knew children were present.” Based on this reasoning, the district court
found that Holloman’s act of possessing a loaded gun near daycare children satisfied the
statutory mens rea requirement, and it therefore convicted him of reckless discharge.
The district court’s reasoning that Holloman was involved in the gun’s discharge
is faultless. But neither the district court’s reasoning nor the circumstances proved at trial
rule out the possibility that the “human intervention” that precipitated the discharge was
something less than reckless conduct. Given that a conviction requires proof that
Holloman engaged in a “conscious or intentional act in connection with the discharge”
that “increase[d] the likelihood that the gun [would] discharge accidentally, involuntarily,
or reflexively,” Engle, 743 N.W.2d at 596, we will affirm if the circumstantial evidence
would allow only for such a finding. But the district court did not make any finding as to
what Holloman was doing with the gun when it discharged, or how he was doing it, and
the record does not allow for anything other than speculation as to what that conduct
might have been.
The district court seems to say that Holloman’s merely possessing or handling the
loaded gun inside the occupied daycare is sufficient to establish recklessness. The state
does not support that theory with any legal authority. And as a matter of law, we know
that loaded guns can indeed be possessed where people are present. See Minn. Stat.
§ 624.714, subds. 1(a) (permitting a person to carry a pistol in public with a permit), 9(1)
(allowing a person to carry a pistol in his dwelling or place of business without a permit)
(2014). Obviously, intentionally discharging a firearm without reason inside the occupied
house would have been reckless, as would intentionally twirling it around, or engaging in
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a host of other foolish conduct. But again, the district court made no findings as to any
act, let alone an intentional or reckless act by Holloman, and the only basis for its
decision—the gun’s mere close proximity to people—does not by itself constitute
reckless behavior, even if those people are children or those caring for them.
Given the lack of any finding or evidence about what Holloman was doing with
the gun when it discharged, a reasonable fact finder cannot rule out the possibility that the
gun was fired by accident rather than in connection with a “conscious or intentional act”
that made it more likely that the gun would discharge. It is true that Holloman’s moving
the gun from the bedroom to the garage and ultimately out of the house after the
discharge implies a guilty conscience. But negligent or accidental conduct could
reasonably precipitate the same guilt-based concealment and deceit, and this is conduct
that the district court’s findings and reasoning do not exclude.
Because the district court’s findings and rationale allow for a reasonable, innocent
hypothesis, we hold that the circumstantial evidence presented at trial cannot support
Holloman’s conviction. Holloman cites alleged constitutional trial errors in a pro se
supplemental brief. Our holding renders those alleged errors irrelevant, and we do not
consider them.
Reversed.
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