STATE OF MINNESOTA, Respondent, vs. BARRY ISHMAEL McREYNOLDS, Appellant.
A20-1435
STATE OF MINNESOTA IN SUPREME COURT
April 27, 2022
McKeig, J.
Court of Appeals. Filed: April 27, 2022. Office of Appellate Courts.
Rebecca Duren, Kelly & Lemmons, P.A., Saint Paul, Minnesota, for respondent.
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Steven P. Russett, Assistant Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for appellant.
S Y L L A B U S
1. Appellant’s guilty plea was not supported by a sufficient factual basis because the record of his plea—that he used a cell phone camera to record a woman without her consent while in the same room with her—does not satisfy the statutory requirement of using a recording device “through the window or any other aperture of a house or place of dwelling” as provided in
Reversed.
MCKEIG, Justice.
At issue in this case is whether the guilty plea of appellant Barry Ishmael McReynolds to interference with privacy was accurate. McReynolds admitted to using his cell phone to record a woman while she was naked in her bed, without her consent and knowing that she likely would not have consented. The question before us is not whether McReynolds’ conduct was wrong, but instead whether the statute McReynolds pleaded guilty to violating,
FACTS
On April 28, 2017, McReynolds and a woman went on a first date. Following the date, McReynolds and the woman travelled to her apartment and McReynolds stayed the night. The next day, the woman contacted the West St. Paul Police Department. She told officers that McReynolds had sent himself naked pictures of her from her phone to his phone. The woman also reported that she had previously told McReynolds that she would not send him naked pictures of herself after he asked her for such pictures. During the subsequent investigation, officers interviewed McReynolds. McReynolds admitted that he
Respondent State of Minnesota charged McReynolds with interference with privacy,
The court accepted his guilty plea and set a date for sentencing. Before sentencing, McReynolds moved to withdraw his plea, claiming that the withdrawal “would ensure a ‘fair and just’ outcome and avoid a ‘manifest injustice.’ ”1 The motion to withdraw alleged, among other claims, that his plea did not “fit[] the elements of the crime for which he was convicted and charged.” The district court denied the motion, stating that the factual basis admitted during the plea hearing “addresses every element of the crime of interference with privacy.” The district court did not specifically address the “through the window or any other aperture of a house” language of
The dissent concluded that while McReynolds’ conduct was “morally repugnant,” his action of taking nude images of another person within their bedroom did not violate
We granted McReynolds’ request for further review.
Following rapid advances in technology, voyeurism has evolved far past the prototypical “peeping Tom.”2 These types of invasions have a host of negative consequences, including interfering with individual’s autonomy, self-respect, and ability to develop intimacy. See Danielle Keats Citron, Sexual Privacy, 128 Yale L.J. 1870, 1898–99 (2019). Voyeurism also particularly impacts women and persons from marginalized communities (in particular, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals) who generally “shoulder the brunt” of invasions of sexual privacy. Id. at 1875, 1892, 1907.
But the question before us is not whether certain acts of voyeurism should be criminalized. Our sole task is to determine whether McReynolds’ actions are criminalized under existing Minnesota law. Specifically, we must determine whether McReynolds’ guilty plea was “accurate.” State v. Ecker, 524 N.W.2d 712, 716 (Minn. 1994). To be accurate, a plea must be established by a proper factual basis. State v. Mikulak, 903 N.W.2d 600, 603 (Minn. 2017); Lussier v. State, 821 N.W.2d 581, 588 (Minn. 2012). “The factual basis requirement is satisfied if the record contains a showing that there is credible evidence available which would support a jury verdict that defendant is guilty of at least as great a crime as that to which he pled guilty.” Nelson v. State, 880 N.W.2d 852, 859 (Minn. 2016);
We review the validity of a guilty plea de novo. Barrow v. State, 862 N.W.2d 686, 689 (Minn. 2015). McReynolds bears the burden of showing that his plea is invalid. Raleigh, 778 N.W.2d at 94. Here, the parties’ dispute about the accuracy of McReynolds’ plea centers on the meaning of the language of
A.
“The object of all interpretation and construction of laws is to ascertain and effectuate the intention of the legislature.”
To determine whether a statute is ambiguous, we first construe words and phrases in the statute “according to rules of grammar and according to their common and approved
The subdivision under which McReynolds was charged provides that:
A person is guilty of a gross misdemeanor who:
(1) enters upon another’s property;
(2) surreptitiously installs or uses any device for observing, photographing, recording, amplifying, or broadcasting sounds or events through the window or any other aperture of a house or place of dwelling of another; and
(3) does so with intent to intrude upon or interfere with the privacy of a member of the household.
The parties focus much of their attention on the word “aperture.” The State argues that aperture has two meanings: “(1) a hole, gap, slit, or other opening; (2) a usually adjustable opening in an optical instrument that limits the amount of light passing through a lens.” The American Heritage Dictionary 60 (New College Ed. 1982). Relying on the second definition, the State argues that a camera can satisfy the aperture requirement. McReynolds, in turn, argues that the second definition of aperture cannot apply to this
We agree with McReynolds that based on the language of
But, the State argues, an individual satisfies the “through . . . any . . . aperture of a house or place of dwelling” element by simply crossing through an aperture of the dwelling to gain access to it. This interpretation is consistent with the discrete “aperture of a house” phrase contained in the statute, but violates basic rules of grammar when considered against the broader language in subdivision 1(b)(2). The statute makes it a crime for a person to “surreptitiously install[] or use[] any device for . . . recording . . . sounds or events through the window or any other aperture of a house or place of dwelling of another.”
Admittedly, the result that the statute’s plain meaning compels is oddly narrow in that a person does not violate the statute merely by using a recording device inside the same room as their target. It may even, as the State suggests, embolden stalkers to gain access to their victims’ homes to record their victims, particularly to the extent that there is no other Minnesota statute that expressly criminalizes such conduct. The court of appeals determined, and the State argues, that this outcome is “absurd.”
We have departed from the plain language of a statute in only one case. See Wegener v. Comm’r of Revenue, 505 N.W.2d 612, 617 (Minn. 1993), as amended on reh’g (Nov. 19, 1993); see also Schatz v. Interfaith Care Ctr., 811 N.W.2d 643, 651 (Minn. 2012) (noting that it is “exceedingly rare” for this court to override a statute’s plain language and that we do so only when “the plain meaning of the statute ‘utterly confounds’ the clear legislative purpose of the statute,” and has only done so once, in Wegener). And we have
Technology has rapidly evolved over the past two decades. We note that in that period, the Legislature has amended
Under the circumstances here, McReynolds’ guilty plea is not accurate because the plain language of
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the decision of the court of appeals and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Reversed.