State of Minnesota v. Michelle MacDonald ShimotaState of Minnesota v. Michelle MacDonald Shimota
Case Information
*1 STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A14-1981
State of Minnesota,
Respondent,
vs. Michelle MacDonald Shimota,
Appellant.
Filed February 16, 2016
Affirmed
Ross, Judge
Dakota County District Court
File No. 19HA-CR-13-1371
Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
Dаniel J. Fluegel, Benjamin J. Colburn, Fluegel Law Firm, Hastings, Minnesota (for respondent)
Stephen V. Grigsby, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Chutich, Presiding Judge; Ross, Judge; and Stauber, Judge.
S Y L L A B U S
1. Minnesota Statutes section 169.91, subdivision 1 (2012), does not require an
arresting police officer to present a suspected impaired driver to a judge before the officer completes all administrative duties attendant to an impaired-driving arrest, including administering the implied-consent testing required by Minnesota Statutes section 169A.51 (2012).
2. A criminal defendant has no Sixth Amendment right to create a video recording of
her trial.
O P I N I O N
ROSS , Judge
Appellant Michelle MacDonald Shimota grabbed her steering wheel, her gear shift knob, and a police officer’s wrist to prevent police from removing her from her car when she refused to be taken into custody on suspicion of drunk driving. After the officers pulled her loose and took her to the police station, Shimota would not submit to a breath test, demanding to be taken before a judge. Shimota challenges her convictions of obstructing legal process and chemical-test refusal, arguing that police violated her statutory right to be taken immediately before a judge after her arrest, that the district court violated her alleged Sixth Amеndment right to create a video recording of the trial, that the district court improperly instructed the jury on the crime of test refusal, and that the evidence does not prove obstruction. Because an arrestee’s statutory right to be taken immediately before a judge after her arrest is not a mechanism for suspected drunk drivers to circumvent an officer’s statutory duty to promptly administer a chemical test; because the Sixth Amendment does not grant a defendant the right to videotape her trial; because the district court acted within its discretion in fashioning the jury instructions; and because the evidence supports the verdict, we affirm Shimota’s convictions.
FACTS
Late one night in April 2013, Rosemount police officer Alex Eckstein followed a car that he clocked at eight miles per hour over the speed limit. Officer Eckstein noticed the car swerve within its lane and saw its left tires contact the yellow centerline. He initiated a traffic stop.
When the officer spoke with the car’s only occupant, Michelle MacDonald Shimota, he noticed that she had watery eyes and smelled slightly of the odor of an alcoholic beverage. Officer Eckstein asked Shimоta to step out of the car to perform field sobriety tests, but Shimota refused. He asked her several more times, and she continued to refuse, so he called Sergeant Bryan Burkhalter to assist. When Sergeant Burkhalter arrived, he also smelled the odor of an alcoholic beverage coming from Shimota’s vehicle and asked her several times to exit the car. Both officers told Shimota she was under arrest. Shimota still refused to exit the car, and eventually the officers tried to forcibly remove her. Shimota resisted the officers’ effort by grabbing the shift knob, the steering wheel, and Sergeant Burkhalter’s wrist.
The officers finally pried Shimota free and took her to the police station, where Officer Eckstein read her the implied-consent advisory and asked her to submit to a breath test. He then gave her time to call a lawyer. Shimota spent 34 minutes making calls and then asked the officer to take her in front of a judge to perform the breath test. The officer refused, but he repeated his request that she take the test. Shimota refused, and the state charged her with test refusal, driving under the influence, and obstructing legal process.
Before her trial Shimota moved the district court to allоw her to bring video recording equipment into the courtroom, asserting that she had a Sixth Amendment right to record the trial. The district court denied the motion. Both parties agreed that the model jury instruction for test refusal was confusing on the element of probable cause. The district court issued a different instruction, to which Shimota objected. The jury found Shimota *4 guilty of test refusal and obstructing legal process but not guilty of driving under the influence. Shimota appeals.
ISSUES
I. Did Minnesota Statutes section 169.91, subdivision 1, require the arresting police
officer to present the appellant to a judge before he completed all administrative duties attendant to the impaired-driving arrest, including administering the implied- consent testing required by section 169A.51?
II. Did the appellant have a Sixth Amendment right to create a video recording of her
trial? III. Did the district court abuse its discretion when it instructed the jury on test refusal? IV. Did the state present sufficient evidence for the jury to find the appellant guilty of
obstructing legal process?
ANALYSIS
I Shimota argues first that police violated her right to be taken immediately to a judge before submitting to a breath test, based on her interpretation of Minnesota Statutes section 169.91, subdivision 1. On that foundation, she seems to argue that the officer’s violation required the district court to suppress the test-refusal evidence, to acquit her of the test- refusal charge as a matter of law, to hold that her test refusal was reasonable and therefore not illegal, or at least to allow her to argue to the jury that she refused the test reasonably. We can address all of the arguments by assessing her premise that police violated her statutory right to be taken immediately to a judge before submitting to a breath test.
We interpret a statute primarily on its plain language in an effort to discern and
effectuate the legislature’s intent.
When any person is arrested for any violation of any law or ordinance relating to the operation or registration of vehicles . . . the arrested person shall be taken into custody and immediately taken before a judge within the county in which the offense charged is alleged to have been committed and who has jurisdiction over the offenses and is nearest or most accessible with reference to the place where the arrest is made, in any of the following cases:
(1) when a person arrested demands an immediate appearance before a judge;
. . . .
(4) when the person is arrested upon a charge of driving or operating or being in actual physical control of any motor vehicle while under the influence of intoxicating liquor or drugs.
The word “immediately” is the center of Shimota’s argument, as she insists that the
officer violated the statute by failing to immediately take her before a judge on her demand.
The statute does not define “immediately.” Shimota rightly urges a plain-meaning
definition and application of that term. Our plain-language approach to statutory
interpretation requires us to construe words and phrases by their common usage, Minn.
*6
Stat.
Here we begin by recognizing that “immediate” carries a common understanding
informed by its literal meaning. Tracing its literal meaning from its Latin origins, we know
that the word means “not” (
in
or
im
) “intervening” (
mediatus
).
See
7
Oxford English
Dictionary
681 (2d ed. 1989). “Immediate” is therefore a relational word that joins two
places, persons, or events with each other without any intervening place, person, or event.
See id
. When it concerns a place such as land, for example, “immediately” marks the lack
of any significant real estate between identified properties, as in, “The land was
immediately adjacent to a city of about 10,000 inhabitants.”
United Zinc & Chem. Co. v.
Britt
,
And when the term refers to events, although “immediately” might mean
“[o]ccurring without delay; instant,”
Black’s Law Dictionary
816 (9th ed. 2009), as
Shimota argues, the context might instead imply a longer period. For example, everyone
would envision an instantaneous occurrence when reading that a patient’s leg elevated
*7
“immediately” after her doctor struck her tendon with a reflex hammer. But no one
imagines instantaneous behavior when the context suggests otherwise, like when the
supreme court says, “Slavik and Wall immediately appealed the district court’s grant of
summary judgment.”
Wall v. Fairview Hosp. & Healthcare Servs.
,
Turning then to the use of “immediately” here, the statute directs that “the arrested
person shall be taken into custody and immediately taken before a judge.”
The term “immediately” has been unchanged in Minnesota Statutes
Whenever any person is arrested for any violation of this act punishable as a misdemeanor, the arrested person shall be immediately taken before a magistrate within the county in which the offense charged is alleged to have been committed and who has jurisdiction of such offense and is nearest or most accessible with reference to the place where said arrest is made.
1937 Minn. Laws ch. 464, art. 18, § 134, at 778–79. Like the current law, the original provision applied to arrests for driving while intoxicated and other serious traffic offenses, such as hit and runs, negligent homicide, and collisions resulting in injury or death. Id. A related section in the 1937 act contemplated an officer’s issuing а citation instructing an arrested person to appear in court at a specified date:
Whenever a person is arrested for any violation of this act punishable as a misdemeanor and such a person is not *9 immediately taken before a magistrate as herein before required , the arresting officer shall prepare in duplicate written notice to appear in court containing the name and address of such person, his driver’s license or chauffeur’s license number, the license of his vehicle, if any, the offense charged, and the time and place when and where such persоn shall appear in court.
1937 Minn. Laws ch. 464, art. 18, § 135(a), at 779 (emphasis added). Read together, the
historical sections 134 and 135 indicate that persons arrested for violating the traffic act
generally would be cited and released without pretrial detention, but they included an
exception allowing for pretrial detention for more serious offenses, such as driving while
intoxicated. We have interpreted the amended provision accordingly, holding that persons
arrested under
These alternate processes contemplated by the statute track the constitutional rights
of arrestees historically. Detention following a warrantless arrest (as opposed to immediate
release after a citation) has always included the right to prompt presentation before a judge
or magistrate.
See County of Riverside v. McLaughlin,
This historical backdrop behind the reason arrestees must appear before a judge
helps us answer what is meant by “immediately,” still today, in the statute’s slightly
amended form. The statute continues to direct that “the arrested person shall be taken into
custody and immediately taken bеfore a judge.” We are convinced that the two
procedurally significant events that carry the “immediate” relationship are the officer’s
completion of the custodial arrest process and the arrestee’s presentation to a judge before
she begins a potentially prolonged pretrial detention. This understanding best fits the
Fourth Amendment’s requirement. The
McLaughlin
Court observed that states that were
meeting the constitutional duty directed that officials must present the arrestee before a
judge immediately after “completing the administrative steps incident to arrest—
i.e.
, as
soon as the suspect has been booked, photographed, and fingerprinted.”
And as we have already suggested, the impaired-driving context similarly confirms
this understanding of “immediately.” Officers are statutorily directed to inform the suspect
of the test requirement, including the right to consult with an attorney before deciding to
submit to a test.
We must ultimately reject Shimota’s contention that the officer violated her statutory right to be taken “immediately” before a judge following her arrest or following *12 her demand, before she was given the opportunity to decide whether to submit to a breath test. Her arrest was not complete until the administrative duties attending her arrest were complete. One officer testified that Shimota was released immediately after the booking process concluded. Shimota was not entitled to be brought before a judge because she was released from custody “immediately” after her arrest, enduring no post-arrest pretrial confinement. And because we hold that the officer did not violate Shimota’s statutory right to be taken immediately before a judge, we do not address whether a violation carries the various legal consequences that she urges.
II
Shimota moved to record the trial implicitly under Minnesota Rule of General
Practice 4.02(c), which allows for video recording only if all parties consent. She relied
expressly on the Sixth Amendment, not the rule. The district court denied her motion after
the state refused to consent. Shimota argues that the district court’s denial violated her
Sixth Amendment right to a public trial. This presents a question of constitutional law,
which we review de novo.
State v. Bobo
,
Shimota offers no authority, either binding or persuasive, that holds or suggests that
a defendant has a constitutional right to record her own trial. She instead extrapolates the
asserted right from other rights. She reminds us that a defendant has the right to a public
trial and that allowing cameras in the courtroom constitutes no per se violation of a
defendant’s constitutional rights.
See Chandler v. Florida
, 449 U.S. 560, 573–74, 101
S. Ct. 802, 809 (1981) (holding no absolute constitutional bar to electronic media
coverage). She also highlights the First Amendment’s relationship to the right to a public
*13
trial.
Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia
,
Shimota’s constitutional argument faces at least three legal problems. First, courts
lack authority to create new constitutional rights—a privilege vested in “the people” and
regulated by a specific amendment process.
See
The Sixth Amendment right to a public trial belongs solely to the defendant and
“guarantee[s] that the accused would be fairly dealt with and not unjustly condemned.”
Estes v. Texas
,
We hold that the district court did not violate Shimota’s constitutional right to a public trial by denying her request to video record the trial. The district court therefore did not err in applying Minnesota General Rule of Practice 4.02(c) and denying Shimota’s motion.
III
Shimota maintains that the district court abused its discretion in instructing the jury
on test refusal. The district court has “considerable latitude” in crafting jury instructions.
State v. Gatson
,
Shimota specifically challenges the part of the district court’s instruction on the test- refusal charge that addressed the need for the officer to have had probable cause that she was impaired before he required her to submit to a breath test:
First, a peace оfficer had probable cause to believe that the defendant drove a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol. “Probable cause” requires objective facts. You should evaluate the totality of the circumstances from the view point of a reasonable officer, and you may consider the experience and training of the officer. Probable cause requires an honest and strong suspicion by the officer that the Defendant was driving a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.
Jury instructions are viewed in their entirety to examine whether they fairly and adequately
explain the law of the case.
State v. Flores
,
The challenged instruction fairly and accurately explains the law. It sets out the
threshold element in the test-refusal statute that a “test may be required of a person when
an officer has probable cause to believe the person was driving . . . a motor vehicle” while
impaired.
Shimota maintains that the instruction redefines the statute to make it unconstitutionally vague and that it prevented the jury from rendering a unanimous verdict. Neither argument succeeds.
We disagree with Shimota’s argument that the instruction rendered the test-refusal
statute unconstitutionally vague. A statute cannot be enforced if it forbids an act in such
vague terms that a person of common intelligence must guess at its meaning.
United States
v. Lanier
,
Shimota argues that, applying the meaning to the statute that the instruction implies,
the statute becomes vague because no one can know whether probable cause exists and
whether refusing a test would be a crime. This is because probable cause depends on a
reasonable officer’s perspective, incorporating
the officer’s
experience and training—
circumstances unknown to the arrestee. But criminal juries commonly must apply а
reasonable person standard. They must do so, for example, in reckless driving trials.
See
We also do not agree with Shimota’s argument that the instruction creates a
unanimity issue becаuse it allows each juror to find probable cause on facts that might have
been rejected by other jurors when probable cause depends on the totality of the
circumstances. Although all criminal jury verdicts must be unanimous, “the jury need not
always decide unanimously which of several possible means the defendant used to commit
the offense.”
State v. Ihle
,
IV
Shimota contends that the evidence was insufficient for the jury to find her guilty of
obstructing legal process. We review the record to determine whether the evidence, taken
in the light most favorable to the verdict, is sufficient for a guilty verdict.
State v. Webb
,
The obstructing-legal-process statute prohibits persons from intentionally
obstructing, resisting, or interfering with a peace officer who is performing “official
duties.”
Shimota also argues that the state failed to prove obstruction because she did not
direct her physical resistance at the officers. But the statute does not require proof that the
offender directed her force at anyonе in particular. As a matter of law, requiring the state
to prove that the defendant directed her force at a police officer rather than at an inanimate
object would render meaningless the statute’s differentiation between obstruction based on
an act “accompanied by force or violence or the threat thereof” and obstruction “in all other
cases.”
D E C I S I O N
Applying the statute’s meaning of “immediately” in the context of an arrest, we hold
that Minnesota Statutes
Affirmed.