Opinion
No. CX-95-1502
Filed May 14, 1996.
Appeal from the District Court, Ramsey County, File No. K7942592.
Hubert H. Humphrey III, Attorney General, (for Respondent).
Susan E. Gaertner, Ramsey County Attorney, Darrell C. Hill, Assistant County Attorney, (for Respondent).
John M. Stuart, State Public Defender, Rochelle R. Winn, Assistant State Public Defender, (for Appellant).
Considered and decided by Lansing, Presiding Judge, Schumacher, Judge, and Short, Judge.
This opinion will be unpublished and may not be cited except as provided by Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (1994).
UNPUBLISHED
This is an appeal from a child-sodomy conviction challenging the scope of rebuttal evidence. It was within the district court's discretion to admit evidence that defendant had been implicated in a sexual offense investigation to rebut defendant's testimony that he fled the jurisdiction due to threats on his life. We affirm.
Facts
In April 1975 twelve-year-old K.M.C. accused her mother's boyfriend, Robert Van Zandt, of sexual abuse. According to K.M.C., a few months after Van Zandt moved in with her family in 1971, he called her into his bedroom and showed her a book with sexually explicit photographs. Within three or four months, Van Zandt performed oral sex on K.M.C. and forced her to perform oral sex on him several times a month. Van Zandt showed K.M.C. the sexually explicit pictures and instructed her to imitate them.
On April 15, 1975, Ramsey County charged Van Zandt with sodomy with a child, Minn. Stat. ___.293, subd. 4(2) (1974). Van Zandt made one court appearance but disappeared in late April 1975.
Nineteen years later Van Zandt, who had changed his name and social security number, sought custody of his son in Idaho. A background investigation revealed the 1975 Minnesota charges and Van Zandt's fugitive status. On August 16, 1994, Ramsey County filed a complaint charging Van Zandt with sodomy with a child, and Van Zandt was arrested in Idaho under a fugitive warrant.
Van Zandt testified that he lived with K.M.C.'s family but had not sexually abused her. He testified that he left Minnesota in late April 1975 because he met a man at the Fargo, North Dakota bus station who pointed a gun at Van Zandt's head and told him to "leave the area." Van Zandt took the next bus, which happened to go to Idaho, and lived there until 1994. In addition to three Spreigl incidents, the district court admitted rebuttal evidence that in early summer 1975, a nine-year-old boy identified Van Zandt from a photographic lineup as the man who had abducted him from a Fargo motel room and sexually molested him.
On February 24, 1995, the jury found Van Zandt guilty of sodomy with a child. Van Zandt appeals.
Decision
Rebuttal evidence "explains, contradicts, or refutes the defendant's evidence." State v. Swanson, 498 N.W.2d 435, 440 (Minn. 1993). The purpose of rebuttal evidence is to "cut down the defendant's case" rather than confirm the state's case in chief. State v. Walker, 306 Minn. 105, 112, 235 N.W.2d 810, 815 (1975), cert. denied, 426 U.S. 950, 96 S.Ct. 3172 (1976). Determining what constitutes proper rebuttal evidence "rests almost wholly" in the district court's discretion. State v. Eling, 355 N.W.2d 286, 291 (Minn. 1984). Rebuttal evidence is not limited to impeachment by cross-examination but may include extrinsic evidence. See Swanson, 498 N.W.2d at 440 (upholding new witness's testimony in rebuttal).
Van Zandt challenges the rebuttal evidence as an improper use of Spreigl evidence, claiming that it is irrelevant and lacks probative value. See State v. Spreigl, 272 Minn. 488, 139 N.W.2d 167 (1965) (imposing procedural safeguards on admissibility of other-crime evidence). Van Zandt's argument, however, mischaracterizes the evidence and its purpose. Unlike the earlier Spreigl testimony of three young people detailing instances of Van Zandt's sexual conduct, the evidence of Van Zandt's identification in the Fargo investigation was not admitted to show a common scheme or plan. The rebuttal evidence was permitted to counter Van Zandt's testimony that his nineteen-year flight from the jurisdiction was because of a threat made against his life in Fargo.
Van Zandt testified that a man at the bus station in Fargo "[p]ut a gun to my head and said if I wasn't out of the area he['d] blow my damn brains out." Van Zandt then explained that he went to Idaho and never returned to Minnesota, because "I was afraid somebody was going to kill me." This explanation of his nineteen-year absence discounts inferences that his flight from Minnesota and concealment of his identity were related to a consciousness of guilt.
The district court permitted the prosecution to respond to Van Zandt's testimony with evidence suggesting that his flight from North Dakota may have been prompted not by a threat to his life, but by his identification in the Fargo incident. This evidence rebuts Van Zandt's testimony that he fled Minnesota, not because of K.M.C.'s accusations, but because he feared for his life. The district court acted within its discretion in admitting the rebuttal evidence countering Van Zandt's explanation of his flight. See Swanson, 498 N.W.2d at 440 (evidence of prior attempted kidnapping was not admitted as Spreigl evidence but to rebut defendant's claim that he was not stalking women).
Even if admitting the rebuttal evidence had been erroneous, it would not require reversal. See State v. Loebach, 310 N.W.2d 58, 64 (Minn. 1981) (a defendant claiming an evidentiary error must establish prejudice resulting from the error). An error is prejudicial only if there is a reasonable possibility that the wrongfully admitted evidence significantly affected the verdict. State v. Post, 512 N.W.2d 99, 102 n. 2 (Minn. 1994). Id. The state presented strong evidence of Van Zandt's guilt including detailed victim testimony and three Spreigl witnesses. To the degree the rebuttal evidence demonstrated flight from an additional jurisdiction, it only duplicated the evidence of Van Zandt's initial flight from Ramsey County.