This opinion will be unpublished and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
A15-1426
State of Minnesota,
Respondent,
vs.
Daniel Lee Kruse,
Appellant.
Filed June 27, 2016
Affirmed
Connolly, Judge
Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-14-27853
Lori Swanson, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and
Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Lee W. Barry, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)
Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Lydia Villalva Lijo, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)
Considered and decided by Larkin, Presiding Judge; Connolly, Judge; and Kirk,
Judge.
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
CONNOLLY, Judge
Appellant challenges his conviction of felony possession of burglary or theft tools,
arguing that the district court abused its discretion and committed reversible error in
instructing a deadlocked jury. Because the jury instruction was not an abuse of discretion,
we affirm.
FACTS
On March 3, 2015, appellant Daniel Kruse had a jury trial on a charge of felony
possession of burglary or theft tools. Before the jury retired on March 3, the district court
read 10 Minnesota Practice CRIMJIG 3.04 (2014) as part of the instructions. The jury
deliberated for an hour and a half, until 4:30 p.m., during which time it sent two notes to
the district court, one concerning a witness’s testimony and the other about the “weight of
eyewitness testimony.”
About an hour after the jury reconvened the next morning, it sent the district court
another note. This note said, “Your Honor, at this point we struggle for a unanimous
decision. After [choosing] to sleep on it, we find for various reasons we are divided six-
six.” The district court read the note aloud to the attorneys and remarked that the jurors
“haven’t really been deliberating awfully long . . . [I]t was only an hour [this morning and]
an hour-and-a-half last night.” Both attorneys agreed that deliberations should continue.
The district court then repeated to the jury some of the instructions it had heard the
previous day:
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Your job will be to find what the facts are in this case by
considering the evidence. Your best guide is your own good
judgment, experience and common sense. You must decide
what testimony to believe and how much weight to give it.
You must decide the facts. You and only you can decide the
facts. Do not take anything I say or do as a sign of what the
verdict should be.
Once facts are decided you must follow the law. You
must follow the law, even if you don’t agree with it. It is your
duty to decide the questions of fact in this case. It is my duty
to give you the rules of law you must apply in arriving at your
verdict. You must follow and apply the rules of law as I give
them to you, even if you believe the law is or should be
different. Deciding questions of fact is your exclusive
responsibility.
Finally, in order for you to return a verdict, whether
guilty or not guilty, each juror must agree with that verdict.
Your verdict must be unanimous.
You should discuss the case with one another and
deliberate with a view toward reaching agreement if you can
do so without violating your individual judgment. You should
decide the case for yourself, but only after you have discussed
the case with your fellow jurors and have carefully considered
their views. You should not hesitate to reexamine your views
and change your opinion[s] if you become convinced they are
erroneous, but you should not surrender your honest opinion
simply because other jurors disagree or merely to reach a
verdict.
So I’ll ask you to go back and deliberate again, and
obviously the deputy will take you to lunch if it gets to be
lunchtime.
Appellant did not object to these instructions, which are verbatim renderings of parts of 10
Minnesota Practice CRIMJIG 1.02 (2014) and of CRIMJIG 3.04.
The jury returned with a guilty verdict; the verdict form indicated that the time was
12:43 p.m. Appellant challenges his conviction on the ground that the instruction in
response to the deadlocked jury’s note was an abuse of discretion.
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DECISION
“We apply our abuse of discretion standard when reviewing a district court’s charge
to a jury to continue deliberating after the jury has indicated it was deadlocked.” State v.
Cox, 820 N.W.2d 540, 550 (Minn. 2012).
Appellant argues that the instructions repeated after the jury reported a deadlock
were coercive and that the district court “instructed jurors in such a way that jurors
concluded that they were required to reach a verdict or that a deadlock was not an option.”
But the district court specifically told the jurors to “deliberate with a view toward reaching
agreement if you can do so without violating your individual judgment,” thus
acknowledging the possibility that the jurors would not be able to come to an agreement if
doing so would violate the individual judgment of even one juror.
Appellant relies on State v. Jones, 556 N.W.2d 903 (Minn. 1996) to argue that
“simply reinstructing the jury on CRIMJIG 3.04 after instructions using the mandatory
language of CRIMJIG 1.02 was not a cure-all.” His reliance is misplaced: the language to
which he refers in the Jones instruction, “giving the proper charge, CRIMJIG 3.04, when
the jury reache[s] a deadlock . . . is not a panacea,” was given as part of a direction to
district courts to give jury instructions verbatim rather than to paraphrase them. Jones, 556
N.W.2d at 911. “Having earlier paraphrased CRIMJIG 3.04, the trial court properly
responded to the jury’s impasse by reading 3.04 verbatim.” Id. at 912. Here, the district
court read CRIMJIG 3.04 verbatim to the jury before it retired, then read CRIMJIG 3.04
verbatim again after the jury reported an impasse, so the problem of paraphrasing did not
arise.
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Moreover, here as in Jones, the amount of time the jury spent deliberating was not
excessive, and instructing it to keep deliberating did not coerce it and did result in a verdict.
There was no abuse of discretion in the jury instructions. Indeed, this was a textbook
response by the district court to a deadlocked jury and we commend the district court for
its handling of this case.
Affirmed.
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