Court of Appeals reverses first-degree criminal sexual conduct conviction and awards defendant a new trial

On September 21, 2020, the Minnesota Court of Appeals issued State of Minnesota vs. Cody Lyle Bergendahl, A19-1450 (Minn. Ct. App. Sept. 21, 2020), in which the court reversed a Le Sueur County jury’s guilty verdict and awarded the defendant a new criminal trial. The grounds for the reversal and remand were that one member of the twelve-panel Le Sueur County jury was not impartial. 

Before the criminal trial, due to the juror’s apparent bias toward the defense’s case, Bergendahl’s criminal defense attorney motioned for the Le Sueur County district court judge to strike that juror from the jury pool for cause. According to the Minnesota appeals court, the district court judge committed reversible error when it denied the lawyer’s motion to strike because the juror was, in fact, biased. In other words, due to this reversal, Bergendahl has a second chance at trial. 

Individuals charged with a crime in Minnesota have a constitutional right to an impartial jury. If even a single juror is not impartial, a defendant could win on appeal. 

Minnesota courts in prior opinions have reiterated that, because the impartiality of the individual’s adjudicators goes to the very integrity of the legal system, the bias of a single juror violates the defendant’s right to a fair trial.

The resolution of Bergendahl’s criminal appeals case largely turned on an analysis of State v. Fraga, 864 N.W.2d 615 (Minn. 2015), a 2015 Minnesota Supreme Court case. In Fraga, the Supreme Court reiterated that if a district court denies a defense attorney’s pre-trial motion to strike a juror for cause, reversal of that decision on appeal is appropriate if two things are true. 

First, there must be evidence that the juror expressed actual bias. To determine whether there was actual bias, the juror’s answers to their voir dire questions must be viewed in context. If, after viewing the juror’s responses in context, the court determines that the juror expressed actual bias, then the court must determine whether the juror was properly rehabilitated. “Proper rehabilitation” means that the court did something in reaction to the juror’s apparent bias, to ensure that the juror will in fact be impartial during the trial proceedings, despite the apparent pre-trial bias. In Fraga, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that a juror is considered to be rehabilitated “if he or she states unequivocally that he or she will follow the district court’s instructions and will set aside any preconceived notions and fairly evaluate the evidence.” In Bergendahl’s case, that did not occur. 

Bergendahl involved a first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge, meaning that the defendant was alleged to have committed the most serious form of sex crime in Minnesota. 

The juror at issue in the appeal (referred to in the opinion as Juror 27), was a mother whose daughter had been physically and emotionally abused by a prior boyfriend. In response to Juror 27’s pre-trial disclosure of her daughter’s past abuse, the judge, the prosecutor, and the criminal defense lawyer all questioned Juror 27 to determine whether she would be impartial, despite her past. 

The district court began by asking her whether her daughter’s abuse “would affect your ability to be fair and impartial in a situation like this?” Juror 27 initially answered that it “might” and further stated, “I would hope that I could be impartial to it all, but I can’t say for sure, either.” Bergendahl’s criminal defense attorney asked Juror 27 whether she “could be fair to both sides of the case.” Juror 27 answered, “I think that I could be, but I can’t . . . say a hundred percent sure.” When asked whether she could “completely set aside the past about your daughter,” she answered, “Yep. Yep, that I could.” Bergendahl’s attorney asked whether her daughter’s experience “would affect how you would think about a case like this?” Juror 27 answered by saying, “I hope not, but I . . . can’t say a hundred percent,” “I want to be impartial [and] to listen to both sides and . . . come up with a fair judgment,” and “[t]here is part of me that says, I might not be able to, yes, that I’m not sure.”

The Court of Appeals determined that Juror 27 was biased, and that her equivocal responses fell shy of the rehabilitation requirements outlined in Fraga. Because of this, the Court of Appeals reversed the criminal defendant’s conviction on appeal, including Bergendahl’s presumptive 12-year prison sentence, and remanded for a new trial. 

Trial errors are common, but that does not make them excusable. Errors committed by judges, prosecutors, and criminal defense lawyers in Minnesota can have a tremendous impact on a trial. Especially in cases where the allegations involve criminal sexual conduct involving force or coercion, or criminal sexual conduct due to a difference in age between the actor and the alleged victim, the consequences can be very serious. 

If your criminal conviction involved a biased jury pool, biased individual juror, or your jury trial was otherwise not impartial, it is critical to retain the best appellate lawyer or criminal appeals attorneys in Minnesota as possible. Wilson Criminal Defense has significant experience in obtaining reversals at the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and petitioning for review of denied criminal appeals at the Minnesota Supreme Court. 

Read the full opinion here: https://www.mncourts.gov/mncourtsgov/media/Appellate/Court%20of%20Appeals/Standard%20opinions/OPa191450-092120.pdf