Attorney’s concession to certain elements of the crime was not an admission of guilt
By Todd Nelson
BridgeTower Media Newswires
MINNEAPOLIS, MN — An Owatonna man convicted of sexually assaulting two underage girls won’t get a new trial because his attorney’s concession to certain elements of the crimes was not an admission of the defendant’s guilt, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in reversing a Court of Appeals decision.
Justin Joseph Huisman alleged that defense counsel conceded his guilt without his consent in admitting that the victims were underage and that Huisman was 26 when the assaults occurred in August 2017.
The District Court found Huisman guilty of first- and third-degree criminal sexual conduct charges.
Huisman had met the victims at an Owatonna park and later took them to his mother’s house nearby, where he was living and where the assaults occurred. Huisman is incarcerated at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater with an anticipated release in August 2030.
Huisman appealed, arguing that his counsel’s concession to some elements of the crimes without his consent amounted to a concession of guilt. The Court of Appeals agreed with Huisman, concluding that he required a new trial.
The Minnesota Supreme Court, however, reversed the Court of Appeals’ ruling and rejected Huisman’s bid for a new trial in an opinion issued on Wednesday.
The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice David Lillehaug, found that the defense did not concede Huisman’s guilt because the elements his counsel admitted concerning the victims’ ages and Huisman’s were undisputed at his trial.
For that matter, Lillehaug wrote, Huisman’s attorney vigorously challenged the one disputed element in the case, that a sexual assault had occurred. The defense argued throughout the trial and during the closing argument that Huisman did not sexually assault the victims, defending “against the state’s strong evidence connecting Huisman to the crime.”
The first-degree charge against Huisman involves three elements: that a sexual assault occurred, that the victim was under 13 and the defendant is more than 36 months older than the victim. The third-degree charge similarly involves three elements: a sexual assault, a victim at least 13 but less than 16 and a defendant who is more than 24 months older than the victim.
The Supreme Court found that the court of appeals erred in reasoning that defense counsel’s concessions amounted to a concession of Huisman’s guilt without his consent. The appeals court based that reasoning on the Supreme Court’s statement in Torres v. State that it reviewed whether counsel in that case had “conceded guilt on any element” of the charges.
The appeals court, Lillehaug wrote, took that statement out of context.
“We observed that the analysis of whether guilt was conceded was, necessarily, based on an analysis of whether elements had been conceded,” Lillehaug wrote of the Torres’ ruling. “We did not say—and clarify today that we did not mean to say—that an unconsented-to concession on any single element necessarily is a concession of guilt. ... Based on the facts of this case, defense counsel’s concessions of fewer than all of the elements was not a concession of guilt.”
The Supreme Court declined Huisman’s invitation announce that as a rule of law, saying it would prevent defense counsel from making what may be appropriate tactical concessions. Justices declined the state’s invitation to announce that only a concession on each and every element of a crime is a concession of guilt.
The Supreme Court also denied Huisman’ alternative argument, that his counsel’s concessions amounted to trial error under the U.S. Supreme Court’s ineffective-assistance test in Strickland v. Washington. That landmark case established that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel means “the right to the effective assistance of counsel.” To claim ineffective assistance, a defendant must show that counsel’s performance fell below an objective standard of reasonableness and that there was a reasonable probability that the result would have been different if counsel had performed adequately.
Huisman met neither prong of the Strickland test, the Supreme Court ruled. The defense counsel’s concessions about undisputed elements were “patently reasonable” and were not prejudicial, with the district court’s conviction relying not on the concessions but on the evidence.
The Supreme Court seems to be trying to take ineffective-assistance claims on a case-by-case basis, University of Minnesota School of law professor David Schultz said.
“What I do find unusual is for them not to take the next step,” Schultz said. “The step they take here is to say you guys got it wrong, you didn’t apply it right. Generally what the court will now say is here’s what we meant and here is the rule going forward so the lower courts know what to do.”
Justices may not have agreed on how to clarify the Torres ruling further.
“From a legal perspective maybe they’re just simply saying that this is a case where we think you got it wrong but we’re not trying to use this decision for precedential value in terms of what the rule actually is,” said Schultz. “So I think it’s a combination of the two, not knowing what the right answer is and just saying in this case, no, you just got it wrong.”
The Huisman decision “is the equivalent of a summary reversal, where the Supreme Court thinks the Court of Appeals has misinterpreted precedent, so (it) steps in with a short quick reversal,” Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor Ted Sampsell-Jones said in an e-mail reply. “They aren't intending to change the law or anything about Strickland.”
