Ooh neat, the effortpost gobbled up by the backup timing survived in clipboard manager, so what the hell:
What leverage is Nick supposed to have in these negotiations?
This is what makes what happened this week funny. He was laying the groundwork on social media for weeks that he intended to take a deal. That means he was 100% confident that he would walk into that room, his lawyer would state the demands Nick was making in terms of altering the deal, and the response would be "Of course, Mr. Rekieta, sir. You're the best legal mind to ever grace this county. We're honored to accept your terms."
What demands did he make? Who knows. What seems clear is that he must have went in expecting a deal and no deal was reached.
I hate to give him or the Barneswalker any credit on anything, but for purposes of perspective-taking there is at least one barely non-frivolous triable issue they probably think they can fool a jury with. At this point everyone, including them, has to accept that the drug charges are a slam-dunk assuming Kayla's motion and any post-trial appeals continue failing to knock out the warrant, but the child endangerment charge is at least slightly weaker insofar as the essential element that a child must be proven "present" at the time of the possession beyond a reasonable doubt, and unfortunately the breadth of that term is poorly defined at the appellate level thus far.
I've referred before to the case of
State v. Wierson, 2019 WL 4409392 (Minn. App. Sept. 16, 2019) (rev'd on other grounds) just as an offhand example of how harshly sentencing could go for the child endangerment gross misdemeanor notwithstanding whatever the felony sentencing guidelines say for the drug count, but interestingly
Wierson also briefly touched on the "presence" element where
even the state seemed to implicitly concede that presence is not necessarily so simple as residing in the same home, and also may involve a question of
access to specific
areas within the home:
Unfortunately the child endangerment conviction in
Wierson was reversed for the unrelated reason of the defendant's caretaker status, so the court had no occasion to drill down on definition and scope of the "presence" element beyond the nonbinding dictum above, so it still is an open question in a case like Nick's where caretaker status is a given. For whatever it's worth though, I figured there would have been more of a battle on this specific issue at the district level that could serve as a sneak preview for how it could play out in Nick's case, and sure enough there was in the MCRO file. The pertinent docs are attached for anyone curious but here's a TLDR:
1. Early on, Wierson's motion to dismiss at the omnibus hearing included, among other things, an argument that there wasn't a sufficient showing of probable cause to believe the child had enough proximity to where the drugs were stored:
2. The state's response to the motion to dismiss pointed out, correctly, that under
State v. Perry the child did not need to have been in actual danger, but seemed to misapprehend the thrust of the defendant's argument that the child, whether in actual danger or not, would at least need to have proximity or access beyond mere presence:
3. In the omnibus hearing transcript, both the court and the state seemed to take seriously the clarified argument about proximity to the drugs mattering despite undisputed presence in the home, to the point that the state even acknowledged the implications of a "statutory vagueness" (i.e. due process) argument separate from the factual argument:
4. When denying the defendant's motion to dismiss, the judge notably at least took the presence argument seriously enough to pad the order with multiple findings of fact fixating on whether the garage was "accessible" versus being "locked or secured," and also whether the toolbox in the garage containing the drugs was "locked or secured," followed by the conclusions of law hinging on how the "unlocked and unsecured" toolbox and the "accessible" garage were crucial to the judge's decision, as though lack of access could have made the decision go another way:
5. In the eventual trial transcript, the state didn't rest on its laurels about the child's presence in the house, and instead the state took the question of access seriously enough to make sure their direct examination of one of the searching officers got it into the record that the garage was "accessible from inside the house" from an "unlocked" service door where a child could "go back and forth," without "access prohibited in any way," such that "the child would have been free to go into their garage" as shown by the "children's toys and other children's objects" in there:
Taking all of the above into account, even though Wierson ultimately didn't need to prevail on this specific argument, it speaks volumes that both the judge and
even the state took the argument very seriously and were careful to build a solid record regarding it so as to withstand appeal on a ripe issue of first impression. It follows that the prosecutor in Nick's case would have to take it seriously, because even though the Barneswalker hilariously waived it for omnibus purposes, it will still be fair game in trial testimony and in an appeal as well.
Moreover, as much as I hate to admit it, Nick would likely have a stronger factual record on this issue than Wierson ever did. In a perfect world for Nick, he could have even had a killshot if all the drugs had been kept in his safes, but because April's dumb ass left the credit cards and vial and likely surrounding residue on the bedside table (which he probably chews her out about regularly), his only hope would be to have him, Kayla, and April all swear on a stack of bibles that each door to that master bedroom was always routinely locked and pray that enough jurors find a bare kernel of reasonable doubt in that transparently self-serving bullshit. That would at least have better chances than Wierson, whose unlocked garage service door and unlocked toolbox made sure he was fucked.
This crucial issue could also shed some more light on why Aaron is regarded as a likely witness when he ordinarily wouldn't be in a bare possession case, and why Nick has had such a hard-on for thinly veiled witness intimidation at all costs. If Aaron could testify to his personal knowledge from many months of cuck orgies in that bedroom that everybody was careless about locking the doors, perhaps even so much so that kids stuck their heads in the door asking for spaghettios etc., then under
Rule 406 that all comes in. There might even be a halfway decent shot at getting in his story about the coke bullet falling into his own couch or any other similar instances of coke making its way out of the bedroom, though that kind of prior bad acts evidence would have a tougher time
Rule 404/
Spreigl unless the state can shoehorn it into one of the various exceptions.
Anyway, that's just an often overlooked aspect of this case worth reconsidering from the prosecutor's perspective. If in her shoes I'd just run a train on this arrogant faggot and let the jury decide, but with her office's limited resources and
bigger fish to fry, you just never know what to expect from her.
