Minnesota Supreme Court, 1981

State v. Crain

Minnesota Supreme Court · Decided June 26, 1981 · Otis

306 N.W.2d 891; 1981 Minn. LEXIS 1340 (North Western Reporter, Second Series)

Counsel

C. Paul Jones, Public Defender, and Mark F. Anderson, Asst. Public Defender, Minneapolis, for appellant., Warren Spannaus, Atty. Gen., Gary Hansen and Kenneth W. Saffold, Sp. Asst. At-tys. Gen., St. Paul, Richard W. Swanson, County Atty., Grand Marais, for respondent.

Can I rely on this case?

Citation treatment has not been reviewed for this case. The notes below come from the citation graph and the Minnesota Revisor's amendment records, not from a review of how later courts treated this decision.

(as of 9/30/2026)

Last cited by a Minnesota appellate court in 1991, among the opinions in this site’s citation index.

Cites Minnesota statutes amended since this decision

Minn. Stat. § 609.52 — amended 1983

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Minnesota statutes cited

Sections of the Minnesota Statutes this opinion cites.

Minn. Stat. § 609.52

Cases that cite this one

2 later published cases cite this decision.

State v. Ostroot (Minn. 1981)
State v. Lund (Minn. Ct. App. 1991)

This list shows which later cases cite this one. It does not say how they treated it, and no review of that has been done. Not a substitute for Shepard’s or KeyCite — verify before relying.

Opinion of the Court

OTIS, Justice.

Defendant was found guilty of theft of over $150, Minn.Stat. § 609.52, subd. 2(1) and subd. 3(2) (1980). He was sentenced to a maximum five-year prison term to run concurrently with a prior sentence which resulted in parole revocation. In addition, the court ordered restitution and fined defendant $200. We affirm.

1. There is no merit to the contention that the evidence did not establish that *892the property taken was valued at more than $150. Defendant was charged with stealing money from the till of a liquor store in Grand Marais. Using the store’s normal accounting procedures, the owner found that the cash register was “short” just over $200. When appellant and his accomplice, Janet Ostroot,1 were arrested a few hours later as they attempted to cross the border into Canada, they had in their possession 26 $10 bills plus 32 $5 bills, on one of which was marked in pencil the number “70” which the owner of the bar testified he had written in his own hand.

2. Although the identification procedures conducted shortly after the defendants were arrested left something to be desired, we hold that there was no “very substantial likelihood of irreparable mis-identification” — Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 97 S.Ct. 2243, 53 L.Ed.2d 140 (1977), and Neil v. Biggers, 409 U.S. 188, 93 S.Ct. 375, 34 L.Ed.2d 401 (1972). The witnesses had ample opportunity to see and confront this defendant at the scene of the theft and he was returned to Grand Marais for identification within a few hours.

3. Defendant’s final contention is that the trial court erred in denying a motion to exclude from evidence defendant’s four prior theft convictions. Whether theft is automatically admissible under Minn.R. Evid. 609 as a conviction directly involving “dishonesty or false statement,” discussed at 3 D. Louisell and C. Mueller, Federal Evidence, § 317 (1979), we need not decide. Nor do we pass on the propriety of receiving all four convictions to impeach defendant’s credibility since we are satisfied that in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt, if there was error it was not prejudicial.

Affirmed.

. See State v. Ostroot, 306 N.W.2d 892 (Minn. 1981).

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