State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-0026

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Alexis Elview Hancock,
Appellant.

Filed December 4, 2017
Affirmed
Reyes, Judge

Blue Earth County District Court
File No. 07-CR-16-1322

Lori Swanson, State Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

Patrick R. McDermott, Blue Earth County Attorney, Susan B. DeVos, Assistant County
Attorney, Mankato, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Erik I. Withall, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Jesson, Presiding Judge; Reilly, Judge; and Reyes,
Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
REYES, Judge
On appeal from her conviction of viola tion of a domestic a buse no contact order
(DANCO), appellant challenges the district court’s denial of her motion to stipulate to the
2
existence of a DANCO and her knowledge thereof as elements of the charged offense in
order to preclude presentation of that evidence to the jury during trial. We affirm.
FACTS
On February 23, 2016, the district court issued a DANCO that prohibited appellant
Alexis Elview Hancock from having direct or indirect contact with her brother, K.R.H., and
his girlfriend, M.K. On March 19, 2016, appellant exited her apartment to meet her sister,
T.H. When appellant went outside, K.R.H. was sitting in appellant’s truck, which she
usually leaves unlocked.
As T.H. pulled into appella nt’s apartment complex, Mankato Police arrived and
arrested T.H. for an unrelated crime. Appellant stood nearby and recorded the incident on
her cell phone with K.R.H. standing next to he r. A police-squad video of T.H.’s arrest
shows appellant and K.R.H. speaking to eac h other. Shortly after, police discovered the
DANCO issued against appellant. On April 5, 2016, the state filed a complaint charging
appellant with a misdemeanor violation of a DANCO under Minn. Stat. § 629.75, subd.
2(b) (2014). 
The district court held a jury trial on Se ptember 30, 2016. In a pretrial motion,
appellant asserted that the DANCO should not be admitted, in part, because it contained
information prejudicial to appellant. Appe llant offered to stipulate that the DANCO
existed and that she knew of its existence. The district court denied appellant’s request and
ruled that the DANCO could be received into evidence. Du ring trial, the jury saw the
DANCO via an overhead projector and heard testimony from a Mankato Police
Department officer regarding the DANCO’s contents, including DA NCO excerpts that
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were read aloud. The jury found appellant guilty of one c ount of misdemeanor violation
of a DANCO. This appeal follows. 
D E C I S I O N
We review the district court’s decision to admit objected-to evidence for an abuse
of discretion. State v. Amos, 658 N.W.2d 201, 203 (Minn. 2003). Appellant has the burden
of establishing that the district court abus ed its discretion by admitting the evidence and
the admission unfairly prejudiced appellant. Id. Appellant is prejudiced if “there is a
reasonable possibility that the wrongfully admitted evidence significantly affected the
verdict.” State v. Thao, 875 N.W.2d 834, 839 (Minn. 2016).
I. The district court properly permitted the state to present its case-in-chief.

Appellant argues that the district court e rred when it denied appellant’s offer to
stipulate to the existence of the DANCO and her knowledge of its ex istence. Appellant
relies on three cases: State v. Davidson, 351 N.W.2d 8 (Minn. 1984); State v. Berkelman,
355 N.W.2d 394 (Minn. 1984); and State v. Kruse, A07-2389, 2009 WL 817266 (Minn.
App. Mar. 31, 2009), review denied (Minn. June 16, 2009). In both Davidson and
Berkelman, the supreme court held that the dist rict court erred when it denied the
defendants’ offers to stipulate to a past conviction because the conviction was one element
of the current criminal charge, and the past conviction did not bear in any way upon issues
not included in the stipulation. Davidson, 351 N.W.2d at 10, 12; Berkelman, 355 N.W.2d
at 396-97. Kruse, an unpublished decision, applied Davidson and Berkelman to
stipulations of the existence and knowledge of a harassment restraining order (HRO). 2009
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WL 817266, at *1. Appellant argues that we should apply the Davidson and Berkelman
holdings here because the court applied them in Kruse, an HRO case.
Appellant fails to distinguish a DANCO fro m a past conviction or an HRO. An
HRO is a civil order and is issued at the petitioner’s request through the civil court process,
Minn. Stat. § 609.748 (2014), and a DANCO is “an order issued by a court against a
defendant in a criminal proceed ing.” Minn. Stat. § 629.75, subd. 1(a) (2014). However,
the existence of a DANCO is not always evidence of a past conviction:
[A] domestic abuse no contact order may be issued as a pretrial
order before final disposition of the underlying criminal case
or as a postconviction probatio nary order. A domestic abuse
no contact order is independent of any condition of pretrial
release or probation imposed on the defendant. A domestic
abuse no contact order may be issued in addition to a similar
restriction imposed as a condi tion of pretrial release or
probation.

Minn. Stat. § 629.75, subd. 1(b) (2014).
In addition, appellant disregards the state’s interests in this case. “[T]he prosecution
is entitled to prove its case by evidence of its own choice, or, more exactly, that a criminal
defendant may not stipulate or admit his way out of the full evidentiary force of the case
as the [state] chooses to present it.” Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 186-87, 117
S. Ct. 644, 653 (1997). The state “may fairly seek to place its evidence before the jurors,
as much to tell a story of guiltiness as to support an inference of guilt, to convince the jurors
that a guilty verdict would be morally reasonable as much as to point to the discrete
elements of the defendant’s legal fault.” Id. at 188, 117 S. Ct. at 654.
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A misdemeanor violation of a DANCO occu rs when “a person who knows of the
existence of a domestic abuse no contact order against the person and violates the order is
guilty of a misdemeanor.” Minn. Stat. § 629.75, subd. 2(b). Had appellant been permitted
to stipulate to the DANCO’s existence and he r knowledge thereof, the state would have
been deprived of its right to present its full case to the jury.
II. The district court did not abuse its discre tion when it denied appellant’s offer
to stipulate to the DANCO because its probative value was not substantially
outweighed by its prejudicial effect.

Appellant argues that the district cour t abused its discretion by admitting the
DANCO because its probative value was outweighed by its prejudicial effect. Specifically,
she argues that the DANCO’s receipt into evidence, publication, and references throughout
trial, as well as the jury instructions, had an unfairly prejudicial impact on the outcome of
the case. We disagree.
Although the presentation of the DANCO may ha ve been damaging to Hancock’s
defense, unfair prejudice “is not merely damaging evidence, [or] even severely damaging
evidence; rather, unfair prejudice is evidence that persuades by illegitimate means, giving
one party an unfair advantage.” See State v. Bell , 719 N.W.2d 635, 641 (Minn. 2006)
(quotation omitted). A lthough “‘(c)ases may arise where unduly prejudicial evidence,
which is without relevance beyond the defenda nt’s judicial admissions, should not be
received[,]’” that is not the case here. See State v. Gustafson, 266 N.W.2d 878, 880 (Minn.
1978).
As the district court found, the DANCO offers probative evidence of the constraints
it imposed. The DANCO contained no unfairly prejudicial details of the incident that led
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to its issuance, did not persuade by illegitimate means, and did not give the state an unfair
advantage. Because the DANCO’s probative value was not outweighed by the danger of
unfair prejudice, the district court did not a buse its discretion when it denied appellant’s
motion to stipulate to the DANCO and permitted its publication at trial.
Appellant’s argument that both the refere nces to the DANCO during trial and the
jury instructions were unfairly prejudicial also lacks merit. Appellant testified about the
DANCO, and any prejudice resulting from the references to the DANCO either during trial
or in the jury instructions di d not substantially outweigh their probative value. Thus, the
district court did not abuse its discretion because the probative value of each substantially
outweighs any resulting danger of unfair prejudice.
Affirmed.