Donquarius Davon Copeland, petitioner, Appellant, vs.

This opinion will be unpublished and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
A17-0285

Donquarius Davon Copeland, petitioner,
Appellant,
vs.

State of Minnesota,
Respondent.

Filed November 20, 2017
Affirmed
Hooten, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-12-9635

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender; and

Bradford Colbert, Assistant Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Jean Burdorf, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Bratvold, Presiding Judge; Bjorkman, Judge; and
Hooten, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
HOOTEN, Judge
Appellant challenges the district court’s ruling that he was not entitled to jail credit
for the time he was in custody in another county on a different offense. We affirm.
2
FACTS
R.G. was sho t and killed with a .357 semi -automatic handgun in Minneapolis on
August 24, 2011, in what appeared to be a gang -related retaliation for a shooting several
weeks earlier. While conducting an unrelated search approximately two days later,
Minneapolis police officers discovered a .357 semi -automatic handgun in a house. The
officers informed the Minneapolis Homicide Unit of their discovery, and a firearms analyst
confirmed that it was the weapon used to kill R.G. Appellant Donquarius Copeland, his
codefendant Derrick Catchings , and another individual were pr esent at the house when
police found the weapon.
On September 2, 2011, Copeland was jailed in Anoka County on an unrelated
offense. The record indicates that in September 2011, police interviewed J.S. —who had
been incarcerated with Catchings on a separate charge—and J.S. indicated that Catchings
discussed his involvement in the murder. Then, in January 2012, Catchings made a partial
admission.1
On March 15, a grand jury was convened to consider charges against Catchings and
any others who were involved in the murder. Later, Copeland made some incriminating
statements regarding the murder.2 The state presented evidence of these statements, along
with testimony of a corroborating witness, to the grand jury on March 29, which returned

1 The record presented on appeal is very sparse. The only evidence describing the police
investigation is part of the testimony of Sergeant Chris Karakostas from Catchings’s trial,
and it does not include any details about what police were told by J.S., or whether
Catchings’s admission implicated Copeland.
2 The record also does not contain any details of the content of Copeland’s incriminating
statements.
3
an indictment against Copeland that same day for two counts of murder in the first-degree
and four counts of attempted murder in the first-degree.
Copeland pleaded guilty to one count of second -degree intentional murder and one
count of attempted second -degree intentional m urder. The district court sentenced
Copeland to 410 months for the murder charge and 153 months for the attempt charge, to
be served concurrently. The district court also awarded Copeland 730 days of jail credit,
calculated from the March 29, 2012 indictment.
Then, Copeland filed a motion for additional jail credit of 209 days, which the
district court denied, and Copeland appealed to this court.
D E C I S I O N
Copeland contends that the district court erred by denying his motion for additional
jail credit, arguing that the state had probable cause to charge him with the R.G. murder as
early as September 2, 2011, while he was in jail for a different offense. Alternatively,
Copeland argues that the state had sufficient evidence to issue the charges in January 2012,
when his codefendant made a partial admission to police, and that he should have received
jail credit commencing on that date.
Deciding “whether to award [jail] credit is a mixed question of fact and law; the
court must determine the circumstances of the custody the defendant seeks credit for, and
then apply the rules to those circumstances.” State v. Clarkin, 817 N.W.2d 678, 687 (Minn.
2012) (quotation omitted). Appellate courts “review the factual findings underlying jail -
credit determinations for clear error, but we review questions of law de novo.” Id.
4
Defendants bear the burden of establishing entitlement to jail credit. State v. Garcia,
683 N.W.2d 294, 297 (Minn. 2004). Credit is only awarded for concurrent sentences, not
consecutive sentences. Clarkin, 817 N.W.2d at 685 –86. If the defendant’s sentences
would be concurrent, jail credit is awarded
for time spent in custody after the date when (1) the State has
completed its investigation in a manner that does not suggest
manipulation by the State, and (2) the State has probable cause
and sufficient evidence to prosecute its case against the
defendant with a reasonable likelihood of actually con victing
the defendant of the offense for which he is charged.
Id. at 689. If the two prongs of Clarkin are met, the district court does not have discretion
in whether to award jail credit. State v. Johnson, 744 N.W.2d 376, 379 (Minn. 2008). It
“must . . . [s]tate the number of days spent in custody in connection with the offense,”
including “time spent in custody from a prior stay of imposition or execution of sentence,”
and is required to deduct that credit “from the sentence and term of imprisonment.” Minn.
R. Crim. P. 27.03, subd. 4(B).
When the State Completed its Investigation3
The district court’s finding that the state did not complete its investigation of
Copeland’s involvement in the R.G. murder until March 29, 2012 is not clearly erroneous.
Copeland first points to September 2, 2011 as a possible date for the end of the state’s
investigation. But, the investigation was just beginning, and the only evidence in the record
linking Copeland to the murde r was his presence at the ho use where police found the

3 The state does not challenge that Copeland’s Anoka County sentence would run
concurrently with his sentences in this case.
5
murder weapon. Copeland next points to January 2012, when Catchings made a partial
admission to police. However, there is nothing in the record describing what Catchings
admitted and whether his admi ssion implicated Copeland. Police continued to interview
witnesses and gather evidence related to the R.G. murder until, and even after, Copeland’s
March 29, 2012 indictment, which supports the district court’s finding that the
investigation was not complete in January 2012.
Copeland does not argue that the state manipulated the date on which it completed
its investigation, and there is no evidence to support such an argument. The district court
did not err by concluding that the state had not completed its investigation of Copeland
until March 29, 2012, when the grand jury returned an indictment against Copeland.
Probable Cause, Sufficient Evidence, and Reasonable Likelihood of Conviction
The record also supports the state’s contention that it did not have probable cause
and sufficient evidence to have a reasonable likelihood of convicting Copeland until March
29. Probable cause exists when “the evidence worthy of consideration . . . brings the
charge against the prisoner within reasonable probability.” State v. Koenig, 666 N.W.2d
366, 372 (Minn. 2003) (quotation omitted). But, Clarkin requires more, because the state
must have evidence sufficient to create “a reasonable likelihood of actually convicting the
defendant.” 817 N.W.2d at 689.
For the tw o points in time that Copeland identifies, September 2011 and January
2012, the only evidence in the record implicating Copeland was his presence at the house
6
where police found the murder weapon.4 But Copeland’s mere presence where the murder
weapon was found is likely insufficient even to prove that Copeland possessed the gun, let
alone that he used it to commit a homicide several days earlier. See State v. Harris, 895
N.W.2d 592, 601 (Minn. 2017) (“To establish that a defendant was consciously or
knowingly exercising dominion and control over a firearm at the time in question, the State
must prove more than the defendant’s mere proximity to the firearm.”). Because Copeland
has not met his burden to show that, prior to the issuance of the indictment on March 29,
2012, the state had completed its investigation , and that the state had a reasonable
likelihood of actually convicting him of the offenses for which he was charged, the district
court did not err in denying Copeland’s motion for additional jail credit.
Affirmed.

4 Because Copeland did not provide this court with a record describing what J.S. told police
in September, or how, if at all, Catchings’s partial admission in January implicated
Copeland, we are not able to consider those sta tements in assessing whether the state had
sufficient evidence to create a reasonable likelihood of convicting Copeland at the time
that the statements were made. Cf. State v. Wembley, 712 N.W.2d 783, 795 (Minn. App.
2006) (holding that assertions of error without supporting facts are waived) , aff’d, 728
N.W.2d 243 (Minn. 2007).