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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A17-1356

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Michael Paul Wooten,
Appellant.

Filed April 2, 2018
Affirmed
Rodenberg, Judge

Watonwan County District Court
File No. 83-CR-14-584

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

Stephen J. Lindee, Watonwan County Attorney, St. James, Minnesota (for respondent)

Thomas K. Hagen, Steven P. Groschen, Rosengren, Kohlmeyer & Hagen Law Office,
Chtd., Mankato, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Rodenberg, Presiding Judge; Bjorkman, Judge; and
Smith, Tracy M., Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
RODENBERG, Judge
Appellant Michael Paul Wooten challenges the district court’s conclusion that clear
and convincing evidence proved he violated a condition of his probation. We affirm.

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FACTS
Appellant was convicted of two separate criminal offenses in early 2015. The
district court stayed execution of senten ce and placed appellant on probation with
conditions that included that appellant not possess or use alcohol or controlled substances,
and that he submit to random drug testing to ensure his co mpliance with this and other
probation conditions.
On Friday, February 10, 2017, appellant met with his probation agent, Neil Johnson,
at Johnson’s office. Johnson requested that appellant provide a urine sample. Johnson
wore rubber gloves during the testing process. He required appellant to wash his hands
and checked appellant for any means of falsifying the sample. Johnson testified, “I got in
there and from what I remember [appellant] coul dn’t go. . . . [H]e kind of fumbled or
dropped the cup. . . . He gave me the cup ba ck. And then I just said, well, we’ll try it—
We’ll try it in a little bit.” Johnson did not remember the cup hitting the urinal or dropping
on the floor.
They waited for some time, and appellant eventually provided a urine sample. The
sampling process was uneventful this time. Johnson field-tested the sample and it was
positive for amphetamine but negative for methamphetamine. This was not a typical result,
so Johnson left appellant in the hallway and took the sample to consult another probation-
department employee. Johnson decided to send the sample to a laboratory for further
analysis, but he allowed appellant to leave his office and not be taken into custody despite
the positive, but somewhat anomalous, field-test result. Johnson pla ced the urine sample
on a table in his office, left his office to retrieve appellant, and then escorted appellant back

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into his office to seal the urine cup and complete paperw ork concerning the sample.
Johnson sealed the sealed urine cup in a plastic bag and placed it in a refrigerator, where it
remained over the weekend before being sent to the laboratory. The laboratory later
reported that testing revealed the sample to contain more th an 1,000 ng/mL of
methamphetamine and more than 400 ng/mL of amphetamine. Johnson later reported the
result and apparent probation violation to the district court.
At the probation-violation hearing, the st ate called three witnesses: Johnson,
another probation agent, and a secretary in the probation department. Only Johnson had
handled appellant’s urine sample. The la boratory report concerning the sample was
received in evidence. Based on that report, Johnson testified that he believed appellant had
violated a condition of his probation by using amphetamine and methamphetamine.
The district court issued a written order on June 12, 2017. The district court found
that appellant “dropped or fumbled the cup” during the first attempt at providing a urine
specimen, that he may have “caught the cup or somehow trapped it against his body and
the urinal,” and that “Johnson had the cup in his office and left momentarily to get the
worksheet to prepare to ship the sample.” But the district court nevertheless found that the
“procedures for urine collection were substantively followed, and there is no evidence the
test was invalid. There was no credible evid ence, or inference, that the test was not
accurate.” The district court concluded that clear and convincing ev idence proved that
appellant violated his probatio n, and it reinstated him to probation with the additional
condition that he serve 60 days in jail.
This appeal followed.

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D E C I S I O N
Appellant challenges the district court’s d ecision that he violated a condition of his
probation. He argues that the state did not prove a violation by clear and convincing
evidence because the urine sample may have been compromised.1
The burden of proof at a probation-violation hearing requires clear and convincing
evidence that a condition of probation was vi olated. Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.04, subd.
2(1)(c)(b). For evidence to be clear and convincing, th ere must be “more than a
preponderance of the eviden ce but less than proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” State v.
Kennedy, 585 N.W.2d 385, 389 (Minn. 1998) (quotation omitted). “Clear and convincing
evidence may be established by the testimony of a single witness.” State v. Oates , 611
N.W.2d 580, 585 (Minn. App. 2000).
Here, the district court concluded that ap pellant had violated his probation by using
illegal drugs. Record evidence supports the district court’s findings of fact. Johnson
testified that, although appellant dropped or fumbled the cup during the first sample
attempt, Johnson saw no need to use another cup because nothing about what he saw gave
him concern about contamination. Appellant speculates that the cup could have become
contaminated, but there is no record evid ence of contamination. Johnson required
appellant to wash and dry his hands before approaching the urinal, he inspected appellant’s
body for things that could falsify the sample, and he stood beside appellant near the privacy
screen as appellant urinated. Johnson testifie d that he had no reas on to believe that the

1 Appellant does not separately challenge the district court’s disposition of the probation
violation by imposing 60 days in jail as an intermediate sanction.

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sample had been contaminated. The prelim inary field test showed amphetamine, and a
“real light line for meth.” Johnson sealed the sample and sent it to a laboratory for chemical
testing, which indicated that appellant’s urine contained both substances.
Appellant argues that Johnson violat ed Department of Corrections (DOC)
procedures for obtaining a urine sample be cause Johnson did not “[ k]eep the collection
bottle in full view of the offender at all time s” or freeze the urine sample before shipping
it to the laboratory. The district court expl ained that, although “[t]here was a period of
time between the sample attempts that the cup wa s in a box, . . . that is irrelevant as the
sample wasn’t provided and [appellant] woul d have had the opport unity to see the cup
before the second attempt.” Additionally, the district court found that there was “a minute
or so when the cup was on Johnson’s desk wh ile Johnson got the forms for preparing the
sample for shipping and [appellant] then returned to complete the process.” The laboratory
test showed the “actual levels of chemicals in the sample.” The district court, in accepting
the test as accurate, implicitly concluded that Johnson’s decisi on to refrigerate the urine
sample did not compromise the sample. The di strict court concluded that such a “minor
deviation from [DOC] protocol” did not invalidate the test result.
The record supports the district court’ s findings, and those findings support the
conclusion that appellant violated a probation condition.
Affirmed.