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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A17-1775

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Stephanie Rae Holdingeagle,
Appellant.

Filed November 13, 2018
Affirmed
Smith, Tracy M., Judge

Otter Tail County District Court
File No. 56-CR-16-1829

Lori Swanson, Attorney General, Michael Everson, Assistant Attorney General, St. Paul,
Minnesota; and

Michelle Eldien, Otter Tail County Attorney, Fergus Falls, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appe llate Public Defender, Suzanne M . Senecal-Hill,
Assistant Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Smith, Tracy M., Presiding Judge; Re illy, Judge; and
Smith, John, Judge.


 Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by app ointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
SMITH, TRACY M., Judge
Appellant Stephanie HoldingEagle 1 challenges the sufficiency of the evidence to
support her conviction of false imprisonment. She argues that any confinement or restraint
that occurred was “completely i ncidental” to committing the cri me of criminal sexual
conduct, of which she was acquitted and her boyfriend was convicted. We affirm.
FACTS
On June 11, 2016, T.H., a 22-yea r-old woman, attended a street dance in Fergus
Falls. T.H. was supposed to meet a friend there, but the friend did not show up. T.H. sat at
a picnic table, and HoldingEagle and her boyfriend, Michael Jaros, came over to the table
and sat down. T.H. did not know HoldingEagle or Jaros, but they soon started talking,
drinking, and listening to music together.
A f t e r a w h i l e , t h e y d e c i d e d t o g o t o a l o c a l b a r t o g e t h e r . A t around 12:30 a.m.,
H o l d i n g E a g l e a n d J a r o s i n v i t e d T . H . t o c o m e b a c k w i t h t h e m t o Jaros’s house. T.H.
accepted their offer, and the three of them drove to Jaros’s house together.
When T.H., HoldingEagle, and Jaros arrived at the house, they began to drink more
and play games. After about an hour, T.H. started to get tired and told HoldingEagle and
Jaros that she wanted to go home. HoldingEagle and Jaros said that T.H. had had too much

1 The case caption in the district court identifies appellant as “Stephanie Rae Holdingeagle”
and that is the name used in the caption on appeal. However, many documents in the record,
and appellant’s own signature, identify her last name as “Holdi ngEagle.” The caption on
appeal must match the caption used in the district court, see Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 143.01,
but we use “HoldingEagle” in the body of this opinion.

3
to drink and invited her to sleep on the couch. T.H. agreed. Wh ile T.H. lay on the couch,
HoldingEagle sat down with her and rubbed her leg. T.H. became uncomfortable, told
HoldingEagle she was not interested in women, and left.
However, T.H. realized that she had forgotten her cell phone in the house. She went
back to the house, retrieved the phone, and tried to leave agai n, but Jaros grabbed her by
the arm and threw her onto the couch. T.H. told Jaros to get of f her, but he slapped her,
pulled off her jeans and underwear, and inserted his penis into her vagina. While T.H. was
struggling with Jaros, she told H oldingEagle, “Get him off of m e. I don’t want this.”
HoldingEagle responded by saying, “You shouldn’t have pissed him off.”
As T.H. continued to try to push Jaros off of her, he began to choke her.
HoldingEagle told Jaros, “Don’t choke her too much because we d on’t want her passing
out.”2 Jaros continued to sexually assa ult T.H., and HoldingEagle wen t into the kitchen.
Jaros then pulled T.H. off the couch, removed her t-shirt and b ra, pulled her into the
bedroom, and continued the sexual assault. HoldingEagle entered the room and grabbed
T.H.’s legs, pushing them over the top of Jaros’s back while Jaros sexually assaulted T.H.
T.H. testified that she tried to leave about five times, but Ja ros kept holding her down.
Eventually Jaros and HoldingEagle allowed T.H. to leave. The wh ole episode from the
couch to the bedroom lasted from two to two-and-one-half hours.

2 T.H. testified that, at this point, Jaros instructed HoldingEa gle to perform oral sex on
T.H., which HoldingEagle did. HoldingEagle denied this account. The jury acquitted
HoldingEagle of first-degree criminal sexual conduct (sexual penetration). See Minn. Stat.
§ 609.342, subd. 1(e)(i), (f)(i) (2014).

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Respondent State of Minnesota c harged HoldingEagle with two co unts of first-
degree criminal sexual conduct under Minn. Stat. § 609.342, subd. 1(e)(i), and Minn. Stat.
§ 609.342, subd. 1(f)(i), as well as false imprisonment under Minn. Stat. § 609.255, subd.
2 (2014). The state charged Jaros with the same crimes.
The jury found HoldingEagle gui lty of false imprisonment but not guilty of criminal
sexual conduct. The jury found Jaros guilty on all three charge s. The district court stayed
imposition of HoldingEagle’s sentence and placed her on probation for four years.
This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
I n a c r i m i n a l c a s e , t h e s t a t e m u s t p r o v e e v e r y e l e m e n t o f a c r ime beyond a
reasonable doubt. In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 364, 90 S. Ct. 1068, 1073 (1970). When
reviewing a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, an appellate court “is limited to a
painstaking analysis of the reco rd to determine whether the evi dence, when viewed in a
light most favorable to the conviction, was sufficient to permi t the jurors to reach the
verdict which they did.” State v. Crow , 730 N.W.2d 272, 280 (Minn. 2007) (quotation
omitted). We assume that the jury credited the state’s witnesse s and drew reasonable
inferences in favor of the state. See State v. Jackson, 726 N.W.2d 454, 460 (Minn. 2007).
We will not disturb a verdict if the jury could have found, aft er giving due regard to the
presumption of innocence and the requirement of reasonable doubt, that the defendant was
guilty of the charged offense. Crow, 730 N.W.2d at 280.
HoldingEagle challenges her convi ction of false imprisonment. A conviction of
false imprisonment requires that the defendant “intentionally c onfine[d] or restrain[ed]”

5
another person without authority and without that person’s consent. Minn. Stat. § 609.255,
subd. 2. Because the state charged HoldingEagle with aiding and abetting false
imprisonment, it was required to prove beyond a reasonable doub t that she, either as the
principal actor or aiding and abetting Jaros, intentionally con fined or restrained T.H.
against her will. Minn. Stat. §§ 609.05, subd. 1 (2014) (aiding and abetting), .255, subd. 2
(false imprisonment).
HoldingEagle argues that the evidence is insufficient to suppor t her conviction of
false imprisonment because any c onfinement or restraint “commit ted either by her or
Mr. Jaros” was completely inciden tal to the commission of crimi nal sexual conduct. She
relies on the supreme court’s decision in State v. Welch , 675 N.W.2d 615, 620 (Minn.
2004).
In Welch, the defendant was convicted of a ttempted criminal sexual conduc t and
kidnapping after attacking a woman in a park and pinning her to the ground. Id. at 616-18.
The supreme court affirmed the criminal-sexual-conduct convicti on but reversed the
kidnapping conviction, holding that any confinement or removal, which is a required
element of kidnapping, see Minn. Stat. § 609.25, subd. 1 (2000), was “completely
incidental” to the criminal se xual conduct and could not suppor t the separate kidnapping
charge. Welch, 675 N.W.2d at 615-16. The supreme court relied on its earlier decision in
State v. Smith, which held, in the context of kidnapping, that “confinement or removal must
be criminally significant in the sense of being more than merely incidental to the underlying
crime in order to justify a separate criminal sentence.” 669 N. W.2d 19, 32 (Minn. 2003),
overruled on other grounds by State v. Leake , 699 N.W.2d 312 (Minn. 2005). The Smith

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court explained that “convictions that solely rely on acts inci dental to the commission of
one crime . . . to constitute the elements of kidnapping (confi nement) unduly exaggerate
the criminality of the conduct.” Id.
The policy concern at issue in Welch and Smith was the disproportionately lengthy
incarceration that would occur for multiple convictions due to kidnapping sentencing laws.
Welch, 675 N.W.2d at 621 & n.5; Smith, 669 N.W.2d at 32 & n.2. This concern exists, in
part, because kidnapping is a cri me for which a specific statut ory exception allows for
imposition of multiple consecutive sentences. See M i n n . S t a t . § 6 0 9 . 2 5 1 ( 2 0 1 4 ) ( “ [ A ]
prosecution for or conviction of the crime of kidnapping is not a bar to conviction of or
punishment for any other crime c ommitted during the time of the kidnapping.”); State v.
Swanson, 707 N.W.2d 645, 659 (Minn. 2006) (“A . . . kidnapping sentence may be served
consecutively to sentences for other crimes committed during the kidnapping.”).
For several reasons, the rule in Welch and Smith is not applicable here. First,
HoldingEagle was convicted of fa lse imprisonment, not kidnappin g, and there is no
reported case applying Welch and Smith in the context of false imprisonment.
Second, even if Welch and Smith do apply in the context of false imprisonment,
there is no risk of unfairly exa ggerating the criminality of Ho ldingEagle’s conduct by
imposing multiple sentences because she was convicted of only o ne crime. The holdings
in Welch and Smith focus on whether the confinement or removal is criminally significant
in order to justify a separate criminal sentence . Welch, 675 N.W.2d at 621; Smith, 669
N.W.2d at 32. There is no need to analyze whether HoldingEagle’s crime was completely
incidental to an underlying felony because she was not convicte d of an underlying felony

7
and thus is not subject to a separate criminal sentence. The concern over disproportionally
lengthy incarceration is simply not present.
Third, HoldingEagle cites no authority to support the propositi on that the
“completely incidental” analysis from Welch and Smith applies to a situation where another
person (here, Jaros) is convict ed of the putative underlying fe lony. Again, HoldingEagle
was convicted of and sentenced for only one crime; the policy concern at the heart of Welch
and Smith is absent.
Because HoldingEagle was convicte d only of false imprisonment, the conduct on
which her conviction was based was not incidental to any underl ying felony. Sufficient
evidence supports her conviction.
Affirmed.