State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A18-1005

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Devontre Jordan Vann,
Appellant.

Filed March 25, 2019
Affirmed
Hooten, Judge

Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CR-17-4174

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, St. Paul, Minnesota; and

John Choi, Ramsey County Attorney, Peter R. Marker, Assistant County Attorney, St. Paul,
Minnesota (for respondent)

Charles F. Clippert, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Hooten, Presiding Judge; Reyes, Judge; and Reilly,
Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
HOOTEN, Judge
Appellant participated in a brutal rape and robbery involving multiple victims. He
pleaded guilty and was sentenced in accord ance with his plea agreement. Appellant now

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asks this court to reduce his sentence because he claims that it unduly exaggerates the
criminality of his conduct. We affirm.
FACTS
This appeal arises from a brutal rape and robbery of a group of teenagers in mid -
2017. The group consisted of four teenagers, two girls and two boys, ranging in ages 15
to 18. They were attacked by appellant and three or four other individuals around 11:15
p.m. at Harriet Island in St. Paul. All four of the victims were held at gunpoint and
threatened with death if they did not comply with the attackers’ demands. The two girls
were each sexually penetrated multiple times by multiple assailants. The assailants also
robbed all four victims, taking a small amount of cash and each o f their cell phones.
Appellant covere d his face during the attack. To facilitate both the robbery and the
assailants’ escape, the m ale victims were forced to strip to their underwear. After the
attack, the assailants left on foot. Three of the assailants were arrested early the following
morning during an a ttempted robbery of a nearby gas station. A fourth assailant fled the
scene of the robbery, but was arrested shortly thereafter. Appellant’s three co-defendants
are allegedly affiliated with local gangs.
After initially charging appellant with eight counts by complaint, the state amended
the complaint to a total of 14 counts , either directly or by aiding and abetting , with: two
counts of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree, penetration by means of creating fear
of great bodily harm in violation of Minn. Stat. § 609.342, subd. 1(d) (2016); four counts
of crime committed for the benefit of a gang in violation of Minn. Stat. § 609.229, subd. 2
(2016); four counts of aggravated robbery in the first degree in violation of Minn. Stat.

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§ 609.245, subd . 1 (2016); and four counts of kidnapping to facilitate felony or flight in
violation of Minn. Stat. § 609.25, subd. 1(2) (2016).
While appellant claimed innocence, the evi dence against him that the state could
have presented at trial was strong. The evidence included: DNA evidence sampled from
appellant’s genital area immediately after the arrest excluding 99. 98 percent of the
population but not either of the female victims; the victims’ expected testimony identifying
appellant as one of the assailants ; appellant’s post-Miranda statement where he admitted
to receiving oral sex from one of the victims, thoug h he claimed it was consensual ;
photographs and physical evidence of the items the assailants took at gunpoint; the female
victims’ expected testimony about being made to p erform sexual acts at gunpoint ;
appellant’s fingerprint found in the car where the rapes occurred; one of the male victims’
expected testimony that he witnessed appellant sexually penetr ate both of the female
victims; video posted to social media shortly before the assault showing appellant with the
other assailants with footage of the firearm that the victims would later identify as “looking
just like the gun” that wa s used in the rape and robbery ; and finally footage of another
video on YouTube showing appellant in the background —posted shortly before the rape
and robbery—of one of the other assailants rapping about robbing people.
In exchange for the state dismissing 10 of the 14 counts, appellant submitted an
Alford plea1 on the remaining four counts. These consisted of two counts of first -degree

1 An “Alford plea” refers to a guilty plea where a defendant agrees to plead guilty to a
charge based on a belief that a jury would convict him, while still maintaining actual
innocence before the court. State v. Theis , 742 N.W.2d 643, 647 (Minn. 2007) (citing
North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 38, 91 S. Ct. 160, 167–68 (1970)).

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criminal sexual conduct and two counts of first-degree aggravated robbery. Because these
charges included multiple victims, the plea agreemen t called for the sentences for the two
aggravated-robbery charges and one of the criminal sexual conduct charges to be served
consecutively, for a total of 270 month s, while the sentence for the remaining criminal
sexual conduct charge (of 201 months) would be served concurrently. This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
Appellant argues that “the imposition of multiple consecutive sentences” makes his
total prison sentence “excessive.” The state argues that appellant’s arguments fail on their
merits, but that, “At the risk of stating the obvious, appel lant’s sentence should be upheld
as an initial matter because he specifically negotiated and agreed to it.”
Minn. Stat. § 609.035, subd. 1 (2016) provides that when “a person’s conduct
constitutes more than one offense . . . , the person may be punished for only one of the
offenses.” The purpose of this statute is “to protect against exaggerating the criminality of
a person ’s conduct and to make both punishment and prosecution commensurate with
culpability.” State ex rel. Stangvik v. Tahash, 161 N.W.2d 667, 672 (Minn. 1968). There
is an exception to this statute when multiple victims are involved in a single behavioral
incident. State v. Whittaker , 568 N.W.2d 440, 453 (Minn. 1997). “Under the multiple-
victim exception, courts are not prevented from giving a defendant multiple sentences for
multiple crimes arising out of a single behavioral incident if: (1) the crimes affect multiple
victims; and (2) multiple sentences do not unfairly exaggerate the criminality of the
defendant’s conduct.” State v. Ferguson, 808 N.W.2d 586, 590 (Minn. 2012) (quotation
omitted).

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Appellant “requests that this Court review his sentence to determine whether it was
excessive and consistent with statutory grounds.” T he plea agreement only called for the
three lesser cha rges to be served consecutively. Were all four counts sentenced
consecutively, appellant would have received a 471-month sentence.
Appellant makes two arguments to support his claim that his sentence unfairly
exaggerates his criminality.2 First, he argues that the court should compare his sentence to
that of his co-defendants. Appellant received a sentence of 270 months. Of the other three
individuals who have been charged in conjunction with this attack, one received a sentence
of 300 months pursuan t to a plea agreement, another received a sentence of 354 months
following a jury trial that resulted in a conviction on all counts, and there has not yet been
a disposition of the final co-defendant’s charges.3
Appellant argues that he had a “limited role” in the attack. But he does not develop
this argument or explain how his role was “limited” when the evidence shows that appellant
concealed his face during the attack and the DNA evidence shows that he sexually
penetrated both female victims.
It is unclear how it could possibly be that appellant’s sentence of 270 months
unfairly exaggerates the criminality of his participation in the brutal rape and robbery of
four victims . Appellant has received significantly less prison time than the other

2 Appellant pleaded guilty to four charges, each of which involved a different victim.
Appellant does not challenge that the first element of Ferguson—that there were multiple
victims—is met.
3 The final co-defendant was a juvenile at the time of the offense. Likely because the state
sought to certify him as an adult, this defendant’s matter is still ongoing.

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defendants who have been sentenced . And appellant has failed to establish that his role
was somehow limited.
Appellant also argues that his sentence should be reduced based on a report that
opined that he was gullible and naive. But appellant has failed to give this court any legal
authority that would support a conclusion that such an opinion makes the defendant’s
conduct so much less culpable that we should actually reverse his sentence , especially
given that he specifically negotiated for the sentence he received.
Furthermore, the report that appellant relies upon does not appear to reduce the
criminality of his conduct. While the report’s author did opine that appellant was gullible,
the report established:
He did participate in the rape of the victims and apparently
tried to cover his face or identity in the process. . . . By his own
account, he was experiencing positive emotions in anticipation
of sexual gratification when he forced the Victim to perform
oral sex on him. . . . He has a history of getti ng caught up in
aggressive behavior when with his friends such as when he was
involved in a riot in school.

When considered as a whole, the report does not support reducing appellant’s
sentence.
Based upon these arguments, and the strong evidence supporting his participation
in the commission of these brutal crimes, we conclude that appellant has failed to establish
that his sentence unfairly exaggerates the criminality of his conduct.
Affirmed.