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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A19-0958

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Jeremy Scott Archambault, Sr.,
Appellant.

Filed April 13, 2020
Affirmed
Worke, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-18-22001

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

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Kelly O’Neill Moller, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Leslie J. Rosenberg, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Florey, Pres iding Judge; Worke, Judge; and Larkin,
Judge.

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U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
WORKE, Judge
Appellant argues that the district court erred by admitting recordings of the two
victims’ interviews into evid ence as nonhearsay prior consis tent statements pursuant to
Minn. R. Evid. 801(d)(1)(B). We affirm.
FACTS
Appellant Jeremy Scott Archambault Sr. is the father of D.M. and S.M. Sometime
in February 2014, M.L.W., D.M. and S.M.’s maternal gran dmother and legal guardian,
learned from a relative that S.M., the older of the two children, had been sexually abused
by Archambault. After learning of the sexual abuse, M.L.W. called D.M., who was away
at boarding school. D.M. confirmed that she was aware of Archambault’s abuse of S.M.,
and began crying when M.L.W. asked if she too had been abused. D.M. then informed a
school counselor of the abuse. When M.L.W. came to pick D.M. up from boarding school,
D.M. relayed the details of her own abuse by Archambault to M.L.W.
D.M. decided in November 2016, when sh e was 15 years old, that she wanted to
report the abuse to the police. The police then referred D. M. to CornerHouse, where a
forensic interviewer conducted a recorded interview of D.M. She told the interviewer that
Archambault sexually assaulted her in his basement bedroom in her paternal grandmother’s
house, and that it happened more than five times. She stat ed that the abuse began when
she was five or six years old and lasted until 2010 or 2011—when she would have been
between nine and eleven years old. D.M. to ld the interviewer that Archambault touched

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her with his hand more than one time, and also penetrated her with his penis more than one
time. She specifically recounted the details of two incidents.
During one incident, D.M. was playing with her cousin when Archambault told her
to go downstairs, where he proceeded to s hut the door, hug and ki ss her, and eventually
sexually penetrated her. When Archambault was finished, D.M.’s brother opened the door,
but D.M. did not know if he saw anything. Archambault then told D.M.’s brother to run
her a bath. D.M. told the interviewer that Archambault always bathed her after his assaults.
During an incident that occurred in either 2010 or 2011, D.M. stated that early in
the morning Archambault tried to sexually assault both her and S.M. in his basement
bedroom. D.M. told the inte rviewer that Archambault tr ied to touch her under her
underwear, but she continued to push his hand away and star ted crying. She then saw
Archambault try and do the same thing to S.M., but S.M. also resisted him, and
Archambault eventually pushed both sisters off the bed.
In May 2017, S.M. was inte rviewed by an investigator with the Hennepin County
Attorney’s Office and pr ovided a recorded witness statement. S.M. told the investigator
that, when she was eleven or twelve years old, and D.M. was approximately seven or eight
years old, Archambault sexually abused them in the basement of the girls’ paternal
grandmother’s home. S.M. told the investig ator that she awoke to find Archambault
inserting his finger into her vagina, kissing her, trying to pull her underwear down, and
rubbing her legs. S.M. resisted Archambault, switched spots on the bed with her sister,
and cried herself to sleep. S.M. later awoke to find D.M. crying and asking for help, and
saw Archambault assaulting D.M. in the same manner that he had just done to her. S.M.

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stated that the only person she told about the incident prior to speaking with the investigator
was a friend, S.
The state charged Archambau lt with three counts of first-degree criminal sexual
conduct. Two counts pertained to D.M., and the other count pertained to S.M.
Both D.M. and S.M. testified at trial. The state sought to introduce D.M.’s
CornerHouse interview and S. M.’s recorded witness st atement into evidence.
Archambault objected, asserting that both recordings were inadmissible hearsay. 1 T h e
district court overruled Archambault’s objecti ons and admitted the recordings as prior
consistent statements. The ju ry found Archambault guilty on all counts of first-degree
criminal sexual conduct. The district court sentenced Archambault to 144 months in prison
on count one, to be served conc urrently with 360 months in pr ison on count three. This
appeal followed.
D E C I S I O N
Archambault argues that the district c ourt erred by admitting the recordings of
D.M.’s CornerHouse interview and S.M.’s witness statement into evidence as nonhearsay
prior consistent statements pursuant to Minn. R. Evid. 801(d)(1)(B). “Evidentiary rulings
rest within the sound discretion of the district court, and we will not reverse an evidentiary
ruling absent a clear abuse of discretion.” State v. Ali, 855 N.W.2d 235, 249 (Minn. 2014).

1 Archambault objected to the admission of D.M.’s Corn erHouse interview during a
conference outside the presence of the jury regarding the admissib ility of S.M.’s prior
recorded statement. However, Archambault did not actually object when the state offered
D.M.’s interview into evidence. Because Archambault objected to the admission of D.M.’s
prior statement, the objection was preserved, an d we treat the district court’s denial of
Archambault’s hearsay objection as pertaining to the admissibility of both statements.

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“A defendant claiming error in the district court’s reception of evidence has the burden of
showing both the error and the pr ejudice resulting from the error.” Holt v. State , 772
N.W.2d 470, 483 (Minn. 2009) (quotation omitted ). This court reviews a district court’s
determination that two statements are substantially similar for an abuse of discretion. See
State v. Zulu, 706 N.W.2d 919, 924-25 (Minn. App. 2005).
Archambault asserts that th e recorded interviews shou ld not have been admitted
because they contained statements that were inconsistent with D.M.’s and S.M.’s trial
testimony and were outside the scope of the trial testimony. Archambault did not ask the
district court for a limiting instruction, nor did he request to redact the portions of the
recordings that he claimed were inconsistent with the witnesses’ trial testimony. Further,
Archambault acknowledged that the recordings “contained many statements; some
consistent, some not consistent[,]” but did not highlight any specific inconsistencies in his
objection.
A prior consistent statement does not need to be verbatim to the declarant’s trial
testimony to be admissible under rule 801(d)(1)(B). State v. Bakken, 604 N.W.2d 106, 109
(Minn. App. 2000), review denied (Minn. Feb. 24, 2000). “[ A]dmission of a videotaped
statement that is reasonably consistent with the trial testimony is not reversible error.”
Zulu, 706 N.W.2d at 924 (quo tation omitted). While in Bakken this court stated that it is
necessary for the district court to analyze the consistency of the individual statements at
issue, 604 N.W.2d at 109, in Zulu this court upheld a district court’s admission of a
CornerHouse interview without specifically addressing any of the alleged inconsistencies

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when the district court found the interview to be “substantially consistent” with the
declarant’s testimony. 706 N.W.2d at 924.
S.M.’s detective interview
On appeal, Archambault identifies the following alleged inconsistencies between
S.M.’s recorded witness statement and her trial testimony:
(1) In her recorded statement S.M. stated that the only person
she told about Archambault’s abuse was a friend, S., but
she testified that she told a cousin, M.C., and her girlfriend,
T.;

(2) In her statement S.M. told the interviewer that Archambault
rubbed her legs, while she tes tified that he rubbed “on my
body” and that he touched he r “kind of all over. So my
upper body”;

(3) S.M. told the interviewer that Archambault kissed her with
his tongue, while she testified that “he would try to kiss me,
and I would push away and tell him ‘no,’ and he kept doing
it,” and also that he touched her skin with his mouth;

(4) In her statement S.M. told the interviewer that Archambault
inserted his finger into her vagina, while she testified in
response to the question “[d]id he put his fingers inside of
you?” that “[h]e started to”;

(5) S.M. told the interviewer that during her attempts to resist
Archambault “I was—you know, crying by then and telling
him to stop and he wouldn’t stop . . . he started kissing me
. . . I realized . . . he wasn’t gonna stop . . . so I just . . .
cried,” while she testified that she “got scared and I pushed
[his hand] away and told him ‘no’ . . . He would move to
. . . a different spot. And he would try to kiss me, and I
would push away and tell him ‘no,’ and he kept doing it”
until he fell asleep;

(6) S.M. testified that her brothers D. and G. were asleep in the
bedroom when the assault occurred, and possibly her

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cousin C. as well, but did not discuss th is topic during her
recorded interview.

With the exception of the slight discrepancy between S.M.’s recorded statement and trial
testimony regarding Archambault’ s penetration of her with hi s finger, all of the alleged
inconsistencies between the two statements are of the type previously held by this court to
be insubstantial.
In Zulu, this court held that differences or omissions between the victim’s statements
regarding who was present when the abuse was reported, wh at potentially corroborating
witnesses may have seen, and the specific location where an act of abuse occurred were all
not substantial and thus did not constitute an abuse of discretion. 706 N.W.2d at 924-25.
Here, the alleged inconsistencies relate to details regarding who S.M. told about the abuse,
who else was present, and minor grammatical differences in her recounting of the assault,
which, in its material details, was essentially consistent with her testimony.
This court also highlighted in Zulu that the victim was subject to cross-examination
regarding the purported inconsistences in her statements, and the defendant was allowed to
argue all inconsistencies to the jury. Id. at 925. D.M. and S.M. were subject to cross-
examination, and Archambault’s attorney argued D.M.’s and S.M.’s credibility to the jury
during his closing argument.
Unlike in Zulu, in Bakken this court held that an inconsistency was not a mere
discrepancy when it “directly affect[s] the elem ents of the criminal charge” and therefore
was inadmissible under rule 801(d)(1)(B). 604 N.W.2d at 110. While Archambault raises
the discrepancy between S.M.’s affirmative answer to the question: “do you know if he put

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his fingers in your vagina?” in her witne ss statement with her trial testimony that
Archambault “started to” put his fingers insi de her, this difference does not affect the
elements of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
For first-degree criminal sexual conduct, “s exual penetration” is defined as “any
intrusion however slight into th e genital or anal openings.” Minn. Stat. § 609.341, subd.
12(2) (2006). Both statements indicate that Archambault, at a minimum, briefly penetrated
S.M.’s vagina with his finger. Therefore, the differences in S.M.’s account of the assault
do not alter the elements of the charged o ffense, and thus do not render S.M.’s prior
recorded statement inadmissible under rule 801(d)(1)(B).
The district court did not abuse its discre tion by determining that S.M.’s recorded
witness statement was “essentially similar” to her trial tes timony, and thus did not abuse
its discretion by admitting the recorded interview as a prior consistent statement.
D.M.’s CornerHouse interview
On appeal, Archambault identifies the following alleged inconsistencies between
D.M.’s CornerHouse interview and her trial testimony:
(1) D.M. told the interviewer that the abuse occurred when she
was five or six years old, but testified that she was
approximately seven to nine years old when the abuse
began;

(2) Regarding the incident that occurred in 2010 or 2011, D.M.
told the interviewer that Archambault pushed both her and
S.M. off the bed after they atte mpted to resist him, but at
trial she testified that Archambault had only pushed her off
the bed;

(3) In the CornerHouse recording D.M. stated that she told her
grandma, a counselor named P.B., her mother, hospital

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personnel, and her best fri end (S.) about Archambault’s
abuse, while she testified that she told her grandma, P.B., a
counselor named C.R., hospital personnel, and an
unidentified woman;

(4) In her CornerHouse interview she described Archambault
as a “pig[]” and stated that she did not meet him until she
was five or six,
2 but she did not testify to these statements.

The analysis of these stat ements is the same under Zulu and Bakken as discussed above
regarding the alleged inconsistencies in S.M .’s prior statement. All of the purported
inconsistencies between the two statements relate to minor deta ils—who D.M. told, how
she felt about her father, who he pushed off the bed—that do not pertain to the charged
offenses. See Zulu, 706 N.W.2d at 924-25.
While D.M.’s conflicting statements about how old she was when the abuse began
could be substantial under Bakken if they affected the elements of the offenses, all that is
required under the statutes is that D.M. wa s under 13 years old, Minn. Stat. § 609.342,
subd. 1(a) (2004), and under 16 years old, Minn. Stat. § 6 09.342, subd. 1(h)(iii) (2004),
when the abuse occurred. Therefore, her in consistent statements that she was either
between seven and nine years ol d, or five or six years old, when the abuse began do not
alter the elements of the ch arged offenses, and thus do not render her prior statement
inadmissible under Bakken. 604 N.W.2d at 110. Accordin gly, the district court did not
abuse its discretion by admitting D.M.’s Corn erHouse interview as a prior consistent
statement.

2 Appellant’s brief asserts that D.M. used the term “deadbeat” to describe him in her
interview, but the record does not support this assertion.

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Pro se arguments
In his pro se supplemental brief, Archambault challenges the credibility of certain
witnesses and reiterates that the allegations against him were substantiated by hearsay.
However, Archambault does not support his assertions with any legal argument or
supporting authority, nor is prejudicial error ob vious on mere inspection. Therefore, his
arguments are forfeited. State v. Bartylla, 755 N.W.2d 8, 22-23 (Minn. 2008).
Affirmed.