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This opinion will be unpublished and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
A19-1042

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Travis Darnell Williams,
Appellant.

Filed June 15, 2020
Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded
Segal, Chief Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-18-9557

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

Michael O. Freeman, Hennepin County Attorney, Sean P. Cahill, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Andrea Barts, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Bjorkman, Presiding Judge; Segal, Chief Judge; and
Bratvold, Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
SEGAL, Chief Judge
In this direct appeal from the judgment of conviction for third -degree drug sale,
appellant argues the district court erred (1) by denying appellant’s motion to suppress one

2
of the statements he made to law enforcement because he was subject to custodial
interrogation without being informed of his Miranda rights; and (2) by entering judgments
of conviction for two controlled -substance crimes in violation of Minn. Stat. § 609.04
(2016). We affirm in part, reverse in part, and remand.
FACTS
On March 16, 2017, Brooklyn Center police officers executed a search warrant at
the apartment of appellant Travis Darnell Williams and his roommate R.W. , looking for
heroin. After the officers entered the apartment, they handcuffed and detained both men
for the duration of the search. No Miranda warning was given. One of the officers, Ryan
Soliday, was put in charge of keeping watch on the two men and logging any items found
during the search. The men were seated in the living room of the apartment and Officer
Soliday was seated in the kitchen about ten to twelve feet away from the two men. The
living room is open to the kitchen.
At the outset of the search , Officer S oliday asked the men “if there was anything
dangerous such as weapons or anything of that nature” that the officers should know about.
In response to Officer Soliday’s question, Williams said that there was a gun in the house
and it was located in the south bedroom.
During the search, o fficers discovered a Hi -Point .45 caliber semi -automatic
handgun and two magazines containing .45 caliber handgun rounds, along with .45 caliber
ammunition located in the closet of the south bedroom. They also located a pair of jeans
in the bedroom that contained a baggie with six packages of heroin totaling 6.61 grams in
one pocket and $2,160 in the other pocket. Additionally, a piece of mail with Williams’s

3
name on it was discovered in the south bedroom and the police report stated that the jeans
were approximately Williams’s size and too large to fit R.W. When an officer brought the
heroin to be logged in by Officer Soliday, Williams stated “several times” that he would
“take the gun” but denied any knowledge of the heroin that was recovered. Officer Soliday
claimed that he did not ask William s any questions while the officers were bringing him
items to log.
Williams was arrested and charged with one count of third -degree intent -to-sell
narcotics and one count of th ird-degree possession of heroin . At the pretrial hearing,
Williams argued that his statements that there was a gun in the house and that he would
“take the gun” should be suppressed because he had not been advised of his Miranda
rights.1 Both Officer Soliday and the officer who discovered the heroin testified at the
pretrial hearing. The district court suppressed Williams’s first statement that there’s a gun
in the house because he was in custody at the time the off icer asked the question and he
had not been provided a Miranda warning. The court noted that the question was “very
specific” and was not a preliminary quest ion. The district court denied the motion to
suppress Williams’s second statement on the grounds that it was spontaneous and was not
prompted by any questions asked by Officer Soliday or the other officers involved in the
search.

1 For ease of reference, the initial statement about there being a gun in the south bedroom
will be referred to as the “first statement” and the statements that Williams would “take the
gun,” but had no knowledge of the heroin will be referred to, in the singular, as the “second
statement.”

4
Williams submitted the case to the district court for a trial on stipulated facts and
stipulated evidence pursuant to Minn. R. Crim. P. 26.01, subd. 3. The stipulated evidence
included the testimony from the two officers at the pretrial hearing, the complaint, police
reports, search warrants, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension lab report, and
the photographs from the execution of the search warrant. The state and Williams
submitted simultaneous written closing statements to the court. The district court found
Williams guilty of both possession and intent-to-sell. At the sentencing hearing, the district
court imposed the presumptive sentence for third-degree sale of 33 months in prison , but
stayed the sentence and placed Williams on probation for three years. The warrant of
commitment contains convictions for both offenses. This appeal follows.
D E C I S I O N
I. The district court did not err when it denied Williams’s motion to suppress the
second statement.

“When reviewing a district court’s pretrial order on a motion to suppress evidence,
‘we review the district court’s factual findings under a clearly erroneo us standard and the
district court’s legal determinations de novo.’” State v. Gauster , 752 N.W.2d 496, 502
(Minn. 2008) (quoting State v. Jordan , 742 N.W.2d 149, 152 (Minn. 2007)). The Fifth
Amendment to the United States Constitution and article I, secti on 7 of the Minnesota
Constitution protect criminal defendants from compelled self -incrimination. In order to
protect this right, a suspect’s statements made to law enforcement during a custodial
interrogation are generally inadmissible in the absence of a Miranda warning. Miranda v.
Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 444, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 1612 (1966). The question of what constitutes

5
a “custodial interrogation ” for the purposes of Miranda turns on the determination of
(1) whether the suspect was in custody and (2) whether the police conduct in question
constitutes “interrogation.” State v. Edrozo, 578 N.W.2d 719, 724 (Minn. 1998).
Here, there is no dispute that Williams was “in custody” at the time he made the
second statement. The only question is whether the statement was made while Williams
was being interrogated.
The term “i nterrogation” in the context of a motion to suppress is not limited to
whether the police have engaged in actual questioning. Rhode Island v. Innis , 446 U.S.
291, 301, 100 S. Ct. 1682, 1689 (1980). The term encompasses “any words or actions on
the part of the police . . . that the police should know are reasonably likely to elicit an
incriminating response from the suspect.” Id. at 301, 100 S. Ct. at 1689-90 (footnotes
omitted). Appellate courts consider the totality of the circumstances when determining
whether a law -enforcement agent’s questions are “reasonably likely to elicit an
incriminating response,” and thus constitute an interrogation. State v. Heinonen , 909
N.W.2d 584, 589-90 (Minn. 2018). Because officers “cannot be held accountable for the
unforeseeable results of their words or actions, the definition of interrogation can extend
only to words or actions on the part of police officers that they should have known were
reasonably likely to elicit an incriminating response.” Innis, 446 U.S. at 301-02, 100 S. Ct.
at 1690 (footnote omitted).
Williams argues that he was subject to interrogation because Officer Soliday “acted
in a way that was reasonably likely to elicit an inc riminating response when he chose not
to advise Williams of his Miranda rights.” Williams claims that, even though Officer

6
Soliday testified that he did not question Williams before the second statement , he was
subjected to the “functional equivalent” of interrogation because Williams was in custody
while a search by a number of officers was taking place in his apartment and he had already
been asked a question by Officer Soliday in violation of his Miranda rights. Williams also
argues that his “second statement was consistent with his first statement because it told the
police that he knew about the gun” and that the statement was thus the product of the initial
unlawful question by Officer Soliday that resulted in the suppression of the first statement.
We conclude, however, that the district court’s ruling on the second statement is
supported by the totality of the circumstances. Here, there was a break in time between the
first statement, made before the search started, and the second statement that was made
sometime later after officers began the search and started bringing items to Officer Soliday
to catalogue. In addition, there is no evidence that any of the officers asked Williams any
questions or otherwise directed comments to him when items found during the search were
brought to Officer Soliday. The second statement, thus, appears to be spontaneous and not
in response to the “functional equivalent” of interrogation . Inventorying items found
during a search warrant in front of a suspect, without more, is not “reasonably likely to
elicit an incriminating response .” Heinonen, 909 N.W.2d at 589 -90. There must be a
“measure of compulsion above and beyond that inherent in custody itself.” State v .
Tibiatowski, 590 N.W.2d 305, 310 (Minn. 1999) (quotation omitted). Therefore, under the
totality of the circumstances, Williams, even though in custody, was not under police
interrogation when he spontaneously made the statement that he would “take the gun,” and
the district court did not err in denying the motion to suppress Williams’s second statement.

7
II. Entering convictions on two controlled-substance crimes was error.
Williams argues that the district court erred by entering convictions for both third -
degree sale and third -degree possession of narcotics. Under Minnesota l aw, a criminal
defendant “may be convicted of either the crime charge d or an included offense, but not
both.” Minn. Stat. § 609.04, subd. 1. The Minnesota Supreme Court has determined that
“the proper procedure to be followed by the trial court when the defendant is convicted on
more than one charge for the same act is fo r the court to adjudicate formally and impose
sentence on one count only.” State v. LaTourelle, 343 N.W.2d 277, 284 (Minn. 1984). If
the adjudicated conviction is later vacated , the remaining conviction can then be formally
adjudicated. Id. An appellate court may “look to the official judgment of conviction in the
district court file as conclusive evidence of whether an offense has been formally
adjudicated.” Spann v. State, 740 N.W.2d 570, 573 (Minn. 2007) (quotations omitted).
The district court only sentenced Williams on the sale charge. However, the warrant
of commitment lists convictions for both counts. Because third -degree possession is
necessarily proven when third -degree sale is proven, the district court erred in entering a
conviction on the warrant of conviction for both offenses. Therefore, we reverse and
remand to the district court to vacate Williams’s conviction for third-degree possession.
Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.