State of Minnesota, Respondent,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by
Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A20-0759

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Keijuan Jarqaway Antonio Brown,
Appellant.

Filed April 19, 2021
Affirmed
Halbrooks, Judge*
Scott County District Court
File No. 70-CR-18-4617

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

Ronald Hocevar, Scott County Attorney, Todd P. Zettler, Assistan t County Attorney,
Shakopee, Minnesota (for respondent)

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

Considered and decided by Bryan, Presiding Judge; Frisch, Judge; and Halbrooks,
Judge.

*Retired judge of the Minnesot a Court of Appeals, servin g by appointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.

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NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
HALBROOKS, Judge
Appellant challenges his theft conviction, arguing that the district court (1) erred by
denying his challenge to the prosecutor’s peremptory strike of the only minority juror and
(2) abused its discretion by admitting surveilla nce footage without proper authentication.
We affirm.
FACTS
In 2017, appellant Keijuan Jarqaway An tonio Brown was a service manager at a
Chipotle restaurant in Shakopee. In that capacity, he had access to the restaurant’s office,
where the safe was located, and had codes for opening the safe and cash registers. Policy
dictated that employees were not allowed to be in the restaurant by themselves, the office
light was supposed to “stay on” at all times, a nd the office door was supposed to be kept
closed. Policy also required managers to collect cash at the end of each shift, count it and
place it into sealed and labeled bags, and place the bags into the safe. Security cameras
monitored and recorded several areas of the restaurant, including the office, and the district
manager was able to view liv e or recorded surveillance f ootage at any time on her cell
phone.
After “a lot of cash” disapp eared in October, Chipotle investigated. The district
manager and the restaurant manager began by reviewing surveillance footage for days the
bank reported missing cash from deposits. They found footage of Brown coming into the
office “after hours” by himself, opening the safe, and turning off the light. Thereafter, the
district manager worked with Chipotle’s “safety, security, and risk” staff to recover footage

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of three times—late evening on October 10, and very early morn ing on October 23 and
27—when Brown entered the offi ce and turned the lights off. All three co rresponded to
dates for which Chipotle was missing cash—$770 from the October 10 deposit, $622 from
the October 22 deposit, and $540 from the October 26 deposit. They also discovered that
the deposit bag for October 31 exhibited si gns of tampering and was missing $122, and
records confirmed Brown was in the restaurant after hours that night.
The district manager and the store mana ger asked Brown about the surveillance
footage. He indicated that he entered the office on October 10 to change his pants because
they had gotten wet washing di shes, but the video showed hi m to be wearing the same
pants before and after he turned out the light. And he said he entered the office another
time to get trash bags for cleaning out his ca r, but there were no trash bags or cleaning
supplies kept in the office.
Brown was charged with theft of more th an $1,000 but less than $5,000. During
jury selection, the prosecutor exercised a pere mptory strike to rem ove Juror 15, the only
non-White person on the jury panel. Brown challenged the removal, claiming racial bias.
The district court denied the challenge. At trial, the prosecutor presented the testimony of
the district manager, the restaurant manager, and the investigating police officer, as well as
the surveillance footage for October 10, 23, and 27. Brown te stified that he was working
three jobs in October 2017 a nd sometimes kept personal items at Chipotle to facilitate
transitions between jobs but did not remember specifically why he would have been in the
store after hours; that period of his life was “a blur.” He acknowledged being in the
restaurant after hours at the times indicate d in the surveillance footage but denied

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tampering with any deposit bags or taking any money from Chipotle. The jury found him
guilty of theft of between $500 and $1,000. The district c ourt convicted Brown of that
gross-misdemeanor offense, stayed impos ition of sentence, and placed Brown on
probation. Brown appeals.
DECISION
I. The district court did not clearly er r by finding that the prosecutor’s
peremptory strike of the only minority juror was not discriminatory.

The existence of discrimination in the exerci se of a peremptory strike is a factual
determination, and we will not reverse the district court’s ruling unless it is clearly
erroneous. State v. Seaver , 820 N.W.2d 627, 632 (Minn. App. 2012). This deferential
review “is warranted because the record may not accurately reflect all relevant
circumstances that may prop erly be considered.” State v. Adams , 936 N.W.2d 326, 329
(Minn. 2019) (quotation omitted).
The Equal Protection Clause of the F ourteenth Amendment prohibits using a
peremptory strike to remove a pr ospective juror based on race. Id. (citing U.S. Const.
amend XIV, § 1; Batson v. Kentucky , 476 U.S. 79, 89, 106 S. Ct. 1712, 1719 (1986)).
Minnesota courts follow the three-step Batson framework for determining whether a
peremptory strike was motivated by racial discrimination. State v. Wilson , 900 N.W.2d
373, 378 (Minn. 2017).
First, the opponent of the strike bears the initial burden of making a prima facie
showing that the strike was base d on racial discrimination. Id. To do so, he “must show
that a member of a protected racial class has been excluded from the jury and that the

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circumstances of the case raise an inference that the exclusion was based on race.” Adams,
936 N.W.2d at 329 (emphasis added); see State v. Onyelobi, 879 N.W.2d 334, 345 (Minn.
2016) (“It is well-settled that mere removal of a member of a racial minority does not
necessarily establish a prima facie case of discrimination.” (quotation omitted)). Failure
to make such a showing may be dispositive. State v. Diggins, 836 N.W.2d 349, 356 (Minn.
2013).
Upon a prima facie showing of discrimina tion, the district court considers the
second step: the party who exercised the peremp tory strike must pr esent a race-neutral
reason. Wilson, 900 N.W.2d at 378. The reason need no t be persuasive or plausible, just
not inherently discriminatory. Id. Third, the opponent must persuade the district court that
the proffered reason was pretextual and the “t rue motive” was purposeful discrimination.
Id. The court can assess the credibility of the prosecuto r’s explanation from various
factors, including his demeanor and the reasonableness of his explanation. Miller-El v.
Cockrell, 537 U.S. 322, 339, 123 S. Ct. 1029, 1040 (2003). If the district court addresses
the second and third Batson steps, we will also address them. Diggins, 836 N.W.2d at 356.
Brown claimed racial discrimination in the prosecutor’s strike of Juror 15 on the
ground that he “was the only person on the jury that was not a [W]hite person.” 1 The
prosecutor responded that he struck Juror 15 because of the juror’s recent criminal record,

1 The record does not clearly identify Juror 15’s racial background—his juror profile
indicates “Other” for race and that he is of “Hispanic Origin”—but it is undisputed that he
was the only minority member of the jury pool. Brown did no t argue to the district court
that his own race bears on the Batson analysis, but he notes in his appellate brief that he is
Black.

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explaining that the other two prospective jurors with criminal records, Juror 2 and Juror 6,
were decades removed from that conduct. The district court denied Brown’s claim,
explaining that Brown failed to establish a prima facie case of racial discrimination because
mere removal of a member of a racial minority is insufficient; even if Brown made a prima
facie case, the prosecutor’s proffered reason for the strike—Juror 15’s criminal history—
was race neutral; and that reason was not pr etextual because the prosecutor reasonably
distinguished Juror 15 from the two prospective jurors with more remote and less violent
criminal histories.
Brown does not dispute that a prospective juror’s criminal record may constitute a
race-neutral reason for removal. See State v. Martin, 614 N.W.2d 214, 222 (Minn. 2000)
(“A family member’s involvement with a criminal investigation is a race-neutral reason for
striking a juror.”); see also Adams, 936 N.W.2d at 330 (conc luding that a juror’s
misrepresentations about her criminal histor y is a legitimate race-neutral reason for a
strike). He contends only that it was not ra ce neutral here because the prosecutor did not
remove two White prospective juro rs with criminal pasts. The district court rejected this
contention because the pr osecutor provided a reasonable e xplanation for the distinction.
The record supports that finding.
Juror 15, who was 45 years old, acknowledged that he had been arrested three times,
“[f]irst for domestic, the seco nd one, DUI, and then domestic .” When asked about the
timing of the arrests, he explained the first was “about 14 years ago,” the second “[I] [t]hink
12 years ago,” and the third “abo ut seven years ago.” He said he was “charged” for the
first one and “went to court, like, three times.” By contrast, Juror 6, who was 62, disclosed

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that, when he was “about 15,” he and a group of friends were drinking and illegally entered
somebody’s house, then ran away when the po lice arrived. And Juror 2, who was 66,
disclosed that he “had a DWI” around 1980.2 In short, Juror 6 and Juror 2 each admitted a
decades-old offense with mitigating factors (Juror 6 was a juvenile and Juror 2’s DWI was,
as the district court observed, “nonviolen t” or “nonpersonal”), while Juror 15 admitted
multiple arrests, some for violent offenses, in his 30s, the most recent of which was only
seven years earlier.
Brown nonetheless argues that two aspect s of the prosecutor’s conduct indicate
racial prejudice. This argument is unavailing in each respect. First, Brown contends the
prosecutor “took the time to ask the two [W]hite jurors about their criminal past” but asked
Juror 15 only ab out the timing of his arrests. Bu t the district court questioned the
prospective jurors first, th en the prosecutor questioned them, overall eliciting the same
information from each—the nature and timi ng of his criminal past. Second, Brown
contends the prosecutor mischaracterized Ju ror 15’s responses by stating that he was
(1) “[f]or sure convicted on one [of his arrests],” and (2) “unsure about when exactly the
time frame happened.” Brown is correct that these statements are not precisely accurate;
Juror 15 did not indicate he was convicted, and he provided the approximate timing of each

2 Brown notes that Juror 2 also separately disc losed an incident in which he was a victim
of a hit-and-run accident and attributed his failure to note the other driver’s license plate to
being “intoxicated.” The juror did not expressly indicate when the accident occurred, but
the prosecutor said, “I could tell, like, that was quite a while ago when—your hit-and-run.”
Brown noted the apparent incident of impaired driving during his Batson challenge but did
not identify a reason to discredit the prosecu tor’s assessment that the incident, like the
juror’s DWI conviction, was “quite a while ago.”

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arrest. But the difference between the juror’s responses and the prosecutor’s descriptions
are minimal, and the district court was in the best position to assess whether the
prosecutor’s statements undermined the credibility of his explanation. On this record, we
conclude the district court did not clearly err by finding that the prosecutor reasonably and
neutrally struck Juror 15 while accepting Juror 6 and Juror 2.
II. The district court did not abuse its di scretion by admitti ng the surveillance
footage based on the district manager’s authentication.

We review a district court’s evidentiary rulings for an abuse of discretion. Dolo v.
State, 942 N.W.2d 357, 362 (Minn. 2020). To obtain reversal, the appellant must
demonstrate both error and resulting prejudice. State v. Griffin, 846 N.W.2d 93, 103 (Minn.
App. 2014), review denied (Minn. Aug. 5, 2014).
The proponent of evidence must authenticate or identify it “by evidence sufficient
to support a finding that the ma tter in question is what its proponent claims.” Minn. R.
Evid. 901(a). Rule 901 provid es an expressly nonexclusive list of “examples” of how to
do so. Id.(b). Video recordings may be authentic ated in two ways, using the pictorial-
witness theory or the silent-witness theory. In re Welfare of S.A.M., 570 N.W.2d 162, 164-
65 (Minn. App. 1997). The first method calls fo r a witness to describe what she saw; the
video serves as a pictorial representation of her observations. Id. at 164; see Minn. R. Evid.
901(b)(1) (permitting authentication by a knowle dgeable witness that the “matter is what
it is claimed to be”). Under the second meth od, the video acts as a “silent witness” to
events that no person directly observed, and witness testimony describes the process or
system of recording and verifies that this process produces an accurate video. S.A.M., 570

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N.W.2d at 165; see Minn. R. Evid. 901(b)(9) (permitting authentication by “[e]vidence
describing a process or system used to pro duce a result and showing that the process or
system produces an accurate result”).
Brown contends the prosecutor failed to authenticate the su rveillance videos
because no witness testified to observing the events depicted in the videos and no witness
described the recording process or verified that it produces an accurate video. He is correct
that none of the witnesses identified the vi deos under the precise requirements of the
pictorial-witness theory or the silent-witness theory. But th e purpose of authentication is
to demonstrate that the matter in question is what its proponent claims. Minn. R. Evid.
901(a). The district manager’s testimony, which the prosecutor offered as authentication,
satisfies this purpose.
The district manager explained that Chip otle maintained se curity cameras in
multiple locations in the restaurant, including in the office, a nd that she was able to view
live surveillance footage from any of the cameras or call up recordings for any camera at a
given date and time. She did so regularly as part of her work, viewing lo cations in the
restaurant, including the office, that she was also personally familiar with as part of her
work. She explained that Chipotle’s safety , security, and risk team maintained the
recordings and likewise was ab le to access recorded surv eillance footage. When she
learned of missing cash, she personally accesse d recordings for the dates when deposits
indicated shortfalls and watched footage showing Brown in the office after hours, opening
the safe and turning off the light. She requested additional footage from the safety, security,
and risk team, which also showed Brown in the office after hours, turning off the light. She

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reviewed the videos before and after attempts were made to “lighten” them, and they were
the same. Most important, wh en the district manager aske d Brown about the recordings,
he did not deny that he was at the restaurant at the indicated times or that he was the person
depicted in the videos. Overall, this testimony provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate
that the videos were what the prosecutor claimed they were—surveillance footage of
Brown entering the office alone after hours on three occasions and turning the light off.
Moreover, Brown has not demonstrated prejudice from the admission of the videos.
He is correct that the substance of the videos was important to the prosecutor’s case; they
established a crucial circumstantial link be tween Brown and the missing cash. But the
videos themselves were not the only such evidence. The district manager testified, without
objection, that she watched surveillance footage from October 10 and saw Brown enter the
office after closing at 10:30 p.m.; he opened the safe and turned off the light, and when he
turned the light back on the safe was closed. Also without objection, she testified that she
watched surveillance footage from October 23 and saw Brown enter the store after
midnight, go into the office and turn off the light, then turn the light back on. And again
without objection, she testified that she watched surveillance footage from October 27 and
saw Brown engaged in the same conduct around 1:50 a.m. In short, the videos may have
provided a more compelling illustration of Brow n’s conduct, but they were substantially
cumulative of the regional manager’s unobjected-to testimony about what she saw Brown
do. On this record, Brown has not demonstrat ed that he is entitled to relief based on the
admission of the surveillance videos.
Affirmed.