1
STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN SUPREME COURT
A21-0221

Court of Appeals Gildea, C.J.
Took no part, McKeig, J.
State of Minnesota,

Respondent,

vs. Filed: July 13, 2022
Office of Appellate Courts
TanyaMarie Esthell Miller,

Appellant.

________________________

Keith Ellison, Attorney General, Saint Paul, Minnesota; and

Ronald Hocevar , Scott County Attorney, Todd P. Zettler , Assistant County Attorney ,
Shakopee, Minnesota, for respondent.

John Kaschins, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for appellant.

________________________

S Y L L A B U S

The district court did not err in sentencing appellant to 48 months in prison for
violating Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3 (2020), aiding an offender as an accomplice after
the fact, because that crime’s statutory maximum sentence is more than 20 years when, as
here, the principal crime is first-degree murder.
Affirmed.
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O P I N I O N
GILDEA, Chief Justice.
Appellant TanyaMarie Esthell Miller appeals her sentence for aiding an offender as
an accomplice after the fact in violation of Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3 (2020), for her
role in concealing evidence of a murder that her husband committed. 1 The statutory
maximum sentence for a conviction of being an accomplice after the fact is “not more than
one-half of the statutory maximum sentence of imprisonment . . . that could be imposed on
the principal offender.” Id. After Miller pleaded guilty to being an accomplice after the
fact and before sentencing, she argued that the statutory maximum is not a determinate
sentence when the principal crime is subject to life imprisonment because “one-half of life
imprisonment” is not calculable in terms of days or m onths. Miller argued that b ecause
the statutory maximum is indeterminate, the district court did not have authority to impose
any sentence for her offense. The district court rejected Miller’s argument and sentenced
her to 48 months of imprisonment. On appeal, t he court of appeals affirmed Miller’s
sentence. State v. Miller , 964 N.W.2d 459 , 462 (Minn. App. 2021) . Because Miller’s
sentence does not exceed the statutory maximum, we affirm.
FACTS
This appeal arises from a murder that Miller’s husband committed. In
February 2020, Miller’s 16 -year-old son arranged to sell marijuana to another juvenile,
S.K. Miller’s son had planned the sale through Snapchat. Miller’s son drove to the meeting

1 We will use the term “accomplice after the fact” to refer to the offense defined in
Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3, because that is the term used in the statute.
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place with Miller’s husband, who was sitting in the rear passenger seat. When Miller’s son
parked the car, S.K. got into the front passenger seat but refused to close the door behind
him. Thinking that S.K. intended to steal the marijuana and run, Miller’s husband fatally
shot S.K. in the head and then pushed him out of the car, at which point Miller’s son drove
away.
Miller’s husband then called Miller and told her what he had done. When Miller’s
husband and son returned home, Miller told her son to delete his Snapchat account. Miller
retrieved their neighbor’s garage key and helped hide the car in the neighbor’s garage. At
some point not long after the shooting, Miller and her husband drove to Miller’s sister’s
house, where Miller’s sister stored the gun in a lockbox.
Four days after the shooting, law enforcement officers arrested Miller and her
husband and son. Officers also recovered the gun from Miller’s sister’s house.
Miller was charged with aiding an offender to avoid arrest under Minn. Stat.
§ 609.495, subd. 1(a) (2020) and being an accomplice after the fact under Minn. Stat.
§ 609.495, subd. 3. She pleaded guilty to both charges, with no agreement as to sentencing.
Because her husband and son had been indicted for first -degree murder in vio lation of
Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a) (2020), an offense subject to life imprisonment, Miller signed a
plea petition acknowledging that she could be sentenced to “imprisonment for one half of
a life sentence.”2 The district court accepted her guilty pleas.

2 A conviction for being an accomplice after the fact under Minn. Stat. § 609.495,
subd. 3, is subject to a statutory maximum sentence of “ not more than one -half of the
statutory maximum sentence of imprisonment . . . that could be imposed on the principal
offender.” A conviction for aiding an offender to avoid arrest, on the other hand, is subject
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At the sentencing hearing, Miller argued that district courts lack authority to impose
any sentence for being an accomplice after the fact when the principal crime is first-degree
murder—an offense subject to life imprisonment —because one-half of life imprisonment
is impossible to calculate. According to Miller, the general sentencing statute that defines
maximum sentences when “no punishment is otherwise provided,” Minn. Stat. § 609.03
(2020),3 does not apply because the Legislature has provided a specific punishment in this
case, even though the precise length of that sentence cannot be determined.
The district court rejected Miller’s argument. According to the district court, a life
sentence “has statutorily been defined many, many times” as 40 years, both in the context
of the attempt statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.17, subd. 4 (2020), and the sentencing guidelines
for conspiracy offenses, Minn. Sent. Guidelines 2.G.13.4 Based on the court’s conclusion
that a life sentence is defined as 40 years, the district court held that the statutory maximum
sentence for being an accomplice after the fact is 20 years when the principal crime is
subject to life imprisonment.

“to imprisonment for not more than three years . . . if the crime committed or attempted by
the other person is a felony.” Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 1(a).

3 Under the general sentencing statute, when “no punishment is otherwise provided,”
the maximum sentence, “[i]f the crime is a felony,” is “to imprisonment for not more than
five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.” Minn. Stat.
§ 609.03(1).

4 Neither Minn. Stat. § 609.17, subd. 4, nor Minn. Sent. Guidelines 2.G.13 defines a
life sentence as 40 years. For example, section 609.17, subdivision 4, simply sets a 20-year
maximum sentence for a person who attempts to commit a crime that provides for a
maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
5
The district court did not, however, impose a 20-year sentence. Instead, using the
analysis set forth in State v. Kenard, 606 N.W.2d 440, 443 (Minn. 2000), the court assigned
Miller’s offense of being an accomplice after the fact a severity level of 8 under the
sentencing guidelines and then imposed a presumptive sentence of 48 months in prison.5
See Minn. Sent. Guidelines 4.A. Miller appealed her 48-month sentence.
The court of appeals affirmed. Miller, 964 N.W.2d at 462. The court agreed with
Miller that “there is no clear statutory maximum sentence of imprisonment” in this case
because life imprisonment has “no ascertainable half.” Id. at 461. The court then employed
the in pari materia canon of construction (also called the “related -statutes canon”) to
interpret the accomplice-after-the-fact statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3, in light of
the attempt statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.17, subd. 4. Miller, 964 N.W.2d at 461. The attempt
statute provides a punishment of “not more than 20 years” when “the maximum sentence
provided for the [attempted] crime is life imprisonment.” Minn. Stat. § 609.17, subd. 4(1).
For all other offenses, the maximum sentence under the attempt statute is “one -half of the
maximum imprisonment . . . provided for the crime attempted.” Id., subd. 4(2). The court
held that the attempt statute “supports the inference that the maximum sentence for an
accomplice after the fact to a crime for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment
is 20 years.” Miller, 964 N.W.2d at 461. The court reasoned that not punishing a person
who is an accomplice after the fact to a crime subject to life imprisonment but punishing a

5 The district court also imposed a concurrent sentence of 1 year and 1 day for
Miller’s conviction of aiding an offender to avoid arrest. This sentence is not before us on
appeal.
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person who is an accomplice to other crimes “would run counter to the presumption against
absurd results.” Id. at 461–62.
We granted Miller’s petition for review on the issue of whether the district court
erred in imposing a sentence for her conviction of being an accomplice after the fact.
ANALYSIS
The statute at issue here, Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3, punishes as “an accomplice
after the fact” anyone who “intentionally aids another person whom the actor knows or has
reason to know has committed a criminal act, by destroying or concealing evidence of that
crime, providing false or misleading information a bout that crime, . . . or otherwise
obstructing the investigation or prosecution of that crime.” A person convi cted of being
an accomplice after the fact “may be sentenced to not more than one -half of the statutory
maximum sentence of imprisonment . . . that could be imposed on the principal offender.”
Id. The “criminal act” in the statute refers to the crimes li sted in Minn. Stat. § 609.11,
subd. 9 (2020), which includes first-degree murder. First -degree murder is subject to a
maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a). Accordingly, a person
convicted of being an accomplice after the fact when the principal offender committed
first-degree murder faces a maximum sentence of one-half of life imprisonment. See Minn.
Stat. §§ 609.495, subd. 3, 609.185(a).
Miller argues that the district court did not have authority to sentence her to any
term of incarceration for being an accomplice after the fact under Minn. Stat. § 609.495,
subd. 3, because the statutory maximum penalty —one-half of the statutory maximum
penalty for the principal offense—cannot be determined when the principal crime is first-
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degree murder. She argues that there is no way to c alculate one-half of life imprisonment
in days or years, and therefore the court lacks authority to impose any sentence because
there is no way to determine whether the sentence exceeds the statutory maximum .
According to Miller, this does not render the statute ambiguous; the statute instead suffers
from a “failure of expression” because the Legislature did not include a definition of “life
imprisonment” or “one-half of life imprisonment.” She contends that the court of appeals
erred in construing the accomplice-after-the-fact statute in light of the attempt statute using
the in pari materia canon because the two statutes have different purposes, do not reference
each other, and do not contain “any common language.”6
The State argues that the penalty p rovision in the accomplice-after-the-fact statute
is ambiguous and urges us to adopt the analysis of the court of appeals. Specifically, the
State argues that we should construe the accomplice-after-the-fact statute and the attempt
statute together because they are in pari materia. The State contends that under the attempt
statute, one-half of life imprisonment is equivalent to 20 years, and so the statutory
maximum for being an accomplice after the fact should also be 20 years.
We review issues of statutory interpretation de novo. State v. Thonesavanh ,
904 N.W.2d 432, 435 (Minn. 2017). The primary goal of statutory interpretation “is to

6 The canon of in pari materia “allows two statutes with common purposes and
subject matter to be construed together to determine the meaning of ambiguou s statutory
language.” State v. Lucas, 589 N.W.2d 91, 94 (Minn. 1999). We have observed that “[t]he
rationale for the canon is that related statutes, although separate, should be considered as
‘one systematic body [of] law.’ ” State v. Thonesavanh, 904 N.W.2d 432, 437–38 (Minn.
2017) (alteration in original) (quoting State v. Bolsinger , 21 N.W.2d 480, 486 (Minn.
1946)).
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ascertain and effectuate the intention of the legislature.” Minn. Stat. § 645.16 (2020). The
first step in the process is to determine whether “the words of a statute in their application
to an existing situation are clear and free from all ambiguity.” State v. Bakken, 883 N.W.2d
264, 267–68 (Minn. 2016). If the statute is ambiguous, that is, “subject to more than one
reasonable interpretation,” we apply canons of construction to resolve the ambiguity.
Thonesavanh, 904 N.W.2d at 435 (quoting 500, LLC v. City of Minneapolis , 837 N.W.2d
287, 290 (Minn. 2013)). But when the language represents a “failure of expression rather
than ambiguity of expression . . . , courts are not free to substitute amendment for
construction and thereby supply the omissions of the legislature.” State v. Lucas ,
589 N.W.2d 91, 94 (Minn. 1999) (quoting State v. Mos eng, 95 N.W.2d 6, 11 –12 (Minn.
1959)).
We agree with Miller that “[t]he legislature has the exclusive authority to define
crimes and offenses and the range of the sentences or punishments for their violation” and
that “[n]o other or different sentence or punishment shall be imposed for the commission
of a crime than is authorized by [chapter 609] or other applicable law.” Minn. Stat.
§ 609.095(a) (2020). And we have recognized that c ourts have no authority to impose
sentences without statutory authorization. See State v. Noggle , 881 N.W.2d 545, 550–51
(Minn. 2016) (holding that the district court was not authorized to impose a term of
conditional release for an attempted crime becaus e the conditional-release statute did not
include attempted violations of the enumerated statutes that were subject to such a
sentence); State v. Pflepsen, 590 N.W.2d 759, 764 (Minn. 1999) (“[T]he power to prescribe
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punishment for criminal acts is vested w ith the legislature and the judiciary may only
impose sentences within the statutory limits prescribed by the legislature.”).
Statutory authorization exists here, however . The language of the statute clearly
shows that the Legislature intended to punish in some way an accomplice after the fact
when the principal offender has committed first -degree murder. 7 To determine the
sentence, we look to the maximum sentence that the principal offender could receive and
calculate one-half of that sentence. Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3. For the principal crime
here, the maximum sentence is life. See Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a). Miller is correct that a
life sentence is not subject to expression in days or years —the exact length varies with
each person serving it. But we know from Minnesota’s homicide sentencing scheme that
a life sentence must be more than 40 years.
There are five types of homicide listed among the “criminal acts” in Minn. Stat.
§ 609.11, subd. 9, which Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3, expressly cross-references: first-,
second-, and third-degree murder and first- and second-degree manslaughter. Minn. Stat.
§§ 609.185–.205 (2020). As the severity of the offense increases, the statutory maximum
punishment increases. For example, second-degree manslaughter has a statutory maximum
of 10 years of imprisonment. Minn. Stat. § 609.205. A person convicted of first -degree

7 Although neither party addressed this issue in their briefs to us, when a statute does
not include a punishment, a general statutory maximum sentence applies based on whether
the offense is a felony, gross misdemeanor, misdemeanor, or fine-only offense. See Minn.
Stat. § 609.03. When “no punishment is otherwise provided” for a felony offense, that
maximum is five year s of imprisonment. Id. We do not find it necessary to apply this
general statutory maximum provision here. But even if we did, we would still affirm
Miller’s sentence because it is less than the 5-year maximum authorized for felonies.
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manslaughter is subject to up to 15 years of imprisonment. Minn. Stat. § 609.20. Third-
degree murder carries a maximum of 25 years. Minn. Stat. § 609.195. Second -degree
murder has a statutory maximum sentence of 40 years. Minn. Stat. § 609.19. And first -
degree murder —the most severe form of murder —is subject to mandatory life
imprisonment. Minn. Stat. § 609.185(a). A life sentence, then, must be something more
than 40 years, the maximum sentence for the lesser crime of second-degree murder.
Applying the one -half provision to the homicide scheme, the statutory maximum
for being an accom plice after the fact to second-degree mansla ughter is 5 years, first -
degree manslaughter is 7.5 years, third -degree murder is 12.5 years, and second -degree
murder is 20 years. One-half of a life sentence in the context of the accomplice-after-the-
fact statute, therefore, must be more than 20 years.8 Importantly, we do not have to identify
the precise statutory maximum for being an accomplice after the fact when the principal
offender is subject to life imprisonment because Miller does not argue that her 48 -month

8 We do not reach this result based on the in pari materia canon of construction, which
only applies when a statute is ambiguous. See Thonesavanh, 904 N.W.2d at 437. Instead,
when the plain language of a statute explicitly cross -references another statute, the cross-
referenced statute may be considered in ascertaining plain meaning. Here, Minn. Stat.
§ 609.495, subd. 3, provides a maximum sentence of “one-half of the statutory maximum
sentence of imprisonment . . . that could be imposed on the principal off ender” and
expressly cross-references the crimes “listed in section 609.11, subdivision 9,” which in
turn includes “murder in the first, second, or third degree,” as well as “manslaughter in the
first or second degree.” Thus, it is appropriate to consider the maximum sentences of
imprisonment for murder and manslaughter listed in Minn. Stat. §§ 609.185–.205 in
considering the plain meaning of Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3. See State v. Boecker ,
893 N.W.2d 348, 351 (Minn. 2017) (“We may read multiple parts of a statute together to
determine whether a statute is ambiguous.”).
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sentence exceeds the statutory maximum. 9 Her only argument is that the district court
lacked authority to impose any sentence because one -half of a life sentence is not
translatable into a specific term of months or years. But because Miller’s sentence does
not exceed the statutory maximum, which is unascertainable but plainly more than
20 years, her sentence is authorized by law.
Miller’s interpretation of the statute —that the court may not impose any sentence
because one -half of life imprisonment is not subject to precise determination —is
unreasonable. The Legislature clearly did not intend to exempt from punishment those
who are accomplices after the fact to offenders who commit first -degree murder. The
accomplice-after-the-fact statute says exactly the opposite. The statute applies to
accomplices after the fact when the aided person has committed a “criminal act” as defined
in Minn. Stat. § 609.11, subd. 9. See Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 3. And first -degree
murder is expressly included in the list of crimes in Minn. Stat. § 609.11, subd. 9 (listing
“murder in the first . . . degree”). We are obligated to give effect to all parts of the statute,

9 Even though we need not precisely define the statutory maximum in this case, it
may be prudent for the Legislature to specifically address the maximum sentence for being
an accomplice after the fact when the principal crime is subject to life imprisonment,
similar to how the attempt statute, Minn. Stat. § 609.17, subd. 4, specifically addresses the
maximum sentence that may be imposed when the attempted crime is subject to life
imprisonment. And t he accomplice -after-the-fact statute is not the only law that is
susceptible to this problem. Multiple criminal statutes define the maximum sentence as
one-half of the maximum for the underlying offense. See Minn. Stat. § 609.175, subd. 2
(2020) (conspiracy when the underlying offense is something other than first -degree
murder or treason); Minn. Stat. § 609.49, subd. 1(a) (2020) (failure to appear); Minn. Stat.
§ 609.493, subd. 2(b) (2020) (solicitation of mentally impaired pe rsons); Minn. Stat.
§ 609.494, subd. 2(b) (2020) (solicitation of juveniles); Minn. Stat. § 609.495, subd. 4
(2020) (aiding—taking responsibility for criminal acts).
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and we cannot rewrite the statute to exempt accomplices after the fact to first-degree
murder when the Legislature did not provide such an exemption . See State v. Riggs ,
865 N.W.2d 679, 683 (Minn. 2015). Because Miller’s interpretation requires us to rewrite
the statute, it is unreasonable.10
Based on our analysis, we hold that the district court did not err in sentencing Miller
to 48 months in prison for being an accomplice after the fact.11
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the decision of the court of appeals.
Affirmed.

MCKEIG, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

10 Miller argues that the accomplice-after-the-fact statute is an example of legislative
silence because there is no statute “defining one -half of a life sentence in days or years.”
But she frames the issue too narrowly. The Legislature was not silent about its intent to
punish those who are accomplices after the fact for someone who committed an offense
subject to life imprisonment.

11 The court of appeals reached the same conclusion after applying the canon of in pari
materia and construing the accomplice-after-the-fact statute in light of the attempt statute.
Miller, 964 N.W.2d at 461 . It is not necessary for us to engage with that argument here
because we only apply in pari materia to ambiguous statutes, Thonesavanh, 904 N.W.2d
at 437, and the accomplice-after-the-fact statute is not ambiguous as applied here.