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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A21-0402

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Rayjon Matthew Willis,
Appellant.

Filed January 10, 2022
Affirmed
Slieter, Judge

Itasca County District Court
File No. 31-CR-20-1129, 31-CR-20-1182, 31-CR-20-1462

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

Matti R. Adam, Itasca County Attorney, Jacqueline A. Destache, Assistant County
Attorney, Grand Rapids, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Ap pellate Public Defender, Ab igail H. Rankin, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Larkin, Pres iding Judge; Johnson, J udge; and Slieter,
Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
SLIETER, Judge
Appellant directly appeals from the final judgments of conviction for 42 counts of
violating a domestic abuse no contact order (DANCO), claiming the district court erred by
the imposition of 42 sentences. Because none of the 42 DANCO violations share a unity
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of time, they were not committed as part of the same behavioral incident, and we, therefore,
affirm.
FACTS
The three district court files consolidated for our review relate to appellant Rayjon
Matthew Willis’s communication with his wife over three time periods. The following
facts are undisputed.
Willis’s Initial Arrest
On May 7, 2020, a state patrol trooper stopped the vehicle Willis was driving.
Willis’s wife was in the car with him, in violation of a DANCO issued in September 2019
by the Hennepin County District Court, which prohibited contact with his wife. The
trooper arrested Willis, and respondent State of Minnesota charged Willis with one count
of violating a DANCO, pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 629.75, subd. 2(d)(1) (2018).
Post-Arrest and day of First Appearance
While Willis was in jail, he contacted his wife via text and phone on the evening of
May 7 and the morning of May 8. Willis temporarily stopped communicating with his wife
when he was led from the jail to attend his first court appearance involving the May 7
DANCO violation charge. During the first a ppearance, the district court issued a new
pretrial DANCO which also prohibited Willis fro m contacting his wife. Once Willis
returned to jail the evening of May 8, he again spoke with his wife on the phone. Based
on these contacts with his wife on May 7 and 8, the state charged Willis with three counts
of violating a DANCO.

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May 9 to June 15
From May 9 to June 15, Willis continued to communicate with his wife either by
text or phone multiple times each day. The state charged Willis with 38 counts of violating
a DANCO—one count for each day that appellant had contact with his wife in violation of
the DANCO orders.
Willis pleaded guilty to all 42 counts of DANCO violations. The district court
convicted and sentenced him to 42 concurrent 30-month ex ecuted sentences. Willis
appeals.
DECISION
Willis argues that his criminal conduct cons ists of three behavior al incidents, that
he should have been sentence d for only three of the charge d counts and, therefore, the
district court erred by imposing a sentence for each of the 42 counts.
District courts generally have broad discretion in sentencing. State v. Soto , 855
N.W.2d 303, 307 (Minn. 2014). Whether multiple offenses are part of a single behavioral
incident is a mixed question of law and fact, and we review the district court’s factual
findings for clear error. See State v. Bakken , 883 N.W.2d 264, 270 (Minn. 2016).
However, we review the district court’s application of the law to those facts de novo. See
id. Because the facts in this case are undisputed, we review de novo whether the offenses
were committed as part of the same behavioral incident. State v. Marchbanks, 632 N.W.2d
725, 731 (Minn. App. 2001).
Pursuant to Minn. Stat. § 609.035, subd. 1 (2018), “if a person’s conduct constitutes
more than one offense under the laws of this state, the person may be punished for only
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one of the offenses and a conviction or acquittal of any one of them is a bar to prosecution
for any other of them.” A person’s conduct “is limited to acts committed during a single
behavioral incident.” State v. Branch, 942 N.W.2d 711, 713 (Minn. 2020).
When the multiple crimes charged are intentional crimes, we first consider whether
the conduct shared a unity of time—meaning it occurred at substantially the same time and
place—and second, whether the conduct was mo tivated by an effort to obtain the same
criminal objective. State v. Degroot, 946 N.W.2d 354, 365 (Minn. 2020). The state bears
the burden of establishing by a preponderance of the evidence that the conduct was not a
single behavioral incident. Id. If the state meets its burden on one of the two
considerations, then we need not consider the other. See, e.g., Munt v. State, 920 N.W.2d
410, 417-18 (Minn. 2018) (analyzing only whether multiple criminal acts were motivated
by the same criminal objective). This record demonstrates that the 42 DANCO violations
did not share a unity of time. Therefore, we need not analyze the other consideration.
After arriving in jail on May 7 following his first DANCO viol ation, Willis began
communicating with his wife and texted his wife again the next morning. Finally, once he
returned to jail following his first appearance involving the first DANCO violation, Willis
again contacted his wife (post-arrest and day of first appearance; three more violations).
From May 9 through June 15, Willis continue d to text and call his wife each day (38
violations). The state alleged the 42 counts of violating the DANCOs on the days during
which Willis contacted his wife. Each count of a DANCO violation occurred, therefore,
at different times and with multiple hours between. See, e.g., Degroot, 946 N.W.2d 354,
365-66 (affirming that a 45-minute break be tween communications is a sufficient
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difference in time to suppo rt multiple convictions); State v. Stevenson, 286 N.W.2d 719,
720 (Minn. 1979) (holding that two criminal acts occurring five hours apart were not part
of single behavioral incident); State v. Schevchuk , 163 N.W.2d 772, 776 (Minn. 1968)
(holding that several crimes were not part of single behavi oral incident when offenses
occurred over a period of two and one-half hours).
Willis argues that the breaks in his communication with his wife were out of his
control because his access to the phone was restricted each night and, therefore, these
breaks should be seen as a unity of time. We are not persuaded. First, loss of phone access
to Willis—whether it be while officers took Willis into custody, during Willis’s court
hearing, or each night—simply suggests he di d not have the ability du ring those times to
commit more DANCO violations. Second, the reason for the break in time is not critical;
the break itself is. Based on our de novo review of this record, these breaks between
communications are sufficient to conclude that each act of a DANCO violation was
separated by a unity of time.
Affirmed.