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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A21-1630

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Moosisaa Dhugumaa Bulchaa,
Appellant.

Filed March 6, 2023
Affirmed in part and remanded
Ross, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-20-11364

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

Mary F. Moriarty, Hennepin County Attorney, Peter R. Marker , Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Rachel F. Bond, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Bryan, Presiding Judge; Ross, Judge; and Larkin, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
ROSS, Judge
Surveillance-camera video footage captured a man following a woman into an
apartment building, riding up the elevator with her, and exiting the elevator behind her.
The woman later testified that, out of the surveillance camera’s view, the man pushed her
down and sexually assaulted her. Police identified the man by comparing the video footage

2
of him with images of a man whom police knew from other recent encounters. Appellant
Moosisaa Bulchaa asks us to reverse his first- degree criminal-sexual-conduct conviction,
contending that the district court improperly denied his motion to strike an officer’s
testimony that Bulchaa was the man in the surveillance images, an opinion she based on
her prior interaction with Bulchaa. We affirm the conviction because B ulchaa has not
shown that there is a reasonable possibility that the officer’s testimony significantly
affected the jury’s guilty verdict and because arguments he presents in a supplemental brief
are either unconvincing or are undeveloped. We remand for the district court to amend the
warrant of conviction to include only the first-degree offense.
FACTS
An emergency dispatcher received a report in April 2020 that a woman, whom we
will call Ruth to protect her privacy, was sexually assaulted in the hallway of a Minneapolis
apartment building. Ruth told responding Minneapolis police officers that a man rode up
the building’s elevator with her, followed her out of the elevator onto the tenth floor,
pushed her to the floor, and digitally penetrated her vagina. Police viewed a building
surveillance video of a man who matched the physical description that Ruth had provided,
and Ruth confirmed that the man in the video appeared to be her attacker.
A Minneapolis police investigator seeking to identify the assailant circulated video-
footage still images of the man who followed and attacked Ruth to local law enforcement.
At least two officers recognized the photographed man as appellant Moosisaa Bulchaa,
based on their recent encounters with him. Police obtained photographs depicting Bulchaa
wearing what appeared to be the same clothes worn by Ruth’s attacker. His physical

3
characteristics also matched Ruth’s description and those of the man in the surveillance
video.
The state charged Bulchaa with first-, third -, and fourth-degree criminal sexual
conduct. At trial, the state presented eleven witnesses, including police sergeant Christine
Patino, the sole witness whose testimony Bulchaa challenges in this appeal. Sergeant
Patino testified that she knew Bulchaa and had spoken with him before the attack. She said
that she reviewed the surveillance video, identified Bulchaa as the man in the video, and
explained how she recognized Bulchaa:
Since I’ve seen him numerous times before . . . I can see . . . he
stands about [6 fee t] tall . . . he’s of light build. Some may
describe that as skinny. His facial features are something that I
recognize also. He has a slim nose. [It’s] just the way that his
eyes lay on his face, his complexion. All of those are things
that I was able to recognize when I watched the video of this
from the times that I’ve interacted with Mr. Bulchaa.

Bulchaa moved to strike Sergeant Patino’s identification as improperly invading the
province of the jury, and the district court denied the motion.
The jury found Bulchaa guilty as charged. The district court sentenced him to 144
months in prison on the conviction of first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
Bulchaa appeals.
DECISION
Bulchaa argues that we must reverse his conviction because, he maintains, Sergeant
Patino’s identification constituted improper opinion testimony that the district court should
have struck. He also argues that we should reverse based on additional issues in his
supplemental brief. None of the arguments requires reversal.

4
I
We are not persuaded to reverse by Bulchaa’s contention that the district court
erroneously refused to strike Sergeant Patino’s allegedly impermissible identification
testimony. He contends particularly that the testimony constituted improper opinion
testimony from a nonexpert witness, violating Minnesota Rule of Evidence 701. We review
a district court’s evidentiary rulings for an abuse of discretion. State v. Amos, 658 N.W.2d
201, 203 (Minn. 2003). Even if we recognize an evidentiary ruling that constitutes an abuse
of discretion, we consider whether the error is harmless, meaning that we will reverse a
conviction only if the erroneous ruling prejudiced the defense. Id. Erroneously admitted
evidence that does not implicate a constitutional right has prejudiced the defense only if
there is a reasonable possibility that the evidence significantly affected the verdict. State v.
Peltier, 874 N.W.2d 792, 802 (Minn. 2016); see also State v. Matthews, 800 N.W.2d 629,
634 (Minn. 2011) (listing factors to consider when determining whether any prejudice
arose from inadmissible testimony) . Because Bulchaa has shown no resulting prej udice
regardless of whether the district court should have excluded the evidence, we need not
consider whether the district court’s ruling constituted an abuse of discretion.
Bulchaa’s argument that the alleged error prejudiced him does not prevail. He
contends that Sergeant Patino’s opinion testimony identifying him as the man in the
surveillance video footage was especially impactful because the jury heard this testimony
“coming from a licensed peace officer.” The contention is not convincing considering that
the jury had already received similar police testimony before Sergeant Patino testified.
Metropolitan Transit Police Officer Ahmad Kahin had informed the jury plainly that, when

5
he saw the surveillance image of the man who followed Ruth of f the elevator before the
attack, he “immediately knew that it was the person” he had encountered during a medical
call when he attended to Bulchaa having breathing trouble at a light-rail station. He had
identified Bulchaa during the medical call by Bulchaa’s state identification card, and he
recognized him instantly when he saw the surveillance image that Minneapolis police
circulated after the attack. Officer Kahin’s testimony was stated in even more absolute
terms than Sergeant Patino’s identification testimony. And before the jurors heard from
Sergeant Patino, they had already heard from Minneapolis Police Sergeant Bevan Blauert.
Sergeant Blauert testified that, when he compared the images of Bulchaa’s two contacts
with Metropolitan Transit Police Department officers to the surveillance images from the
night of Ruth’s attack, he too had “determined it to be the same person.” That two police
officers had already testified—without objection and without challenge on appeal—to
having identified Bulchaa as the man in the surveillance video substantially diminishes the
significance of Sergeant Patino’s identification testimony. Indeed, the prosecutor
referenced all of this police testimony together during her closing argument to the jury:
“Yesterday, you heard from a bunch of law enforcement officers talking about the process
that they went through to identify this defendant . . . .”
We add that this was an atypical case in that the victim did not identify her attacker
before or during trial. The state instead relied heavily on the jury’s opportunity to compare
surveillance video footage and images of Bulchaa identified during other incidents to the
video and images surrounding the attack. In other words, the prosecutor essentially
produced evidence that allowed the jury itself to directly identify the defendant. This was

6
largely the way the prosecutor urged the jury to decide the case, minimizing the officers’
identification and ushering the jury toward its own:
It’s the defendant. And yo u’ll be able to go back to the jury
room, you’ll be able to look at these photos and compare them
side by side, and when you do that, you will see he has the same
build, he has the same stature. You’ll see that the skin tone is
the same across those photographs. You’ll be able to compare
the facial hair, you’ll be able to compare how he’s standing,
how he’s dressed, the manner of dress, how he’s wearing that
hood, how he’s all zipped up. The jacket, of course, is very
identifiable. The backpack’s identifiable, and he has the same
pants and shoes. You will be able to compare across all of these
photographs and know, beyond a doubt, that this defendant is
the man who attacked [Ruth].

(Emphasis added.) Given the fact that the jury had already heard from other police
witnesses who testified that they reached the same conclusion that Sergeant Patino later
said she reached, and given the state’s focus at trial on the photographic evidence with the
prosecutor’s argument that the jury could identify Bulchaa as the attacker, we are satisfied
that Sergeant Patino’s allegedly improper opinion testimony identifying Bulchaa as Ruth’s
attacker had little independent impact on the verdict. This reasoning about the lack of
prejudice also disposes of Bulchaa’s related emphasis on the fact that Sergeant Patino’s
testimony was the last testimony the jury received.
II
Bulchaa raises five arguments in his supplemental brief. We address only one in
substance, and we conclude that none merits reversal.
Bulchaa argues that the district court improperly denied his motion for a downward
durational departure from the presumptive sentence designated by the Minnesota

7
Sentencing Guidelines. A district court may depart downward durationally from a
presumptive guidelines sentence only if the defendant’s criminal conduct was significantly
less serious than conduct an offender typically engages in when committing the offense.
State v. Solberg, 882 N.W.2d 618, 623–24 (Minn. 2016). We review a district court’s
refusal to depart for an abuse of discretion, and we will therefore affirm a guidelines
sentence if the district court carefully evaluated all the evidence and information presented
to it before sentencing. State v. Johnson, 831 N.W.2d 917, 925 (Minn. App. 2013), rev.
denied (Minn. Sept. 17, 2013); see also Solberg, 882 N.W.2d at 623. Our review of the
record convinces us that the district court carefully evaluated all the testimony presented.
The district court observed that Ruth’s physical injuries were less severe than those in some
first-degree criminal-sexual-conduct cases , but it reasonably implied that Bulchaa’s
conduct was not significantly less serious than conduct in a typical offense. The district
court issued the sentence within its discretion.
Bulchaa’s other assertions—that the state failed to produce sufficient evidence on
four issues: to prove the elements of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct; to prove the
element of force; to support the first-degree criminal-sexual-conduct conviction; and to
establish that he was Ruth’s assailant —lack any supporting argument or legal authority.
We generally do not consider unsupported contentions. See State v. Andersen, 871 N.W.2d
910, 915 (Minn. 2015). We therefore do not address the arguments further.
III

We have spotted an issue that neither party raises. See State v. Hannuksela, 452
N.W.2d 668, 673 n.7 (Minn. 1990) (emphasizing that the duty of appellate courts to decide

8
cases in accordance with law is not diminished by a party’s “failure to specify issues”
(quotation omitted)). The district court may not convict a person of both a crime and a
lesser-included offense. Minn. Stat. § 609.04, subd. 1 (2018). The warrant of commitment
here suggests that the district court may have inadvertently entered convictions of third-
and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct, not just first-degree criminal sexual conduct,
for the same conduct. The district court properly sentenced Bulchaa only to the first-degree
offense. But on remand, the district court should amend the warrant language to confirm
the entry of only one conviction.
Affirmed in part and remanded.