State of Minnesota v. Buay David Duol

STATE OF MINNESOTA

IN SUPREME COURT

A22-0748
A24-1754

Hennepin County Moore, III, J.

State of Minnesota,

Respondent,

vs. Filed: September 3, 2025
Office of Appellate Courts
Buay David Duol,

Appellant.

________________________

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

Mary F. Moriarty, Hennepin County Attorney, Matthew D. Hough, Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for respondent.

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Julie L. Nelson, Assistant State
Public Defender, Saint Paul, Minnesota, for appellant.

________________________

S Y L L A B U S

A district court judge’s deliberate independent investigation and consideration of

extra-record facts in denying a petition for postconviction relief violates the petitioner’s

constitutional right to an impartial judge. Such a violation is a structural error requiring

automatic reversal under the Due Process Clause of the Minnesota Constitution.

Reversed in part and remanded.

1
 O P I N I O N

MOORE, III, Justice.

The issue in this appeal is whether appellant Buay David Duol is entitled to a new

evidentiary hearing on his petition for postconviction relief because the district court, in

denying relief, investigated and considered facts outside the record. In 2022, Duol was

found guilty and convicted in Hennepin County District Court of first-degree premeditated

and second-degree intentional murder for the shooting death of Lavelle Jackson. The

district court sentenced Duol to life in prison without the possibility of supervised release.

Duol appealed, and we granted his request to stay his direct appeal to allow him to petition

for postconviction relief based on a claim of newly discovered evidence.

Duol’s newly discovered evidence claim rested primarily on new testimony from

Dequarn Bell, who had been in jail with Duol as he awaited trial. Duol argued that if

presented at trial, Bell’s testimony would have “neutralized” the testimony of one of the

State’s key witnesses, who testified that Duol confessed to murdering Jackson. After an

evidentiary hearing, the district court denied Duol’s petition for a new trial. One of the

district court’s conclusions was that Bell’s testimony was not credible. In reaching that

determination, the district court discussed numerous factual details from Bell’s criminal

history. Some of the facts the district court discussed and considered relating to Bell’s

adult and juvenile convictions were not entered into the record by either party but were

extra-record facts based upon the district court’s deliberate independent investigation.

Duol now appeals from the denial of his petition for postconviction relief. He asks

that we reverse his convictions and remand for a new trial, or in the alternative, remand for

2
a new evidentiary hearing on the grounds that the district court’s investigation into facts

outside the record relating to Bell’s criminal history violated Duol’s constitutional right to

an impartial judge under State v. Dorsey, 701 N.W.2d 238, 252–53 (Minn. 2005). Duol

further argues that the district court judge was disqualified from presiding over the hearing

under Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 2.11(A) due to the appearance of bias and

was thus required to recuse himself under Minnesota Rule of Criminal Procedure 26.03,

subdivision 14(3).

Here, we conclude that the district court violated Duol’s right to due process by

independently investigating extra-record details related to Bell’s criminal history and

considering those facts in assessing Bell’s credibility. The district court thus committed

structural error that entitles Duol to a new evidentiary hearing on his claim of newly

discovered evidence before an impartial judge. We therefore reverse the decision of the

district court denying postconviction relief and remand for proceedings consistent with this

opinion.

FACTS

The facts essential to this appeal are as follows. In January 2022, after an eleven-

day trial, a Hennepin County jury found Duol guilty of first-degree premeditated murder

and second-degree intentional murder for the shooting death of Lavelle Jackson at

Jackson’s home in Minneapolis. The district court accordingly sentenced Duol to life in

prison without the possibility of supervised release.

Among the witnesses who testified for the State at trial was S.P. When Duol was

arrested, S.P. was an inmate in the Hennepin County jail awaiting sentencing. S.P. testified

3
as follows: Duol approached S.P. at the jail, introduced himself, and asked to talk to S.P.

about his case. Duol told him that he was in jail “on a body,” which S.P. explained meant

“[Duol] killed somebody.” Duol told S.P. that the victim, Jackson, had been in a

relationship with the mother of Duol’s child. Duol said he killed Jackson to help protect

his child from mistreatment by Jackson. Duol asked S.P. for advice, and S.P. told him that

he could help find someone to create an alibi for the time of the murder. 1 But S.P.

ultimately declined to help Duol because Duol did not have enough money to pay him.

S.P. also testified that Duol repeatedly tried to get in contact with Duol’s brother (who had

driven him to Jackson’s house) to “tie up some loose ends.” S.P. advised Duol that jail

calls were monitored, so if Duol needed to communicate with anyone, to use the mail.

When asked what his motivation was for testifying against Duol, S.P. testified that

he “[felt] bad for, you know, the man who died and his family and stuff,” and that his

girlfriend encouraged him to “do the right thing” by cooperating with police. In exchange

for S.P.’s agreement to testify at the grand jury proceeding and at Duol’s trial, the State

agreed to reduce S.P.’s presumptive sentence of 60 months in prison to a probationary

sentence including local incarceration.

1
S.P. testified that he offered to help Duol “formulate some witnesses to back up his
story of where he was,” because “if you ain’t got no alibi, you know, and you got people
saying you did this, then they’re going to end up getting you, and charging you, convicting
you.”

4
 After Duol was found guilty and convicted, Duol directly appealed from his

convictions. 2 In January 2023, Duol requested that we stay his direct appeal to allow him

to petition for postconviction relief. We granted the stay. State v. Duol, No. A22-0748,

Order at 1–2 (Minn. filed Jan. 13, 2023). In March 2023, Duol petitioned for

postconviction relief. Duol stated in his petition that when he was sent to MCF-Rush City

after his trial, he encountered Dequarn Bell, who had been part of the same pod at the

Hennepin County Jail with Duol and S.P. in November 2020. Duol’s postconviction

petition claimed that Bell “expressed regret when he saw Duol and learned that he had

been convicted because Bell knew [S.P.] had worked with the state to convict Duol in

exchange for a deal on [S.P.’s] pending charges.”

A defense investigator interviewed Bell. Bell told the investigator that in November

2020, Duol “repeatedly told other inmates that he was being framed by the police and that

he did not kill anyone.” Bell also reported that “[S.P.] was a jailhouse snitch who had no

problem with ‘jumping’ on other people’s cases to get out of jail.” Bell said that S.P. had

approached him to suggest testifying against Duol so that they might lessen their own

sentences. 3

2
We note that the State relied on several other witnesses and sources of evidence to
bring its case against Duol. These additional facts are omitted here because they are not
relevant to the narrow claim resolved in this appeal.
3
Duol’s petition for postconviction relief also raised arguments based on statements
by Bell about Duol’s discovery materials, including that Bell saw “[S.P.] go through Duol’s
discovery when Duol was not around.”

5
 Duol’s postconviction petition requested that the district court reverse Duol’s

convictions based on “newly discovered evidence that undermines S.P.’s testimony about

Duol’s involvement in Jackson’s murder.” Duol argued that “[S.P.] was one of the state’s

key witnesses. Without S.P.’s false testimony, there was scant other evidence linking Duol

to Jackson’s murder. As such, the jury might have either acquitted Duol or the trial might

have ended in a hung jury.” Duol submitted two affidavits along with his petition, one

from the investigator who interviewed Bell, and another from Duol’s trial attorney. Duol

requested reversal of his convictions and a new trial, or in the alternative, an evidentiary

hearing on Bell’s proposed new testimony.

The district court judge presiding over Duol’s trial granted Duol’s request for a

postconviction evidentiary hearing, and a different district court judge presided over the

hearing. Duol called two witnesses, Bell and the trial attorney, to testify. Bell testified that

he was housed with both Duol and S.P. in November 2020, and that he and S.P. had

discussed “conspiring to maybe . . . jump on [Duol’s] case.” Bell testified that this plan

would involve gathering information about Duol’s case and giving the information,

including, if needed, made-up details, to the police to help the State convict Duol. Bell

testified that he did not see Duol show his discovery to S.P., which contradicted his earlier

statement to the investigator that he had seen S.P. reviewing the discovery. Asked at the

hearing about this discrepancy, Bell stated that whatever he told the investigator was

correct. The trial attorney testified that Bell’s testimony would have “neutralize[d]” S.P.’s

testimony at trial, which included that Duol confessed to Jackson’s murder, and that “at the

6
end of the day, there really wasn’t much else to put this murder on Mr. Duol. . . . They

needed [S.P.].”

After the one-day evidentiary hearing, the district court issued a thorough and

detailed 73-page order denying Duol’s petition for relief. Because the parties did not agree

over which legal test applied to Duol’s claim, and because “the Supreme Court will . . . be

reviewing this Court’s order and opinion,” the district court analyzed Duol’s newly

discovered evidence claim under two tests: the three-prong test from Larrison v. United

States, 24 F.2d 82, 87–88 (7th Cir. 1928), overruled by United States v. Mitrione, 357 F.3d

712, 718 (7th Cir. 2004), vacated on other grounds, 543 U.S. 1097 (2005), 4 for claims of

false trial testimony, and the four-prong test from Rainer v. State, 566 N.W.2d 692 (Minn.

1997), for claims of newly discovered evidence. The district court concluded that under

either test, Duol failed to show a new trial was required.

Central to the district court’s analysis under both legal standards was the question

of Bell’s credibility as a witness. In determining that Bell was not credible, the district

court’s ruling relied on details about Bell’s criminal history that were not in the record.

These extra-record facts were not presented at the hearing or by any of the parties and were

instead the product of the district court’s independent investigation. In particular, it is

undisputed that the district court cited to and discussed factual details about Bell’s prior

first-degree criminal sexual assault conviction—taken from the plea hearing transcript, the

4
Although Larrison was overruled in Mitrione, “Minnesota courts continue to apply
the Larrison test in cases involving witness-recantation and false-testimony claims.”
Gilbert v. State, 2 N.W.3d 483, 486 n.3 (Minn. 2024), reh’g denied (Mar. 1, 2024) (citation
omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted).

7
presentence investigation, and the opinion of the Minnesota Court of Appeals in State v.

Bell, 971 N.W.2d 92 (Minn. App. 2022), rev. denied (Minn. Apr. 27, 2022)—as well as

details related to Bell’s other adult felony and misdemeanor convictions, and his juvenile

criminal history. Some of the statements in the district court’s order that relied on

information outside the record included:

After eleven days of jury selection and trial, Bell pleaded guilty, on
October 14, 2020, to all three charges and to the heinous enhancing factor of
intentionally causing great bodily harm by using a hot curling iron to leave
serious, permanent scars—a total of 14 burns—on the victim’s face, neck,
chest, back, underarms, and leg and also by penetrating her vagina with the
hot curling iron.

Bell also has felony convictions for (1) violation of a DANCO, in
Court File No. 27-CR-17-21424 (convicted in 2017), (2) domestic assault, in
Court File No. 27-CR-18-25687 (although charged as a felony, Bell received
a gross misdemeanor sentence pursuant to his plea agreement upon his
conviction in 2018), (3) second-degree riot, in Court File No. 27-CR-13-
18185 (Bell received a stay of imposition upon his conviction and sentence
in 2013, so this conviction was deemed a misdemeanor), as well as (4) a
misdemeanor conviction for providing a fictitious name or false statement in
Court File No. 27-CR-17-13886 (convicted in 2017). Like [S.P.] . . . Bell
also had an extensive criminal history as a juvenile as well as adult
misdemeanor convictions.

....

. . . It can be true that [S.P.]’s actions were motivated by both the
desire to obtain a better plea agreement for himself as well as to bring
forward information in a serious murder case that weighed on him.
(All but one of [S.P.]’s felony convictions were for crimes of
dishonesty—theft, burglary, financial transaction card theft, etc.—not
brutal personal crimes of violence, like Duol’s murder of Jackson or
the particularly brutal and heinous manner in which Bell sexually
assaulted the victim in his criminal sexual assault case (testimony in
that case established that Bell used a 400-degree curling iron to
penetrate her vagina and also to leave serious burns over much of her
body). The portions of Bell’s testimony that may be credible, if they
were believed by a trier of fact, do not demonstrate that [S.P.]’s trial

8
 testimony on some points is false, they merely open the door to more
than one explanation for [S.P.]’s actions.

. . . The district court originally imposed a sentence of life with parole
eligibility after 30 years for Bell on his first-degree criminal sexual
conduct conviction, but that sentence was vacated and remanded for
resentencing on Bell’s appeal. See State v. Dequarn Bell, 971 N.W.2d
92, 107–111 (Minn. App. 2022), rev. denied, Minn. (April 22, 2022);
State v. Dequarn Bell, Court File No. 27-CR-19-22461, Dk Nos. 78
(original district court sentencing order, December 4, 2020) & 107
(sentencing order on remand, September 23, 2022).

Duol v. State, No. 27-CR-20-21445, Order at 18–19, 62–63, 63 n.57 (Henn. Cnty. Dist. Ct.

filed Oct. 21, 2024) (citations omitted).

Duol now appeals from the denial of his petition for postconviction relief, arguing

that he is entitled to a new trial, or in the alternative, that the inclusion of these extra-record

facts entitles him to a new evidentiary hearing.

ANALYSIS

Duol argues that he is entitled to a new trial because the district court wrongly

denied his petition for postconviction relief based on newly discovered evidence. We do

not reach that ultimate issue, however, because we instead find for Duol on his alternative

argument that he is entitled to a new evidentiary hearing because the district court

investigated and relied on facts outside the record in denying his petition for postconviction

relief. 5 Duol’s claim has two distinct threads. Duol argues first that the district court’s

5
We have never squarely addressed the remedy resulting from a district court’s
deliberate independent investigation and use of extra-record facts in a postconviction
evidentiary hearing, but we have addressed the remedy for a denial of counsel at a
postconviction evidentiary hearing. See State v. Krause, 817 N.W.2d 146, 147 (Minn.
2012). In Krause, the court remanded for a new evidentiary hearing, as opposed to a new

9
deliberate independent investigation and use of extra-record facts violated his

constitutional right to an impartial judge. Second, Duol contends that the district court

judge’s extra-record investigation disqualified him from presiding over the hearing under

the Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 2.11(A) (stating that “[a] judge shall

disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might

reasonably be questioned”), and Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure 26.03 (which

states that a “judge must not preside at a trial or other proceeding if disqualified under the

Code of Judicial Conduct”). Because we conclude that the use of extra-record information

pertaining to Bell’s prior convictions constituted a violation of Duol’s constitutional right

to an impartial judge—and that this error was structural under the Due Process Clause of

the Minnesota Constitution and therefore requires reversal and remand for a new

evidentiary hearing before an impartial judge—we do not reach Duol’s arguments relying

on the Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct and Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure.

A.

Duol’s contention that he was denied the constitutional right to an impartial judge

is a legal question, which we review de novo. State v. Lopez, 988 N.W.2d 107, 120 (Minn.

trial, relying on the legal principle that a remedy should be appropriate to the violation and
retrial is not required if a remand will remedy the violation. Id. The Krause court
explained that although this principle had been articulated in the slightly different contexts
of courtroom closures and the admission of evidence seized during a warrantless search, it
applied with equal force to the denial of counsel. Id. at 147–48; see also State v. Jackson,
977 N.W.2d 169, 176 (Minn. 2022) (remand for new public hearing appropriate remedy
after the improper closure of a post-trial Schwartz hearing). This legal principle applies
with equal force when a due process violation occurs due to a district court’s deliberate
independent investigation and use of extra-record facts in a postconviction evidentiary
hearing.

10
2023). The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Article 1,

Section 7 of the Minnesota Constitution entitle criminal defendants to due process. U.S.

Const. amend. XIV; Minn. Const. art. 1, § 7. These due process rights include the

fundamental right to a fair trial and “a fair and impartial judge.” Cuypers v. State,

711 N.W.2d 100, 104 (Minn. 2006) (citing Bracy v. Gramley, 520 U.S. 899, 904–05

(1997)); see also Rose v. Clark, 478 U.S. 570, 577 (1986) (“The state of course must

provide a trial before an impartial judge . . . .”). We have stated that an impartial trial

process “requires that conclusions reached by the trier of fact be based upon the facts in

evidence,” and “prohibits the trier of fact from reaching conclusions based on evidence

sought or obtained beyond that adduced in court.” State v. Dorsey, 701 N.W.2d 238,

249–50 (Minn. 2005).

We have recognized a “bright-line rule that judges may not engage in independent

investigations of facts in evidence . . . .” Id. at 251; see also Lopez, 988 N.W.2d at 119

(reaffirming this principle). When a district court judge does so, they no longer act as a

fair and impartial judge. We have never recognized an exception to this guardrail. Even

though we have acknowledged that adopting a more flexible standard may result in a “less

distasteful outcome” in some cases, we have said that our failure to apply this rule

uniformly “would permanently compromise the bedrock principle in our criminal justice

system that judges may not investigate or rely upon extra-record knowledge when sitting

as the finder of fact.” Dorsey, 701 N.W.2d at 251.

Duol argues that he is entitled to a new evidentiary hearing because the district

court’s investigation into Bell’s criminal history deprived Duol of his constitutional right

11
to an impartial judge. Duol states that at the evidentiary hearing, “the parties presented to

the [district] court only limited information about Bell’s criminal history.” At the hearing,

the State impeached Bell’s credibility by introducing evidence of four prior convictions—

but the extent of the record on those convictions was only the offense name, date of

conviction, and court file number. Duol notes that the State did not introduce any

additional evidence regarding Bell’s offenses and did not question Bell about them at the

hearing.

The State does not dispute that the district court’s order denying relief “contained

information about Bell’s criminal history that was not part of the postconviction record.”

Specifically, the State agrees the order contained details related to Bell’s first-degree

criminal sexual assault—including information about the victim, the plea hearing

transcript, presentence investigation, and opinion at the court of appeals—as well as facts

pertaining to Bell’s adult felony convictions, adult misdemeanor convictions, and juvenile

criminal history. The State concedes that “[g]iven both the amount and specificity of the

extra-record material included in the [district] court’s order, it logically follows that the

[district] court inquired into this information,” and that “it appears the [district] court then

used this information when making credibility determinations about Bell[.]”

As we set forth above, under the due process guarantees of the Minnesota and

United States Constitutions, there is a “bright-line rule” that prohibits the trier of fact from

conducting deliberate independent investigations of extra-record facts and then considering

those facts. Dorsey, 701 N.W.2d at 249; Lopez, 988 N.W.2d at 118. Applying that rule

here, the district court’s deliberate independent investigation and use of extra-record facts

12
in the order denying an evidentiary hearing violated Duol’s constitutional rights under the

Minnesota and United States Constitutions.

The State offers several theories for why we should not reach such a conclusion

here, but none of them are persuasive. First, the State argues that Minn. Stat. § 590.04,

subd. 3, which governs hearings on petitions for postconviction relief, empowered the

district court to conduct independent extra-record investigations. This is not the case.

Section 590.04, subdivision 3, states that a district court judge presiding over a

postconviction hearing “may inquire into and decide any grounds for relief, even though

not raised by the petitioner.” It would strain the text of the statute to interpret this provision,

which permits a district court judge to grant relief on grounds the petitioner did not raise,

as authorizing a district court judge to conduct a wide-ranging investigation into facts

outside the record in order to deny relief. Moreover, because defendants possess the right

to an impartial judge under the Minnesota and United States Constitutions, which includes

a judge’s duty to refrain from conducting their own factual investigations, interpreting the

statute as the State asks us to would raise important questions regarding its

constitutionality. We therefore reject the State’s assertion that section 590.04,

subdivision 3, authorized the use of extra-record facts here.

Second, the State reasons that the rule we established in Dorsey was “specific to a

criminal trial,” and that the rule does not apply to postconviction proceedings. We have

never considered a case involving an allegation of judicial bias in a postconviction

proceeding and therefore have not had occasion to state definitively that the right to an

impartial judge applies in postconviction proceedings. But we have emphasized that a

13
“judge must maintain the integrity of the adversary system at all stages of the proceedings.”

State v. Schlienz, 774 N.W.2d 361, 367 (Minn. 2009) (emphasis added). Because

postconviction proceedings are intended to “vindicate [the] denial of fundamental rights

and thereby prevent manifest injustice,” Butala v. State, 664 N.W.2d 333, 338 (Minn.

2003), today we clarify that postconviction proceedings, just as criminal trials and direct

appeals, must comport with the fundamental due process guarantees of the United States

and Minnesota Constitutions. We therefore reject the State’s argument that the

constitutional right to an impartial judge does not apply in this case.

Finally, the State contends that this case is distinguishable from those in which we

have previously held the investigation and use of extra-record facts to be constitutionally

impermissible. The State argues that because the district court judge here did not discuss

any extra-record facts at the postconviction hearing itself, the State did not have “an

advantage at the evidentiary hearing like the factfinder did for the State during the bench

trial in Dorsey.” But the constitutional prohibition on independent judicial investigations

that we established in Dorsey does not turn on whether the investigation provides an

advantage to either party in practice. This is because the very “act of seeking information

outside the record effectively transform[s] the court into an investigator . . . thereby

eliminating any vestige of impartiality.” Lopez, 988 N.W.2d at 119 (alteration omitted)

(emphasis added) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted). Both the state and

federal constitutions prohibit this practice, regardless of whether it is done in open court or

14
a written order. The State’s third and final argument that there was not a constitutional

violation here therefore fails. 6

B.

Accordingly, we turn to the proper remedy for the violation of Duol’s due process

rights. In Dorsey, we held that the deprivation of the “basic protection” of an impartial

judge is a “structural error” that requires reversal without questioning whether the error is

harmless. Dorsey, 701 N.W.2d at 253. Generally, if a defendant “had counsel and was

tried by an impartial adjudicator, there is a strong presumption that any other errors that

may have occurred are subject to harmless-error analysis.” Rose, 478 U.S. at 579. But

“structural defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism . . . defy analysis by harmless-

error standards.” Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309 (1991). In Fulminante, the

U.S. Supreme Court specifically referenced the right to an impartial judge as one such

structural error. Id. at 309; see also Gray v. Mississippi, 481 U.S. 648, 668 (1987) (“[S]ome

constitutional rights are so basic to a fair trial that their infraction can never be treated as

harmless error. . . . The right to an impartial adjudicator, be it judge or jury, is such a right.”

(alteration omitted) (citation omitted) (internal quotation marks omitted)).

The State asserts that “[o]n this record, [the district court’s] inclusion of the

information was harmless error,” because Duol’s request for a new trial would have failed

regardless of the district court’s views as to Bell’s credibility. But applying a harmless-

6
The State does not assert that any of the district court’s conduct here fell within the
purview of what is permitted by judicial notice, and we therefore do not pass upon that
issue.

15
error analysis here would be inconsistent with the bright-line rule we applied in Dorsey.

See 701 N.W.2d at 251. In Dorsey we were, as we are in this case, “confident that the

judge . . . was motivated by [their] desire to seek the truth and be candid about what [they]

knew.” Id. at 250. Nevertheless, we emphasized in Dorsey and Lopez that a deliberate

independent investigation and use of extra-record facts undermines the factfinder’s duty

“to make factual determinations solely on the basis of evidence in the record,” and therefore

is a structural defect, that requires reversal without inquiry into whether the error would

have changed the outcome. Dorsey, 701 N.W.2d at 250–53; Lopez, 988 N.W.2d at 119–20;

see also State v. Shoen, 598 N.W.2d 370 (Minn. 1999).

Reversal in part and remand for a new evidentiary hearing without consideration of

a harmless error analysis is the required result here as well. We recognize that this is a

difficult case involving complex trial court proceedings, including the challenging

circumstance of a district court judge taking over a murder case already at the

postconviction stage. But because Duol’s due process rights were violated by the district

court’s deliberate independent investigation and use of extra-record facts, we reverse the

district court’s decision denying Duol’s petition for postconviction relief. On remand,

Duol is entitled to a new evidentiary hearing on his claim of newly discovered evidence

before an impartial judge. 7

7
Because we conclude that the use of extra-record information pertaining to Bell’s
prior convictions constituted structural error under the Due Process Clause of the
Minnesota Constitution, we need not address whether the district court judge who presided
over the postconviction hearing had to recuse under Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct
Rule 2.11(A) and Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure 26.03. On remand, Duol is

16
 We conclude by emphasizing that the Minnesota Constitution’s guarantee of due

process includes the right to an impartial judge. Minn. Const. art. 1 § 7. We therefore

clarify that our holding in this case—that due process requires a bright-line rule prohibiting

independent judicial investigations into facts outside the record and that such an

investigation constitutes a structural error—is based separately and independently on the

Minnesota Constitution. 8 See Michigan v. Long, 463 U.S. 1032, 1041 (1983).

CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the decision of the district court in part and

remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Reversed in part and remanded.

entitled to a new evidentiary hearing before an impartial judge. As in all criminal cases,
the remand is subject to Minnesota Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 2.11(A) and Minnesota
Rules of Criminal Procedure 26.03, subdivision 14.
8
Although Fulminante and Gray point to the same rule applying under the United
States Constitution, we maintain our holding under the Minnesota Constitution even
assuming a contrary rule under federal law.

17