Ricky Arlen Turner, petitioner, Appellant,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A22-0971

Ricky Arlen Turner, petitioner,
Appellant,

vs.

State of Minnesota,
Respondent.

Filed April 10, 2023
Affirmed
Ross, Judge

Washington County District Court
File No. 82-CR-17-2023

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Erik I. Withall, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

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

Kevin Magnuson, Wa shington County Attorney, Nicholas A. Hydukovich, Assistant
County Attorney, Stillwater, Minnesota (for respondent)

Considered and decided by Ross , Presiding Judge; Gaïtas, Judge; and Wheelock,
Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
ROSS, Judge
The state charged appellant Ricky Turner with promoting prostitution, aiding and
abetting racketeering, aiding and abetting concealing criminal proceeds, and sex trafficking
of a minor. In exchange for the state’s agreement to dismiss the concealing-criminal-
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proceeds and sex-trafficking charges, Turner pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution and
aiding and abetting racketeering. The district court convicted him and, based on the
dismissed sex-trafficking charge, informed Turner of his obligation to register as a
predatory offender when he completes his prison sentence. Turner petitioned for
postconviction relief to challenge the registration requirement. The postconviction court
denied his motion for relief. Because Turner’s dismissed sex-trafficking charge arose out
of the same set of circumstances as his racketeering conviction, we affirm.
FACTS
Ricky Turner allegedly met a seventeen-year-old girl at a fast-food restaurant in
Wayzata, told the girl that he was a pimp, and asked her to work for him. When the girl
asked whether other girls worked for him, Turner responded that his “wife” did. He told
the girl that he would buy her a car if she worked for him. In May 2017, police arrested
Turner’s codefendant, B.H., who was caught engaging with an undercover officer in a
prostitution sting operation. Police surveillance of the parties’ residence led them to arrest
Turner in his driveway while he was sitting in his car with the seventeen-year-old girl.
The state charged Turner with promoting prostitution, aiding and abetting
concealing criminal proceeds, aiding and abetting racketeering, and sex trafficking of a
minor. Turner pleaded guilty to the racketeering charge and to promoting prostitution, and
the district court dismissed the remaining charges based on the parties’ plea agreement.
Turner agreed that he must register as a predatory offender. He admitted at his plea hearing
that, from 2016 until May 2017, he ran an enterprise called “Finesse” through which he
promoted the prostitution of women in the Twin Cities area. He recruited women both in
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person and online to work for him. He testified specifically about prostituting his girlfriend
and codefendant, B.H. Turner and B.H. rented a Wayzata home that they occasionally used
to serve their patrons. According to Turner, he promoted B.H. in prostitution “dozens and
hundreds” of times. The district court sentenced Turner to serve 168 months in prison—
concurrent for each crime of conviction—and advised him of his requirement to register as
a predatory offender for ten years after completing his sentence.
Turner moved the district court for postconviction relief, challenging the order that
he register as a predatory offender. The district court denied the motion. Turner appeals.
DECISION
Turner argues that he need not register as a predatory offender because the dismissed
charge of sex trafficking of a minor did not arise out of the same circumstances as his
racketeering conviction, which was instead premised in part on the prostitution of B.H., an
adult. A person must register as a predatory offender if he was charged with a specified
predatory offense and was convicted of that offense “or another offense arising out of the
same set of circumstances.” Minn. Stat. § 243.166, subd. 1b(a)(2) (2022). Sex trafficking
of a minor is one of the specified predatory offenses, but racketeering is not. Id., subd.
1b(a)(2)(iii). Offenses arise out of the “same set of circumstances” when the “same general
group of facts [give] rise to both the convicted offense and the [dismissed] offense.” State
v. Berry, 959 N.W.2d 184, 188 (Minn. 2021) (quotation omitted). Identical circumstances
are not required; we instead analyze whether the circumstances overlap in terms of “time,
location, persons involved, and basic facts.” State v. Lopez, 778 N.W.2d 700, 706 (Minn.
2010). We approach this analysis de novo. Id. at 705. Our de novo review leads us to affirm.
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Turner contends that we must determine the circumstances surrounding the
conviction offense of racketeering by considering only the specific racketeering predicate
offenses established at the plea hearing. To commit racketeering, a person must engage in
a “pattern of criminal activity,” Minnesota Statutes section 609.903, subdivision 1 (2014),
which is three or more criminal acts that:
(1) were committed within ten years of the commencement
of the criminal proceeding;

(2) are neither isolated incidents, nor so closely related and
connected in point of time or circumstance of
commission as to constitute a single criminal offense;
and

(3) were either: (i) related to one another through a common
scheme or plan or a shared criminal purpose or (ii)
committed, solicited, requested, importuned, or
intentionally aided by persons acting with the mental
culpability required for the commission of the criminal
acts and associated with or in an enterprise involved in
those activities.

Minn. Stat. § 609.902, subd. 6 (2014). Turner maintains that, because the predicate
offenses expressly established during the plea hearing refer only to the prostitution of an
adult (his codefendant B.H.), the dismissed offense of sex trafficking of a minor could not
have arisen out of the same set of circumstances.
The contention fails because we do not read the plea-hearing transcript references
to B.H. as the exclusive basis for all three criminal acts establishing the pattern of criminal
activity necessary for the racketeering conviction. Turner responded affirmatively when
the prosecutor asked him, “And you agree that [B.H.] and these women that worked for
you often would meet with several men a day?” (Emphasis added.) He also responded
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affirmatively when the prosecutor asked, “And during this time there were at least three
separate acts of promotion of prostitution which makes you guilty for racketeering?” These
questions did not reference B.H. exclusively. Indeed, the prosecutor inquired about
promoting her in prostitution only after asking more general questions about multiple
“women” involving “separate acts of promotion of prostitution.” It is true that the
prosecutor expressly referenced the racketeering predicate-acts requirement while asking
Turner about B.H. But this does not show that her role in the prostitution enterprise was
the exclusive basis for establishing Turner’s pattern of criminal activity. His admissions
before specifically discussing B.H. reflected that his pattern of criminal activity was
broader, including at least three distinct incidents of promoting prostitution of B.H. and
other women within the ten-year statutory period. See Minn. Stat. § 609.902, subd. 6(1),
(2). Turner’s plea-hearing admissions regarding B.H. apparently represented only part of
his larger criminal enterprise.
Having established what circumstances we may consider, we turn to the Lopez
factors of time, location, persons involved, and basic facts to determine whether the
circumstances of Turner’s racketeering offense of conviction overlap with his dismissed
sex-trafficking-of-a-minor offense. 778 N.W.2d at 706. The complaint and plea colloquy
indicate that the offenses occurred during the same time frame. The criminal complaint
alleges that police arrested Turner in May 2017 as he sat in his car with a seventeen-year-
old girl. And Turner admitted to having promoted prostitution from 2016 until his arrest in
May 2017. We rej ect Turner’s contention that the record’s silence as to the time he
allegedly recruited the minor to engage in prostitution precludes a holding that the two
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offenses temporally overlap. The contention overlooks the inference that ongoing
interactions between a prostitution solicitor and his victims necessarily follow initial
prostitution-recruitment efforts. And the district court need not merely infer that the child’s
presence in the car with Turner was the natural consequence of his recruitment; it was
immediately after police found them together there that the child disclosed Turner’s
recruitment efforts. The offenses overlap in time.
As to location, we reject Turner’s argument that, because his promotion of B.H.’s
prostitution occurred only in the Wayzata property’s guest house and he was found with
the child in the driveway, the locations of the two offenses do not overlap. His narrow
approach fails on the law and facts. As to the law, contrary to Turner’s assertion that State
v. Berry supports the notion that offenses do not overlap when one occurs inside a building
and the other occurs just outside, the Berry court concluded that the locations did not
sufficiently overlap where the dismissed offense occurred inside a building and the offense
of conviction occurred “in a car traveling over hundreds of miles of interstate highway.”
959 N.W.2d at 190. Our circumstances materially and obviously differ from Berry’s given
the close proximity of offenses on the same property. As to the facts, Turner acknowledged
in his offense of conviction plea colloquy that he promoted prostitution across the Twin
Cities—an area that includes all components of the Wayzata house. The offenses overlap
in location.
The basic facts of the dismissed and convicted offenses also overlap. The complaint
alleges that Turner met the minor at a fast -food restaurant, described himself as a pimp,
and asked her to work for him in exchange for money and cars. During his plea hearing,
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Turner admitted to engaging in the same recruiting approach for the “Finesse” enterprise.
He acknowledged that he recruited women into his enterprise online and in person. He also
admitted that the prostitution profits went into his bank account and that he used them to
purchase luxury items, like cars. His recruitment of the minor mirrors the recruiting
practices used in his pattern of criminal activity.
Turner contends that the basic facts and persons involved do not overlap because he
testified to promoting the prostitution of adult women, not minor girls, while the dismissed
offense involves his alleged sex-trafficking of a minor. The different verbiage does make
this a close call. But given that the minor that Turner was allegedly recruiting was within
nine months of adulthood, and because both near-adult females and adult females might,
in common vernacular, together be referred to as a class of “women,” we do not believe
that the age distinction constitutes enough of a difference to distinguish the basic facts of
the dismissed offense from the offense of conviction or place the minor outside the class
of persons that Turner recruited as part of his criminal enterprise.
We are not persuaded by any concern that treating Turner’s dismissed sex -
trafficking-of-a-minor offense and his racketeering conviction offense as involving
overlapping circumstances would allow the state to charge a defendant with meritless
predatory offenses simply to require registration. Two safeguards mitigate against this
concern. The first is that “it is the judiciary ’s determination of probable cause, not the
prosecutor’s bringing of a charge, that triggers the statutory basis for sex -offender
registration,” State v. Haukos, 847 N.W.2d 270, 273 (Minn. App. 2014), and the same is
so for the predatory -offender registration requirement here. Any defendant facing a
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meritless predatory-offense charge may therefore simply ask the district court to dismiss
the charge and, if his assessment about merit is correct, avoid the registration requirement
altogether. He could make this probable-cause challenge unrelated to any plea discussion,
or he could instead negotiate to make his agreement to plead guilty contingent on the
district court’s dismissing the predatory-offense charge as lacking in probable cause. The
second safeguard is the defendant’s right to refuse any plea agreement under circumstances
involving what the defendant believes is a genuinely meritless predatory-offense charge.
We hold that Turner’s conviction for aiding and abetting racketeering arose out of
the same set of circumstances as the dismissed sex-trafficking-of-a-minor charge. The
postconviction court did not err by refusing to relieve Turner of his obligation to register
as a predatory offender.
Affirmed.