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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A23-1203

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Antoine Darnique Suggs,
Appellant.

Filed July 29, 2024
Affirmed
Ross, Judge

Ramsey County District Court
File No. 62-CR-21-5368

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

John J. Choi, Ramsey County Attorney, Alexandra Meyer, Assistant County Attorney, St.
Paul, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Steven P. Russett, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Johnson, Presiding Judge; Ross, Judge; and Reyes ,
Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
ROSS, Judge
Antoine Suggs fatally shot all four of his unarmed passengers in the head and drove
around for about eight hours before leaving the car in a Wisconsin cornfield with the dead
bodies and his blood- splattered driver’s license inside. Suggs promptly attempted to
2
purchase an alibi-establishing plane ticket, and he fled to Arizona in a rental car. A jury
rejected Suggs’s self-defense claim and found him guilty on four counts of second-degree
intentional murder. Suggs appeals from his convictions, arguing that the district court
erroneously instructed the jury on self-defense, that his attorney improperly conceded his
guilt, that the prosecutor engaged in misconduct during trial, and that the district court
excessively sentenced him to serve 1,244 months in prison. None of Suggs’s arguments
warrants reversing.
FACTS
In the afternoon of September 12, 2021, a farm worker in Dunn County, Wisconsin,
followed a long path of flattened stalks through a cornfield and found a black Mercedes
SUV parked and occupied. The worker approached, intending to confront the trespassers
and order them off the property. But when he peered through the driver’s side window, he
saw a woman in the passenger seat slumped forward with dried blood on her shirt and a
man in the back seat, staring blankly with his head tipped back. The farm worker told his
supervisor, who summoned police.
Police found four dead bodies—two women and two men—inside the Mercedes,
each shot in the head. Investigators later identified the victims. Nitosha Flug-Presley sat in
the front passenger seat. Jasmine Sturm sat immediately behind her . Loyace Foreman III
sat in the rear middle position beside Jasmine. And Matthew Pettus sat immediately behind
the driver’s seat beside Loyace. The driver’s seat was empty. Dunn County investigators
found a Parliament cigarette and a candy wrapper outside the Mercedes. Inside the car they
3
recovered six bullet casings, a receipt from a St. Paul bar, and a blood-splattered Arizona
driver’s license belonging to Antoine Suggs.
During the ensuing investigation, police learned that a family friend of Suggs held
title to the Mercedes but that Suggs may have been in the process of purchasing the car
from him. A logo on two of the victims’ shirts and a receipt in the car led police to two St.
Paul bars on West 7th Street: Shamrocks and the White Squirrel. The White Squirrel owner
told investigators that victim Jasmine, who had applied to work there, had visited the bar
with friends on September 12, 2021. Victims Nitosha and Matthew were two of those
friends. According to the bartender, Jasmine, Nitosha, and Matthew left the bar shortly
before 2:00 a.m.
St. Paul police, aided by the FBI, analyzed cellphone records of Suggs, Suggs’s
father, and the four gunshot victims to piece together the sequence of events. Those records
established that the victims’ phones were within the same area as Suggs’s phone in the
early morning of September 12. At about 3:30 a.m., Suggs’s and the victims’ phones all
left the area of the White Squirrel. Using audio-video surveillance footage captured by
multiple cameras on West 7th Street, investigators pinpointed the location of the Mercedes
when four gunshots were fired, and then, 13 seconds later, a fifth gunshot sounded as the
Mercedes traveled on the street. The victims’ phones had no outgoing activity after the
gunshots.
Suggs’s phone data showed that he then drove throughout St. Paul. Surveillance
footage depicted the Mercedes traveling with Nitosha in the front seat slumped over the
dashboard exactly as the Wisconsin deputies would later find her body in the cornfield.
4
Other footage showed Suggs stopped and pumping gas into the Mercedes at a gas station
on Snelling Avenue, again with Nitosha slumped over the dashboard. P hone records
indicate that Suggs called his father, Darren Osborne. At about 5:1 0 a.m., Suggs’s and
Osborne’s phones met and began traveling together. Both phones were turned off at about
6:05 a.m., but the victims’ phones continued to transmit data and traveled together. Suggs’s
phone and the victims’ phones were all on and together at about 9:00 a.m. The victims’
phones showed that they had moved into Wisconsin and later reached an area that included
the cornfield by about noon. Surveillance-camera footage depicted the Mercedes and
Osborne’s Nissan Rogue driving together into Wisconsin and stopping at a gas station near
the cornfield. A gas-station employee recounted that a man entered the store to buy
Parliament cigarettes, and she identified that man in a photographic lineup as Osborne.
The state charged Suggs with four counts of second-degree intentional murder and
four counts of felony murder. Multiple witnesses testified to establish the events just
described. We summarize additional trial evidence relevant to the issues raised in this
appeal.
Two medical examiners testified about the victims’ autopsies. According to that
testimony, photographic evidence, and examination records, all four victims died from
gunshots to the head. Nitosha had been shot in the face at a proximity of “within inches”
of the gun’s muzzle. Forensic laboratory testing of her blood revealed that she had ingested
cocaine and had an alcohol concentration of 0.207. Matthew had been shot twice in the
back of his head, with one bullet entering slightly from the right. He too had ingested
cocaine, and his alcohol concentration was 0.105. Loyace had been shot twice in the head
5
from “close up,” with one shot entering his right cheek and the other the top of his head.
He had ingested alcohol, cocaine, THC, and an opioid. Jasmine had been shot once with a
bullet that travelled through her hand and into her face. She too had ingested alcohol and
cocaine.
One of Nitosha’s friends testified. She told the jury that she had been drinking with
all four victims at Shamrocks, where Jasmine and Matthew worked, and that when
Shamrocks closed at 1:00 a.m., they all went with her to the White Squirrel. But because
she felt ill from her alcohol consumption, she remained in her car rather than entering the
White Squirrel with the group. She testified that she later watched the group leave the bar
and enter a black Mercedes SUV. She saw Suggs sitting in the driver’s seat. She said that
she walked to the car, spoke with Nitosha and the others briefly, and left to go home.
Suggs testified in his defense. He provided an account attempting to establish that
he acted in self-defense. He said that he lives in Arizona and flew to Minnesota before the
weekend of the incident to visit his children. His friend, who owns the Mercedes, picked
him up at the airport, and Suggs checked in at a downtown St. Paul hotel. He said that he
met Nitosha two days after he arrived in Minnesota, that he placed a handgun inside the
Mercedes glovebox, and that he and Nitosha went to his hotel room where he showed her
$14,000 in cash. Suggs said that the Mercedes owner flew to Atlanta and left the Mercedes
for him to use.
Suggs testified that he went to the White Squirrel on September 11 with a female
friend and that he saw Nitosha there. He said that he left the bar to smoke in the parked
Mercedes and that Nitosha and her friends joined him. He testified that the group had a
6
discussion that he did not understand and that at about 3:00 a.m. the group told him to pull
away from the area of the bar, and he did. According to Suggs, Matthew suddenly began
punching the back of his head and Nitosha pulled the gun from the glovebox and pointed
it at him. Matthew then allegedly told Suggs, “We want all of that shit,” referring to
cocaine. Suggs explained that he acted quickly when Nitosha became distracted, snatching
the gun from her and shooting twice. At that point Jasmine reached for the gun from the
backseat, Suggs asserted, and he shot again. Suggs intimated that his shots just happened
to strike the four passengers precisely in their heads, telling the jury that he fired all the
shots within 8 to 10 seconds and that he just randomly “shot in general directions of where
[he] thought people were,” not intending to kill anyone. He claimed also that he was
concerned that other guns were in the car. He told the jury that he didn’t “see anything that
[he] could have done to avoid this situation.” He acknowledged that he did not check to
see if any of the four were alive after the shooting, did not touch or move the victims within
the car after he shot them, and did not check to see if any of the victims had a weapon.
Suggs’s testimony implied that his memory was fuzzy about the events after the
shooting. He remembered only asking for his father’s help and that he and his father wound
up in a cornfield in Wisconsin where they left the Mercedes and drove away in his father’s
Nissan. He testified that his father disposed of the gun for him after they left the bodies in
Wisconsin. Suggs then drove to Arizona in a car rented under a different name. He also
attempted to counter the prosecutor’s theory that he fabricated an alibi by quickly driving
to Arizona intending to fly immediately back to Minnesota. Explaining why he attempted
7
to book a flight from Arizona to Minnesota instead of Minnesota to Arizona, Suggs claimed
that he had merely been confused.
The jury was apparently not persuaded by Suggs’s self-defense account, finding him
guilty on all counts of intentional murder. It acquitted him on all counts of felony murder.
The district court sentenced Suggs to four consecutive prison terms consisting of 326, 306,
306, and 306 months, totaling 1,244 months. This appeal follows.
DECISION
Suggs challenges his conviction based on four arguments. He argues first that the
district court erroneously gave the jury the justifiable-taking-of-life self-defense instruction
even though he denied that he killed the victims intentionally. He argues second that his
attorney provided ineffective representation by conceding his guilt through an allegedly
erroneous jury-instruction request and by failing to thoroughly investigate. He argues third
that the prosecutor committed four instances of misconduct prejudicing his right to a fair
trial. And he argues fourth that the district court abused its discretion by sentencing him
consecutively to 1,244 months in prison. We have carefully considered each argument and
conclude that, for the following reasons, none leads us to reverse.
I
Suggs convincingly argues that the district court erroneously followed Suggs’s
request to include a justifiable-taking-of-life self-defense instruction. We generally review
a challenge to a jury instruction for an abuse of discretion. State v. Koppi, 798 N.W.2d 358,
361 (Minn. 2011). But where, as here, the alleged error resulted from the appellant’s
invitation, we review only for plain error. See State v. Carridine , 812 N.W.2d 130, 142
8
(Minn. 2012). Under that review standard, Suggs can secure a reversal only if he identifies
an error, we conclude that the error was plain, and we hold that the error affected his
substantial rights. Id. If Suggs passes each step, we will consider reversing only if the error
should be addressed “to ensure fairness and the integrity of the judicial proceedings.” Id.
(quotation omitted). Our review informs us that Suggs has identified a plain error but that
he fails to show that the error affected his substantial rights.
The district court plainly erred by giving the instruction. Errors are plain when they
are “clear or obvious.” State v. Burg, 648 N.W.2d 673, 677 (Minn. 2002) (quotation
omitted). Minnesota law contemplates two categories of self-defense, the first applying to
self-defense generally and the second applying only in cases involving intentional killing.
Under the first, “reasonable force may be used upon or toward the person of another
without the other’s consent when the following circumstances exist or the actor reasonably
believes them to exist: . . . (3) when used by any person in resisting . . . an offense against
the person.” Minn. Stat. § 609.06, subd. 1 (2020). Under the second, “[t]he intentional
taking of the life of another is not authorized by section 609.06, except when necessary in
resisting or preventing an offense which the actor reasonably believes exposes the actor or
another to great bodily harm or death.” Minn. Stat. § 609.065 (2020). Suggs correctly
argues that the district court erroneously instructed the jury, “The defendant asserts the
defense of justifiable taking of life ,” followed by the explanation that a crime does not
occur “when a person intentionally takes a life of another” to avoid death or great bodily
harm. Caselaw consistently holds that a district court errs if it instructs the jury on the
justifiable intentional taking of a life when the defendant claims the resulting death was
9
unintentional. See State v. Marquardt, 496 N.W.2d 806, 806 & n.1 (Minn. 1993); State v.
Pollard, 900 N.W.2d 175, 176 (Minn. App. 2017). Because Suggs testified that he did not
intend to kill the victims and that he fired the gun merely in their direction, the district court
plainly erred by instructing the jury on the justifiable taking of life.
But Suggs does not and cannot show that the plain error affected his substantial right
to a fair trial. Erroneous jury instructions prejudice a defendant’s right to a fair trial if “there
is a reasonable likelihood that giving the instruction in question had a significant effect on
the jury’s verdict.” State v. Huber, 877 N.W.2d 519, 525 (Minn. 2016) (quotation omitted).
We know that t he erroneous instruction was inconsequential based on the jury’s verdict,
finding Suggs guilty of second- degree intentional murder. The guilty verdict informs us
that the jury necessarily rejected Suggs’s claim that his killings were unintentional. And
because intentional killings are justified only if a defendant meets the elements for the
justifiable taking of a life, the jury’s verdict coincidentally made the erroneous self-defense
instruction applicable. In other words, the erroneous instruction could have only aided,
rather than prejudiced, Suggs’s defense.
This reasoning is not new, as it follows the supreme court’s Carridine rationale. The
Carridine defendant faced trial for premeditated first-degree murder, claimed that he acted
in self-defense, and asserted that the killing was unintentional. 812 N.W.2d at 134–36. The
jury found Carridine guilty after receiving the justifiable-taking-of-life instruction. Id. at
134, 143. The instruction was erroneous because the defendant testified that he had not
intended to kill the victim. Id. at 143–44. But the error did not affect his substantial rights
because the jury implicitly rejected his claim that the killing was unintentional, which was
10
a “factual predicate” to his challenge to the district court’s self-defense jury instruction. Id.
at 144. The same reasoning applies here, defeating Suggs’s instruction-based unfair-trial
argument.
II
We are unpersuaded by Suggs’s contention that he received constitutionally
inadequate representation. We address first his claim that he received inadequate
representation based on his attorney’s implicitly conceding that Suggs intentionally killed
the four victims. Criminal defendants are entitled to adequate legal representation. U.S.
Const. amend. VI; Minn. Const. art. I, § 6. Addressing a claim of ineffective assistance of
counsel, we ordinarily must determine whether counsel’s performance fell below an
objective standard of reasonableness, and if it did, whether counsel’s unreasonable
performance affected the outcome of the trial. Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687
(1984); State v. Jones, 977 N.W.2d 177, 193 (Minn. 2022). But Suggs rests his contention
on the theory that his counsel conceded his guilt. When defense counsel concedes his
client’s guilt without the defendant’s consent or acquiescence, “counsel’s performance is
deficient and prejudice is presumed.” State v. Huisman, 944 N.W.2d 464, 467 (Minn. 2020)
(quotation omitted). Suggs loses on this issue because we do not believe that his trial
counsel conceded his guilt.
Suggs bases his guilt- concession argument on two circumstances: his attorney’s
requesting the erroneous instruction and his attorney’s statement during closing argument.
Neither basis supports his argument.
11
Suggs’s attorney’s requesting the erroneous justifiable-killing instruction did not
concede to the jury that Suggs is guilty. The record does not suggest that the jury knew
which party, if either, had requested the instruction. The jury was advised that the
instructions were the district court’s legal directives, not that they originated with either
party. Suggs does not explain why we should assume that the jury inferred that the
instruction originated with Suggs rather than with the state or with the district court.
Similarly unavailing is Suggs’s contention that his counsel implicitly conceded his
intent to kill in the following segment of closing argument:
So you have been given an uncomfortable truth. Mr. Suggs was
presented with such a dangerous threat that he was justified in
ending the threat by killing those who intended to kill him. His
actions were done in kind, or on par with, the level of threat
that was presented against him. In fact, he used the same
weapon to end the threat that was attempted to be[] used
against him.

This statement in the closing argument does not concede that Suggs intended to kill the
four victims. It indicates only that he ended the supposed threat against him “by killing
those who intended to kill him.” The attorney was stating a fact undisputed at trial (that
Suggs had killed them all) and referencing Suggs’s self-defense theory. Suggs had testified
that one of the victims was punching him in the head while another pointed a gun at him.
Based on his testimony, his counsel’s argument can reasonably be interpreted as urging the
jury to find that Suggs feared for his life and that he used force consistent with the force
employed by his assailants. The argument so interpreted did not concede Suggs’s intent to
kill but contended that Suggs killed them by responding proportionately and justifiably.
The argument therefore incorporates Minnesota’s general self-defense standard. See Minn.
12
Stat. § 609.06, subd. 1(3). We reject Suggs’s claim that his counsel conceded his guilt on
either basis, and we hold that his claim of ineffective assistance of counsel fails.
Also unconvincing is Suggs’s second basis for asserting that he received inadequate
representation, which is that his attorney failed to interview and subpoena his father and
the woman he was with before the killings. Suggs’s argument requires us to evaluate the
tactical decisions of his counsel, which we decline to do. State v. Hokanson, 821 N.W.2d
340, 358 (Minn. 2012). We add that his attorney’s tactical decision does not appear to be
unreasonable. The trial evidence established that neither Suggs’s father nor the woman was
present at the time of the shootings, and the only material factual dispute at trial was
whether Suggs intentionally killed the victims and, if he did, whether he did so justifiably
in self-defense. Suggs does not say how either of the two identified potential witnesses
would have testified or suggest how their testimony would bear on the relevant trial issues.
Suggs fails to identify any constitutionally inadequate representation.
III
Suggs argues that the state committed four instances of prosecutorial misconduct.
Because Suggs objected to none of the alleged misconduct during trial, we review his
contentions applying a modified plain-error standard. See State v. Ramey, 721 N.W.2d 294,
302 (Minn. 2006). Under that standard, Suggs first bears the burden of identifying a plain
error. Id. If he succeeds, the burden shifts to the state to prove that the misconduct did not
affect Suggs’s substantial rights, meaning that there is “no reasonable likelihood that the
absence of the misconduct in question would have had a significant effect on the verdict of
the jury.” Id. (quotation omitted). If Suggs meets his burden and the state fails to meet its
13
consequent burden, we must determine whether reversal is necessary to “ensure fairness
and the integrity of the judicial proceedings.” Id. We hold that any prosecutorial
misconduct did not affect Suggs’s substantial rights.
We begin with Suggs’s contention that the prosecutor committed misconduct by
presenting evidence that police gave him a Miranda warning. Suggs’s argument concerns
the prosecutor’s direct examination of an investigator who interviewed Suggs while he was
in custody following the killings. The following testimony occurred:
Q. Okay. So Mr. Suggs was in custody at that point; is that
right?
A. Correct.
Q. And I am going to show you what’ s been marked as
Exhibit 204. Do you recognize this document?
A. Yes.
Q. What is it?
A. It’s a Miranda form.
Q. And is that just where it lists off someone’s Miranda
rights you read off?
A. Correct. We ask for information, pertinent information,
name, address, date of birth, phone number, and then
read the rights of the individual.
Q. Okay. And did he give a phone number when you talked
to him?
A. Yes.
Q. And what phone number is that?
A. (480) 925-[XXXX].

The prosecutor then successfully offered into evidence the actual Miranda form being
discussed. The supreme court has clarified that a prosecutor’s eliciting an officer’s
testimony that the officer gave the defendant a Miranda warning is error when the
testimony is “ wholly gratuitous, serving no probative purpose whatever.” State v. Beck,
183 N.W.2d 781, 783–84 (Minn. 1971). The prosecutor’s referencing the Miranda form in
14
his direct examination of the investigator and offering the Miranda form into evidence here
was not error under the Beck standard.
The circumstances here differ substantially from the circumstances in Beck . The
Beck court reversed a defendant’s conviction after an officer testified that he gave the
defendant a Miranda warning and advised him of his right to remain silent. Id. at 783. The
supreme court reasoned that, because the testimony served “no probative purpose
whatever” and because it encouraged an adverse inference from the defendant’s failure to
testify at trial, the testimony was improper and not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
Id. at 783–84. Because no victim in this case survived, the only witness to the killings was
Suggs. The state therefore relied on cellphone data to prove that Suggs was the killer, which
required matching Suggs’s phone number (as listed on the Miranda form) to the data used
to provide the jury with a timeline of key events. And unlike the defendant in Beck, Suggs
did testify at trial, limiting the potential negative inference from Suggs’s decision to
exercise his right to remain silent. We hold that offering the Miranda-related evidence did
not constitute misconduct.
We next consider Suggs’s contention that the prosecutor misinformed the jury about
his claim of self-defense. Prosecutors may not misinform the jury on the applicable law.
State v. Strommen, 648 N.W.2d 681, 689 (Minn. 2002). Suggs contends that the
prosecutor’s following closing comments misinformed the jury:
Mr. Suggs can’t have it both ways. Right. He can’t have it both
ways. I am so scared; I’m convinced that these people are going
to rob me and kill me. Right. But I never intended to actually
kill them, never intended to do that. I just wanted to stop the
threat.
15

The state appears to concede that this was plain error. Minnesota’s general self-defense
law, as explained above, applies to the situation described by the prosecutor: the defendant
used reasonable force but did not intend to kill the victims. See Minn. Stat. § 609.06, subd.
1(3). The prosecutor’s statement was therefore legally incorrect; Suggs could claim both
that he was convinced that the victims would kill him and that he did not intend to kill
them. Suggs has identified a plain error.
But the state has carried its burden of proving that the prosecutor’s misstatement of
the law did not affect Suggs’s substantial rights. Under these facts, we are confident that
the jurors relied on the overwhelming evidence, rather than on the errant argument, to reach
their finding that Suggs killed the victims intentionally. Jurors learned that Suggs shot all
four victims in the head at extremely close range, two of them twice. They learned that he
shot one of the men in the face and also in the top of the head and that he shot the other
man twice in the back of the head. It is inconceivable that the jurors might have found the
killings unintentional. And no reasonable juror could have believed Suggs’s self- defense
theory. Jurors learned that each of Suggs’s gunshot victims was substantially under the
influence of alcohol and other drugs at the time of the shootings . No victim possessed a
weapon. Suggs did not stop to determine whether any victim was still alive, needing
medical assistance. He did not report their alleged attack and supposed attempted theft to
police. He instead drove around for many hours with their dead bodies in the car. Then he
summoned his father’s assistance and attempted to hide the bodies in the Wisconsin field
before he fled the state. Self-defense might have been his best defense available, but it was
16
nevertheless logically implausible. We are certain that the prosecutor’s misstatement of
law did not impact the jury’s conclusion that Suggs intentionally killed the victims and did
not act in self-defense.
We address next Suggs’s contention that the prosecutor committed misconduct by
imagining alternative factual scenarios during closing argument. The prosecutor told the
jury,
The State does not need to prove motive. In other words, it is
not the burden of the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt
the reason why this happened. I am sure anyone could come up
with any number of possible reasons. After cocaine and alcohol
and no sleep, someone in the car said something that was
offensive to Mr. Suggs, and he snapped. [A female friend] was
already upset about not spending the night with him. Maybe
she was texting him. Maybe Nitosha said she wanted to go
home. There’s any number of explanations, but none of it’ s
going to be satisfactory because at the end of day, there was
simply no reason in the world for these four people to be shot
and killed that night. It was senseless.

Prosecutors may argue reasonable inferences from the evidence presented. State v. Munt,
831 N.W.2d 569, 587 (Minn. 2013). But prosecutors are prohibited from speculating in
closing arguments about “events occurring at the time of the killing absent a factual basis
in the record.” State v. Leake, 699 N.W.2d 312, 327 (Minn. 2005). While the record
contained evidence that Suggs had consumed alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana, the record
did not establish that anyone said anything offensive to Suggs, causing him to “snap,” or
that he was provoked by a text message. The prosecutor therefore plainly erred by inviting
jurors to speculate about what led Suggs to kill his passengers.
17
But the prosecutor’s speculation did not affect Suggs’s substantial rights. One factor
bearing on whether an improper argument prejudiced the defense is whether the
defendant’s counsel had the opportunity to rebut the improper remarks. State v. Davis, 735
N.W.2d 674, 682 (Minn. 2007). Suggs’s counsel had this opportunity and took advantage
of it:
The state doesn’t have to prove motive; that’s true. I’m not
telling you that [it] does, but if you logically reasonably think
about whether or not he was acting responsibly, then we also
must think about why do we think – if it didn’t happen the way
that Mr. Suggs [says it] happened, then why do we think that it
happened some other way?

That statement and rhetorical question rebutted the prosecutor’s misconduct by also asking
the jury to speculate about what caused Suggs to kill the four victims. We conclude that
the state has carried its burden of showing that the prosecutor’s impermissible speculation
comments did not affect Suggs’s substantial rights.
Suggs contends finally that the prosecutor urged the jury to draw adverse inferences
from his post- Miranda silence. During closing arguments, the prosecutor attacked the
credibility of Suggs’s self-defense story, three times pointing to the “year -and-a-half”
Suggs had to “come up with the perfect explanation for what happened in that car.”
Prosecutors cannot use a defendant’s post-Miranda silence to impeach a defendant’s trial
testimony or to refute his defense. Wainwright v. Greenfield, 474 U.S. 284, 292–95 (1986)
(refuting defense); Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U.S. 610, 617–18 (1976) (impeaching testimony).
That rule protects against “the fundamental unfairness of implicitly assuring a suspect that
his silence will not be used against him” and then using his silence to impeach him at trial.
18
South Dakota v. Neville, 459 U.S. 553, 565 (1983). But the prosecutor did not reference
Suggs’s silence. The comments instead merely highlighted that, despite having had a year
and a half since the killings, Suggs’s objectively unreasonable self-defense theory was the
best defense he could develop. We see no misconduct in the prosecutor’s statements.
IV
Suggs’s remaining issue is whether the district court abused its discretion by
sentencing him to serve consecutive 326-, 306-, 306-, and 306-month prison terms. We
afford the district court great discretion in its sentence imposition. See State v. Hough, 585
N.W.2d 393, 397 (Minn. 1998). A district court abuses its discretion when its sentence
unfairly exaggerates the criminality of the defendant’s conduct. Id. Contrary to Suggs’s
argument, his sentence does not unfairly exaggerate the criminality of his offenses. The
multiple-victim rule permits the district court to issue multiple sentences for multiple
crimes that arise out of one behavioral incident when the defendant’s crimes affected
multiple victims and when the imposition of multiple sentences does not “unfairly
exaggerate the criminality of the defendant’s conduct.” State v. Alger, 941 N.W.2d 396,
400 (Minn. 2020) (quotation omitted). We have surveyed relevant caselaw for sentences
received by other offenders for similar offenses as the supreme court demonstrated in
Carpenter v. State, 674 N.W.2d 184, 189 (Minn. 2004), and we are satisfied that neither
the length of the individual prison terms nor the consecutive nature of the sentences
unfairly exaggerates Suggs’s criminal conduct. We hold that the district court acted within
19
its discretion when it sentenced Suggs to consecutive prison terms totaling 1,244 months
for convictions of four counts of second-degree intentional murder.
Affirmed.