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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A24-0104

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Carrie Lynn Sennie,
Appellant.

Filed December 23, 2024
Affirmed
Ross, Judge

Stearns County District Court
File No. 73-CR-23-1683

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

Renee N. Courtney, St. Cloud City Attorney, See Lee-Sanders, Assistant City Attorney, St.
Cloud, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, Rebecca Ireland, Assistant Public
Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Schmidt, Presiding Judge; Ross, Judge; and Ede, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
ROSS, Judge
A Walmart theft-prevention employee caught Carrie Sennie stealing merchandise
using stealthy barcode -scanning techniques at the self-checkout register. The employee
searched the store’s records associated with Sennie’s credit- card data and reviewed
surveillance footage to discover that Sennie had also stolen from the store twice the
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previous month. The employee testified at Sennie’s trial for the earlier thefts by referencing
the theft method Sennie used in the later theft s. In this appeal from her conviction for the
earlier thefts, Sennie argues that the district court improperly admitted into evidence the
employee’s testimony about the later thefts because it constituted untimely noticed and
unfairly prejudicial Spreigl evidence. Because neither the state’s late notice nor the
substance of the testimony unfairly prejudiced Sennie’s defense, we affirm.
FACTS
A theft-prevention employee at the Walmart store in Sartell suspected that customer
Carrie Sennie had stolen goods in December 2022 and January 2023. He first saw Sennie
in January 2023 pilfering merchandise at the store’s self-checkout register using two
surreptitious techniques: “under-ringing,” which is intentionally failing to scan
merchandise barcodes, and “ticket-switching,” which is scanning the barcodes of relatively
inexpensive items in place of the barcodes of more expensive items. The employee
summoned Sartell police officers, who stopped Sennie outside the store. The employee
obtained Sennie’s credit-card information and from it identified purchases Sennie
previously made on two days in December 2022. He checked surveillance-video recordings
of Sennie’s December purchases at self-checkout registers and saw that she had used the
same techniques to steal merchandise on those occasions also. The state charged Sennie
for the December thefts in a single criminal complaint and charged her separately for the
January thefts.
Six days before trial on the December thefts, the state filed a Spreigl notice of its
intent to offer evidence of the later January thefts and attached the Walmart employee’s
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statement describing them. The notice was on a form indicating that the state intended to
use the evidence to show intent, knowledge, absence of mistake or accident, identity,
motive, common scheme or plan, or “one of the other reasons listed in Rule 404.” The
prosecutor participated in a motion hearing the day before trial, asking the district court to
admit evidence of the January incident for the purposes of proving identity, lack of mistake,
and modus operandi. Sennie objected on three grounds: the Spreigl notice had been
untimely; the notice did not sufficiently specify the state’s intended use of the evidence;
and the potential for unfair prejudice substantially outweighed the evidence’s probative
value. The district court issued an order that same day admitting the Spreigl evidence “for
the permissible purposes set forth in Minn. R. Evid. 404(b),” observing that the notice was
untimely but reasoning that neither the untimeliness nor the substance of the evidence
prejudiced Sennie. Sennie renewed her objection on the day of trial, and the district court
again overruled it, this time indicating that the evidence was admissible to prove identity,
lack of mistake, and modus operandi.
Sennie’s opening statement asserted that the evidence would show that she had been
distracted when she processed her items for purchase: “Ms. Sennie was so distracted and
so overwhelmed that she simply left the store without realizing that she failed to pay for
some merchandise.” Testifying during the state’s case in chief, the Walmart employee said
that he learned Sennie’s identity after police stopped her outside the store in January 2023.
He described how he used Sennie’s credit-card information obtained during that encounter
to seek the surveillance-video footage of her December under-ringing and ticket-switching
activity at the self-checkout registers. The district court cautioned the jury not to apply the
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employee’s testimony about the January incident as evidence of Sennie’s propensity to
commit theft. The employee then testified that he had interacted with Sennie in January:
“It was determined that [Sennie] had taken merchandise without paying for it, so police
were called to assist with apprehending her.” He recounted how he had noticed Sennie
under-ringing and ticket-switching items that day. The district court prohibited the
employee from testifying about the value of the merchandise Sennie improperly scanned
in January, and it also prohibited the police officer who cited Sennie from testifying about
the January thefts.
Sennie testified in her own defense. She asserted that she had been “stressed” and
therefore “distracted” at the time of the alleged thefts at issue in the trial. The prosecutor
twice mentioned the January incident during her closing argument. She first stated, “You
heard about the January 5, 2023 incident. You heard about that. The December 5th and
December 14th [incidents] were not an accident. They were not a mistake. Ms. Sennie
knew what she was doing.” Shortly afterwards, the prosecutor urged, “This, again, was not
a mistake, ladies and gentlemen. . . . Not on multiple occasions, December 5th, December
14th, and the January 5th occasion. It is not a mistake.” Sennie’s attorney countered in
closing argument, “Ms. Sennie’s mind was elsewhere as she scanned her merchandise. No
one alerted her to the fact that some of her items didn’t scan. She didn’t receive any error
messages from the self-checkout system. No one stepped in to assist her.”
The district court’s jury instructions again cautioned against using the testimony
about the January incident as propensity evidence to find Sennie guilty of the December
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incidents. The jury found Sennie guilty. T he district court sentenced her to serve 90 days
in jail but stayed execution conditioned on her completing one year of probation.
Sennie appeals.
DECISION
Sennie appeals from her conviction, contending that the district court improperly
admitted bad-acts evidence, also known as Spreigl evidence. Sennie focuses on the
evidence about her thefts in January 2023 while she was instead on trial for the alleged
thefts occurring a month earlier. Sennie is correct that this evidence would not be
admissible to imply that she has the character of a thief, because evidence of another crime
or wrong is categorically inadmissible “to prove the character of a person in order to show
action in conformity therewith.” Minn. R. Evid. 404(b)(1). Bad -acts evidence “may,
however, be admissible for other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent,
preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident.” Id. Sennie
forwards two theories to argue that the district court erroneously admitted the evidence of
her January conduct: first, the state did not timely notify her of its intent to seek its
admission, and second, the probative value of the Spreigl evidence was outweighed by its
potential for unfair prejudice. We review a district court’s decision to admit Spreigl
evidence for an abuse of discretion. State v. Griffin, 887 N.W.2d 257, 261 (Minn. 2016).
For the following reasons, we are not persuaded that the district court abused its discretion
by admitting the evidence.

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I
Sennie unconvincingly maintains that we should reverse her conviction based on
the state’s improper notice of its intent to ask the district court to admit the Spreigl
evidence. The state generally must provide the defendant with written notice of Spreigl
evidence that the state may offer at trial. Minn. R. Crim. P. 7.02, subd. 1. In misdemeanor
cases where the proceedings include a pretrial conference, the prosecutor must give the
notice at or before the conference or as soon after the conference as the prosecutor learns
of the evidence. Id., subd. 4(b). Sennie argues, and the state appropriately agrees, that the
Spreigl notice here was untimely. The state did not provide notice of its intent to rely on
the January 2023 Spreigl-evidence incident before or during the pretrial conferences in
August and November 2023, and the prosecutor did not notify Sennie until six days before
trial. We conclude that the parties are correct in characterizing the state’s notice as
untimely.
But the untimely nature of a notice does not mandate reversing, and Sennie does not
show that reversal should occur here. A district court’s decision to admit untimely noticed
Spreigl evidence warrants reversing a conviction only if the untimeliness prejudiced the
defendant. State v. Woodard, 256 N.W.2d 478, 479 (Minn. 1977). Sennie had about six
days remaining to prepare for trial after she received the notice, and she does not adequately
explain how this was too short a period for her to adjust her defense. By comparison, the
supreme court in Woodard held that a Spreigl notice received just three days before trial
did not prejudice the defendant because the defendant failed to show that he did not have
adequate time to prepare to address the evidence. Id. at 479. Sennie’s familiarity with the
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evidence and her pretrial conduct also weigh against reversing. A district court does not
abuse its discretion by admitting untimely noticed evidence of bad acts when the defendant
was familiar with the evidence and had sufficient opportunity to rebut the evidence at trial.
Wanglie v. State, 398 N.W.2d 54, 57–58 (Minn. App. 1986). Sennie acknowledges on
appeal that she knew of the January incident and its relationship to the December incidents,
and she demonstrated her readiness to confront the evidence by choosing not to seek a
continuance. We bear in mind the purpose of the notice requirement, which “is to prevent
a defendant from being taken by surprise by the introduction” of the bad-acts evidence.
State v. McCoy, 682 N.W.2d 153, 159 (Minn. 2004). Although the prosecutor should have
provided the notice promptly, the record does not suggest that the untimeliness left Sennie
surprised at trial or otherwise unable to respond to the evidence. Because the untimeliness
caused Sennie no unfair prejudice, we will not reverse on this ground.
II
Sennie also argues that the district court abused its discretion because the potential
for unfair prejudice in admitting the Spreigl evidence outweighed its probative value. The
district court may not admit Spreigl evidence unless its probative value is not outweighed
by its potential prejudice to the defendant. State v. Ness, 707 N.W.2d 676, 686 (Minn.
2006). The district court makes this balancing assessment by considering the extent to
which the state needs the Spreigl evidence as part of its case. Id. at 690. When the state’s
case is weak on a particular issue, the probative value of Spreigl evidence increases. See
id. at 690–91. But if the state’s case is “not weak on the real issue for which the evidence
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was offered,” admitting the evidence may constitute error. Id. Applying these standards,
we see no error by the district court.
We begin by rejecting Sennie’s assertion that the district court admitted the Spreigl
evidence only to prove identity. The record informs us that the prosecutor stated during the
December 18 pretrial hearing that she intended to use the evidence for three purposes, to
prove identity, lack of mistake, and modus operandi. Just before trial the next morning, the
district court judge confirmed that she was admitting the evidence for those purposes:
So [the evidence] does go to prove identity also absence of
mistake. . . . It wasn’t a mistake or accident that this is
apparently the modus operandi of the particular thefts at
issue. . . . [T]he prosecutor did indicate yesterday as well as
today what the evidence is being offered to prove.
It is true, as Sennie emphasizes, that the district court later said that “[o]ne of the elements”
the state would have to prove at trial “is the identity of the [defendant]” and stated that
“[t]hey figured out the identity based upon the January 5th incident, so I believe the
[relevance] prong of the test is met.” But while this statement certainly supports the view
that the evidence was admitted to prove identity, it does not contradict the fact that it was
also admitted expressly for the other specified purposes.
Although Sennie’s identity was not disputed at trial, the reason for her conduct at
the register took center stage. Sennie attempted to convince the jury that she was distracted
when she used the self-checkout register, mistakenly under-scanning some items and
mistakenly missing others. She previewed this strategy during her opening statement,
presented it during her testimony, and made it her last act at closing. Her consistent story
was that she was “so distracted and so overwhelmed that she simply left the store without
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realizing that she failed to pay for some merchandise.” The Walmart employee’s testimony
that Sennie engaged in under-ringing and ticket-switching at the register in January—as
she did in December —directly contradicted Sennie’s I-was-stressed-and-confused trial
narrative. And without this comparison testimony, the state’s counter to Sennie’s proffered
explanation would have been significantly weaker. The employee’s testimony about
Sennie’s January conduct was therefore particularly probative on the most disputed fact at
trial.
Admitting this probative testimony had little risk of unfairly prejudicing Sennie’s
defense. The district court narrowed the scope of the evidence by preventing the employee
from testifying about the value of the items stolen in January and by preventing the police
officer who testified at trial from discussing the incident at all. And the district court twice
instructed the jury not to use evidence of Sennie’s January conduct to infer that she had a
propensity to commit theft. We are satisfied that the evidence was not unfairly prejudicial
to Sennie’s defense and that the district court therefore did not abuse its discretion by
admitting it.
Affirmed.