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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A24-1270

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Ali Dayib Warsame,
Appellant.

Filed June 30, 2025
Affirmed
Bjorkman, Judge

McLeod County District Court
File No. 43-CR-23-1849

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

Ryan S. Hansch, McLeod County Attorney, Michael K. Junge, Assistant County Attorney,
Glencoe, Minnesota (for respondent)

Cathryn Middlebrook, Chief Appellate Public Defender, John Patrick Monnens, Assistant
Public Defender, St. Paul, Minnesota (for appellant)

Considered and decided by Bjorkman, Presiding Judge; Harris, Judge; and
Klaphake, Judge.
∗

∗ Retired judge of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, serving by appointment pursuant to
Minn. Const. art. VI, § 10.
2
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
BJORKMAN, Judge
Appellant challenges his conviction of first-degree burglary, arguing that the district
court’s instructions to the jury directed a verdict on the “dwelling” element of the offense.
We affirm.
FACTS
In December 2023, T.L. arrived at her farmhouse after completing a shift at work
and running errands. T.L. pulled her car into the house’s attached garage and was
unloading shopping bags from the passenger seat when she heard “banging” noises coming
from inside the house. She listened at the door between the garage and the interior hallway
and determined the sounds to be coming from “right on the other side” of the door.
Because T.L. knew that the rest of her family was not home, she quickly reentered
her car and began backing out of the garage. As she was leaving, she observed a man, later
identified as appellant Ali Dayib Warsame, walk around the side of the attached garage.
Warsame told her that he was looking for someone to help pull his car out of a nearby ditch.
T.L. replied that she would get help; she then drove the half mile to her closest neighbor’s
home and called 911. As T.L. drove away, she noticed a vehicle “stuck in [the family’s]
pasture.”
T.L. later walked through the house with responding police officers. She observed
that several things were not how she had left them; her bedroom drawers had been opened
and emptied, and there was a hammer lying on her pillow. T.L. also noticed that a ring
was missing from its usual place on the top of her jewelry cabinet. The ring contains the
3
birthstones of T.L.’s two children and is inscribed with their names and birthdates. An
inspection of the exterior of the house revealed that the handle and frame of the door
leading to the walkout basement had been damaged by a hammer.
Officers eventually located Warsame walking approximately half a mile from T.L.’s
house. As they placed W arsame in the back of a squad car, officers noticed that he was
wearing an ill-fitting ring on his pinky finger. Upon examination, officers observed that
the ring was engraved with two names and dates. T.L. later identified the ring as hers.
Respondent State of Minnesota charged Warsame with first-degree burglary,
second-degree burglary, and theft.1 A three-day jury trial was held, during which T.L. and
three police officers testified consistent with the facts presented above. Warsame testified
in his own defense, explaining that he crashed his truck in a ditch after falling asleep behind
the wheel and that he only approached T.L.’s home to knock “on the back porch” for help.
When asked about T.L.’s ring, Warsame testified that he found it on the ground near the
back porch of the house.
Following the close of evidence, the district court instructed the jury on the elements
of the charged offenses. The court explained that the first-degree burglary offense has four
elements:
First, the defendant entered or remained in a building
without the consent of a person in lawful possession.

. . . .

Second, the building was a dwelling.

1 Warsame was also charged with driving after revocation, but that charge was later
dismissed.
4
. . . .

Third, another person, not an accomplice, was present
in the dwelling when the defendant entered it or at any time
when the defendant was in the dwelling.

. . . .

Fourth, the defendant committed the crime of Theft,
Taking Property of Another, while in the building.

The district court defined the term “building” to mean “a structure suitable for affording
shelter for human beings, including . . . any adjacent, appurtenant, or connected structure.”
And the court defined “dwelling” as “a structure suitable for affording shelter for human
beings that is used as a permanent or temporary residence.”
After the district court instructed the jury, counsel presented their closing
arguments. The following exchange occurred during defense counsel’s argument:
DEFENSE COUNSEL: Count 1, the defendant entered
or remained in the building, without—without consent? Yes,
there was no consent for Mr. Warsame to be in the building.
However, it’ s an undisputed fact that nobody saw
Mr. Warsame in that building, nobody. If it had been the
Easter Bunny, I don’t know. I wouldn’t know; I wasn’t there.
None of you were there. None of us were there. Mr. Warsame
was there. [T.L.] was there. It could have been anyone that—
that disrupted the house.
However, Mr. Warsame, it doesn’t make sense for him
to be in that house; it would not.
The building was a dwelling, obviously. Another
person entered the building, third element on that. It’s
undisputed no one entered that building.

PROSECUTOR #1: Your Honor, objection. One, the
“undisputed” language is not appropriate in closing, anyway,
which has been used repeatedly; two, “There—There was
evidence that [T.L.] entered the building,” that’s just a gross
misstatement of facts.
5

DEFENSE COUNSEL: I’m arguing my side of the
view.

THE COURT: Well, you can—you can argue the
facts—

DEFENSE COUNSEL: Yep.

THE COURT: —as far as what you believe the
evidence shows.

DEFENSE COUNSEL: Yep, and that’s what I intend to
do. I will use “undisputed.” The facts show that [T.L.] did not
enter the residence, did not—

PROSECUTOR #2: Objection. Your Honor, may we
approach?

THE COURT: You may.

(Bench conference off the record.)

THE COURT: So, Jurors, just for clarification, “the
dwelling” includes the entire building.

DEFENSE COUNSEL: It’s un—Well, facts show that
[T.L.] went into the garage, never opened the door, never
walked in; however, she went in—back into her car and left.
That’s when the interaction happened.

(Emphasis added.)
The jury found Warsame guilty as charged. The district court entered a conviction
on the first-degree burglary offense and imposed a 51-month prison sentence.
2
Warsame appeals.

2 The district court did not enter convictions for second-degree burglary or theft because
they are included offenses of first-degree burglary.
6
DECISION
Warsame contends that the district court’s clarifying instruction impermissibly
directed a verdict in favor of the state on one element of the burglary offense. District
courts have “considerable latitude” in selecting jury-instruction language. State v. Gatson,
801 N.W.2d 134, 147 (Minn. 2011) (quotation omitted). We review the adequacy of jury
instructions for an abuse of discretion. State v. Moore, 699 N.W.2d 733, 736 (Minn. 2005).
In doing so, we assess whether the instructions, reviewed in their entirety, fairly and
adequately explain the law of the case. State v. Koppi, 798 N.W.2d 358, 362 (Minn. 2011).
An instruction is erroneous if it materially misstates the law. State v. Kuhnau, 622 N.W.2d
552, 556 (Minn. 2001). Because the jury must determine that a defendant is guilty beyond
a reasonable doubt of every element of the charged offense, United States v. Gaudin, 515
U.S. 506, 510 (1995), a jury instruction is also erroneous if it directs a verdict on an offense
element, Moore, 699 N.W.2d at 737.
A person commits first-degree burglary if they “enter[] a building without consent
and commit[] a crime while in the building” if “the building is a dwelling and another
person, not an accomplice, is present in it when the burglar enters or at any time while the
burglar is in the building.” Minn. Stat. § 609.582, subd. 1(a) (2022). 3 As used in the
burglary statutes, “building” means “ a structure suitable for affording shelter for human
beings including any appurtenant or connected structure .” Minn. Stat. § 609.581, subd. 2

3 Second-degree burglary has the same offense elements, with the exception of the presence
of a third party at the time the burglar is in the dwelling. Minn. Stat. § 609.582,
subd. 2(a)(1) (2022).
7
(2022). And “dwelling” is defined as “a building used as a permanent or temporary
residence.” Id., subd. 3 (2022).
Warsame argues that the district court committed structural error 4 because its
direction to the jury in the midst of defense counsel’s closing argument that “ʻthe dwelling’
includes the entire building” effectively directed the jury’s verdict on the “dwelling”
element of first-degree burglary charge. As support for his argument, Warsame cites
Moore and State v. Staeheli, No. A15-0250, 2016 WL 456804 (Minn. App. Feb. 8, 2016).5
Moore was charged with first-degree assault , an element of which is the infliction
of “great bodily harm.” Moore, 699 N.W.2d at 736. “Great bodily harm” is defined as “an
injury that causes a permanent or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any
bodily member or organ.” Id. at 736-37 (quotation omitted). In Moore, the district court
instructed the jury that “[t]he loss of a tooth is a permanent loss of the function of a bodily
member.” Id. at 736. Our supreme court held that this instruction was structural error
because it prevented the jury from independently determining whether the element of
“great bodily harm” was proved. Id. at 736-38.

4 A structural error is a “defect[] in the constitution of the trial mechanism” that typically
requires automatic reversal. State v. Watkins, 840 N.W.2d 21, 25-26 (Minn. 2013)
(quotation omitted). But in Pulczinski v. State, our supreme court explained that where, as
here, the defendant does not object to a structural error at trial, plain-error review may
instead apply. 972 N.W.2d 347, 356-59 (Minn. 2022). We need not decide which standard
of review applies here because we discern no error in the district court’s instruction.

5 Nonprecedential opinions may be cited as persuasive authority. See Minn. R. Civ. App.
P. 136.01, subd. 1(c).
8
Similarly, in Staeheli, we concluded that the district court’s instruction on second-
degree burglary that “[a]n attached garage is included in the definition of a dwelling,”
directed a verdict on that offense element because the instruction effectively “asked and
answered a question of fact.” 2016 WL 456804, at *2-3 (emphasis omitted) . We also
noted that the instruction likely misstated the law because a garage could be attached to a
house but not satisfy the definition of “dwelling”—for instance, if the house were
abandoned. Id. at *3 n.1.
Warsame contends that, like in Moore and Staeheli, the district court resolved
questions of fact by effectively “inform[ing] the jury that [T.L.’s] residence was a
dwelling” and that “the dwelling included the attached garage.” He also argues that, for
the same reasons set out in Staeheli, the district court misstated the law. We disagree for
two reasons.
First, the district court did not misstate the law. Warsame does not dispute that the
district court’s general instructions on the elements of first-degree burglary were accurate.
He challenges only the court’s subsequent clarification that “ʻthe dwelling’ includes the
entire building.” But the term “building” is used in the statutory definition of “dwelling.”
Minn. Stat. § 609.581, subd. 3 (defining “dwelling” as “a building used as a permanent or
temporary residence” (emphasis added)). And a building includes “any appurtenant or
connected structure.” Id., subd. 2. U nlike in Staeheli, the district court did not use fact-
specific language or suggest that a particular type of structure meets the definition of
“dwelling.” Considering the instructions as a whole, w e see no error by the district court
in explaining the law. Koppi, 798 N.W.2d at 362.
9
Second, the district court’s clarifying instruction did not tell the jury how to resolve
a question of fact. Rather, it essentially reiterat ed the statutory definitions the court had
already provided in its general instructions. The jury was then responsible for applying
those definitions to the facts of Warsame’s case. To find Warsame guilty, the jury was
required to find that (1) T.L.’s house was “suitable for affording shelter for human beings,”
(2) the attached garage constituted an “appurtenant or connected structure” relative to the
house, and (3) the house is “used as a permanent or temporary residence.” Minn. Stat.
§ 609.581, subds. 2, 3. Nothing in the district court’s clarifying instruction resolves these
questions or departed from the court’s general instructions, to which Warsame did not
object.
Because we discern no error in the district court’s general jury instructions and we
conclude that the district court’s clarifying instruction did not direct the verdict on the
burglary charge, we affirm.
Affirmed.