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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A24-1375

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Deanna May Jaeger,
Appellant.

Filed May 27, 2025
Reversed and remanded
Ross, Judge

Kandiyohi County District Court
File No. 34-CR-23-755

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

Shane D. Baker, Kandiyohi County Attorney, Willmar, Minnesota (for respondent)

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

Considered and decided by Bratvold, Presiding Judge; Ross, Judge; and Smith,
Tracy M., Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
ROSS, Judge
Two months into her sentence for drug possession, Deanna Jaeger’s probation agent
reported that she had violated probationary conditions by missing drug tests and
appointments and by failing to complete a comprehensive substance-abuse and mental-
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health assessment. The district court conducted a hearing and revoked Jaeger’s probation,
remarking that she had not complied with court orders arising from unrelated proceedings
in family-law matters. Jaeger argues on appeal that the district court improperly revoked
her probation by relying on those other matters and that it also failed to make adequate
findings supporting revocation. Because the record supports Jaeger’s contention that the
district court may have, without notice, decided to revoke Jaeger’s probation based on
circumstances outside the record, we reverse the revocation decision and remand for further
findings.
FACTS
Deanna Jaeger pleaded guilty to felony drug possession in January 2024. When the
district court released Jaeger from custody pending sentencing, the judge told Jaeger, “I’m
very well aware of your prior actions while on release, and your propensity to not follow
my orders.” When Jaeger appeared for a sentencing hearing which did not occur because
of an attorney-scheduling conflict, the same judge ordered Jaeger to be taken into custody
based on a pretrial agency report that Jaeger had continued to use drugs.
After the eventual sentencing hearing, the same judge sentenced Jaeger to serve 15
months in prison but stayed execution of the prison term on probationary conditions, which
included serving 120 days in jail. The judge added that she was rejecting the parties’
bargained-for 30-day cap on executed jail time due to Jaeger’s consistent noncompliance
with conditions imposed by the court:
Ms. Jaeger, I’ve known you for a lot of years. . . . I can only
think what would be different in your life if you had followed
the plans that were in place for you years ago that were meant
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to improve your mental health and your stability, but you
refused to participate in those things. . . . You could have done
much better in maintaining contact with corrections pre-trial.
Instead, you went off and did things your way, which was not
what you bargained for or the state.
The probationary conditions prohibited Jaeger from using or possessing drugs and required
her to sign a probation agreement, submit to random drug testing, meet with her probation
agent as directed, complete a comprehensive assessment for substance abuse and mental-
health disorders, and obey the law.
About a month after Jaeger completed her jail term, her probation agent reported
that she had violated probation in four ways: failure to complete random testing, failure to
comply with her probation agreement and meet with her agent as directed, failure to
complete the comprehensive assessment, and failure to remain law abiding. At a hearing
on the violations, the state dropped its allegation that Jaeger had failed to remain law
abiding, and Jaeger indicated that she would like to admit to the other violations. But the
judge presiding over the hearing—who was not the judge who had previously handled the
matter—did not accept Jaeger’s admission because Jaeger did not establish an adequate
factual basis for the violations. The district court set the case for a contested revocation
hearing.
Jaeger failed to appear for the scheduled hearing. The judge who had sentenced
Jaeger issued a bench warrant, stating in part, “The Court has a long history of Ms. Jaeger,
a long history of failure to appear, a long history of illegal substance use. There’s no way
that this Court would have released her [after the prior hearing], but another Court did,
unfortunately.” Police took Jaeger into custody the next day.
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The district court then held a contested revocation hearing at which the sentencing
judge presided. Jaeger’s probation agent testified that Jaeger had complied with testing
once and tested negative but then twice failed to report for testing. She also testified that
Jaeger had met with a probation agent but then failed to report for three more recently
scheduled meetings. She said that Jaeger had failed to complete a comprehensive
assessment and failed to stay in contact with her office or cooperate to transfer her
probation supervison to Swift County, where Jaeger lived.
A probation agent who was investigating the probation transfer to Swift County also
testified. She similarly said that Jaeger completed one drug test but missed two others. She
testified that Jaeger had attended three probation appointments but missed three others,
including the two more recent ones. She testified that Jaeger had failed to provide proof
that she completed a comprehensive assessment and that the probation transfer did not
occur because of Jaeger’s failures to attend appointments, complete drug testing, and
provide a verifiable home address.
Jaeger testified in her defense. She stated she did not have a fully operational
cellphone and that walking was her primary means of transportation. She said she had
contacted the organization tasked with administering her comprehensive assessment but
implied that she had not yet attended an appointment.
The state asked the district court to order Jaeger to serve 90 days in jail for the
violations and to complete the comprehensive assessment, among other conditions. Jaeger
asked to be reinstated to probation on the prior terms.
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The district court judge then issued an oral order, stating that she was “[m]aking the
following findings”:
Ms. Jaeger has had significant Court involvement, whether it
was in criminal probation matters or Court oversight, child
protection, or termination of parental rights matters. Ms.
Jaeger is unamenable to supervision in either area, whether it
is child protection or criminal.
(Emphasis added.) The judge recounted Jaeger’s struggles on probation in other criminal
files, observing that Jaeger had asked to be excused from court orders based on her poverty,
her lack of a functioning phone, and her unstable housing, and that she “comes to Court
each time with the very same excuses with no willingness to actually problem solve on her
own benefit.” The judge continued, “So, through the course of years and many cases, the
court finds that Ms. Jaeger is not amenable to community supervision, that probation is
revoked and her sentence will be executed.” The judge then listed the “specific conditions”
Jaeger had violated —failure to maintain contact with probation, failure to make
appointments, and failure “to abide by no use in testing”—and observed, “If I did not
violate her or revoke her stay, it would unduly depreciate the seriousness of her violations
in context with every other violation of the last three years has resulted in the execution of
two prison sentences previously to this.” The judge concluded, “The stay of execution
previously imposed is revoked” and outlined the terms of the imposed sentence.
Jaeger appeals.
DECISION
Jaeger makes two principal arguments on appeal. She argues first that the district
court improperly based its probation-revocation decision on family-law matters outside the
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record. She argues second that the district court erred by failing to make sufficient record-
supported Austin findings before revoking her probation. See State v. Austin, 295 N.W.2d
246, 250 (Minn. 1980) . For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the district court
abused its discretion by improperly referring to, and apparently basing its revocation
decision at least partially on, circumstances in the family-court proceedings.
We agree with Jaeger that the district court improperly based its revocation decision
on family-law matters outside the record. We review a district court’s decision to revoke
probation for an abuse of discretion. Id. at 249–50. Given the district court’s statements,
Jaeger’s contention that the district court based its revocation on her unamenability to
supervision in child- protection and termination-of-parental-rights matters is, at least in
part, well-founded. The state euphemizes a concession, saying th at “it would have been
better [for the district court] not to say these words.” It does not appear that the district
court was merely saying words; the district court seems to have based its decision to revoke
probation on its concerns about Jaeger’s failings in family-court proceedings. This was
error because, to revoke probation based on a violated probationary condition, “the
condition alleged to have been violated must have been a condition actually imposed by
the court.” State v. Ornelas, 675 N.W.2d 74, 80 (Minn. 2004). None of the conditions of
Jaeger’s probation included issues related to “significant Court involvement [in other
cases], whether it was in criminal probation matters or Court oversight, child protection, or
termination of parental rights matters.” And the district court openly decided that “ Ms.
Jaeger is unamenable to supervision in either area, whether it is child protection or
criminal.”
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Our concern is not allayed by the fact that the district court did not expressly refer
to Jaeger’s family-law matters when it made its “specific” findings on which probation
conditions she had violated. By beginning its decision by twice referencing Jaeger’s
family-law proceedings, the district court revealed that it was relying at least partly on its
concerns about those matters. Because the district court based its revocation decision on
extra-record family-law matters, it abused its discretion.
The substantive error includes a procedural deficiency. A district court must inform
a probationer that she has the right to disclosure of “all evidence used to support
revocation.” Minn. R. Crim. P. 27.04, subd. 2(1)(c). The district court informed Jaeger of
this right, but it does not appear from the record that Jaeger had ever been notified of, and
therefore had reason to prepare to respond to, the court’s stated concerns about her conduct
in the family-law matters. Neither Jaeger’s probation-violation report nor the probation
agents’ testimony at the revocation hearing expressly discussed the family-law-related
conduct the district court alluded to. Jaeger’s own testimony and her cross-examination of
the agents at the revocation hearing reasonably focused instead on her partial compliance
with the alleged probation violations and the reasons why she had failed to fully comply.
We acknowledge that the district court here also referenced Jaeger’s other criminal
matters and that a district court considering whether to revoke probation may, in the proper
context, consider prior offenses because “determining the threat to the public and the need
for confinement will, on occasion, require analysis of a defendant’s [prior] record.” State
v. Osborne, 732 N.W.2d 249, 253, 256 (Minn. 2007); see also State v. Rottelo, 798 N.W.2d
92, 95 (Minn. App. 2011) (approving reliance on probationer’s prior criminal record to
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assess his “need for confinement and treatment”), rev. denied (Minn. July 19, 2011). Jaeger
was therefore on notice that the district court might take her prior criminal record into
account because her criminal history was listed on the violation report. But the failure to
notify Jaeger that the court would base its decision partially on her involvement in family-
law matters is an independent reason for our reversal today.
Jaeger asks us to remand the case with instructions to assign it to a different district
court judge. We will reverse and remand for the district court to determine whether to
revoke probation on proper findings. See State v. Modtland, 695 N.W.2d 602, 606–08
(Minn. 2005). But we decline to require that the case be assigned to a different district court
judge, as we are not persuaded to do so by Jaeger’s reliance on State v. Malone, 963 N.W.2d
453 (Minn. 2021). The Malone court reversed and remanded the criminal proceedings to a
different judge because the original judge had, in relevant part, “investigated a fact not
introduced into evidence, announced the findings from that investigation to the parties,
relied on those findings in rejecting Malone’s motion to dismiss, suggested that the State
might want to consider calling a second witness to testify against Malone, and had
communications passing through the judge’s chambers as to the identity of a potential
witness.” Id. at 466. Unlike the judge in Malone, the district court judge here did not
involve herself improperly in the proceedings. Although it was improper for the judge to
refer to Jaeger’s family-law circumstances, we presume that the assigned judge can and
will “set as ide collateral knowledge and approach cases with a neutral and objective
disposition.” State v. Dorsey, 701 N.W.2d 238, 248–49 (Minn. 2005) (quotation omitted).
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We are confident that, on remand, the district court will objectively decide whether to
revoke Jaeger’s probation based on proper considerations.
Because we are remanding this case for further findings, which may rest on the prior
hearing or, at the discretion of the district court, on additional proceedings, we do not
address Jaeger’s alternative argument challenging the sufficiency of the district court’s fact
findings.
Reversed and remanded.