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This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A24-1626

State of Minnesota,
Respondent,

vs.

Amanda Jean Smith,
Appellant.

Filed July 14, 2025
Affirmed
Ross, Judge

Chippewa County District Court
File No. 12-CR-22-242

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

Matthew Haugen, Chippewa County Attorney, Christopher Reisdorfer, Assistant County
Attorney, Montevideo, Minnesota (for respondent)

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

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Connolly, Judge; and Wheelock,
Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
ROSS, Judge
The district court ordered Amanda Smith to pay $118,651 in restitution after the
state accused her of stealing more than $90,000 from her former employer and she pleaded
guilty to two felony theft counts. Smith argues on appeal that the district court erroneously
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ordered her to pay for losses her victim incurred before the date of the crimes she was
convicted of. Because Smith failed to challenge restitution on that ground in the district
court, she forfeited the challenge and we affirm.
FACTS
According to the state’s criminal complaint, a Montevideo company employed
Amanda Smith from November 2015 until her discharge in April 2021 for using a company
credit card to purchase automotive items shipped to her home. The company investigated
and discovered that Smith had made other improper transactions, which she had taken pains
to conceal. The state charged Smith with three felony theft and fraud counts specifically
ranging from “on or about July 2016 through April 2021.”
Smith agreed to plead guilty to two amended felony theft counts sentenced as
separate behavioral incidents. She pleaded guilty to the conduct alleged in the first count,
admitting that she stole property from “on or about January 1st, 2020, through May 24th,
2021,” and to the second count, admitting that she diverted corporate funds to herself
“between January 1st, 2020, and May 24, 2021.” Smith acknowledged that “the timing of
[the thefts in count one] date back to October of 2018” and “then continued on for a period
of about a year.”
The district court accepted Smith’s guilty pleas based in part on those admissions.
It convicted her of felony theft of between $1,000 and $5,000 and felony theft of corporate
property of over $35,000 and ordered her to pay restitution as part of her sentence. The
state sought $159,017, an amount that Smith challenged after requesting a hearing.
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The district court held a restitution hearing. At that hearing the state relied on a
demonstrative exhibit outlining the employer’s claimed restitution items and categorized
Smith’s hundreds of alleged thefts by date and by the various retail, social media, and
electronic-services vendors to whom Smith directed the unauthorized expenditures. The
exhibit dates the transactions from 2016 through 2022. Smith “agree[d] she owes
restitution” for payments to certain vendors on the list. Smith’s employer testified,
connecting the company’s claimed restitution amounts to Smith’s conduct. Smith also
testified, claiming that many of the requested items were proper work expenses and
asserting that she could not afford to pay the requested amount. Smith’s closing brief
reaffirmed that she had admitted to only some of the allegations but argued that many of
the claimed transactions had innocent explanations or lacked foundation.
The district court granted some but not all of the state’s restitution request, ordering
Smith to pay $102,166 for the transactions and $16,485 for investigation fees , for a total
restitution order of $118,651.
This appeal follows.
DECISION
Smith contests her restitution obligation. A district court has discretion to order
restitution, but we review de novo whether a district court has statutory authority to order
a specified item. See State v. Ramsay, 789 N.W.2d 513, 517 (Minn. App. 2010). Smith
argues that the district court erroneously ordered her to pay restitution for items she
allegedly stole before the periods of the offenses to which she pleaded guilty, which began
in January 2020. The argument has facial merit. The district court may order restitution
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only for injuries that are “directly caused by, or follow naturally as a consequence of, the
defendant’s crime,” State v. Boettcher, 931 N.W.2d 376, 381 (Minn. 2019), and this
excludes funds or items allegedly stolen before the period during which the defendant’s
crimes of conviction occurred.
But Smith’s argument has a fatal defect: she raises it for the first time on appeal. We
rarely decide issues that were not first raised in the district court. Roby v. State, 547 N.W.2d
354, 357 (Minn. 1996) . And the Roby rule applies to restitution issues. State v. Johnson,
851 N.W.2d 60, 64 (Minn. 2014); see In re Welfare of I.N.A., 902 N.W.2d 635, 639 (Minn.
App. 2017) (acknowledging that a defendant’s challenge to the district court’s statutory
authority to order restitution was not properly preserved), rev. denied (Minn. Nov. 28,
2017). Smith generally argued in the district court that her crimes did not “directly cause”
certain losses claimed, but she never argued that restitution could not apply to thefts that
occurred before 2020. Compounding her failure to make the temporal argument in the
district court, she expressly conceded that the district court could enter restitution for some
pre-2020 losses. She attached a spreadsheet to her closing brief detailing restitution
amounts that she agreed to pay, including transactions for items purchased as early as
November 2016. Smith’s failure to raise her current argument to the district court forfeited
the sole issue she raises here.
Affirmed.