State of Minnesota, Appellant,

This opinion is nonprecedential except as provided by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
A25-0183

State of Minnesota,
Appellant,

vs.

Cody Logan Fohrenkam,
Respondent.

Filed September 22, 2025
Appeal dismissed
Slieter, Judge

Hennepin County District Court
File No. 27-CR-22-3336

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

Mary F. Moriarty, Hennepin County Attorney, Adam E. Petras, Senior Assistant County
Attorney, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)

Anders J. Erickson, Johnson Erickson Criminal Defense, Minneapolis, Minnesota (for
respondent)

Considered and decided by Bjorkman, Presiding Judge; Bratvold, Judge; and
Slieter, Judge.
NONPRECEDENTIAL OPINION
SLIETER, Judge
This pretrial appeal from appellant State of Minnesota follows this court’s previous
decision reversing respondent Cody Logan Fohrenkam’s second-degree murder conviction
and remanding for a new trial based upon the district court’s failure to suppress
2
Fohrenkam’s custodial statement to police. See State v. Fohrenkam, No. A23-0703, 2024
WL 2721238, at *1 (Minn. App. May 28, 2024) (Fohrenkam I), rev. denied (Minn. Oct.
15, 2024). The state now challenges the district court’s decision, on remand, to refuse to
hold a Rasmussen hearing
1 for the state to introduce additional evidence regarding the
admissibility of Fohrenkam’s custodial statement. The state claims that the district court’s
decision had a critical impact on its ability to prosecute the case and erroneously interpreted
this court’s remand instruction to bar the district court from holding a Rasmussen hearing.
Because the district court’s order did not have a critical impact on the state’s ability to
prosecute its case, we dismiss the state’s appeal.
FACTS
This case stems from the 2022 shooting death of D.H., a 15-year -old boy.
Fohrenkam I, 2024 WL 2721238, at *1. We recite those facts relevant to the issues in this
appeal.
On February 9, 2022, surveillance footage captured D.H. walking past an individual
wearing red pants and carrying a backpack. Id. This individual “stopped, pulled a gun out
of his backpack, and fired three shots at D.H.,” killing him. Id.
The state presented evidence that Fohrenkam was present at Wally’s Foods, a
nearby store whose external surveillance video captured the shooting, shortly before the
shooting. At the store, Fohrenkam purportedly got into an altercation with another

1 A Rasmussen hearing is a pretrial proceeding to determine the admissibility of evidence
allegedly obtained in violation of a defendant’s constitutional rights. State ex rel.
Rasmussen v. Tahash, 141 N.W.2d 3, 14 (Minn. 1965).
3
individual, who punched Fohrenkam and robbed him of his cell phone. Fohrenkam was
allegedly trying to find the individual who took his cell phone in the lead-up to the shooting.
In the investigation following the shooting, the Minneapolis Police Department
became aware of Fohrenkam as a potential suspect after receiving a tip from another law-
enforcement agency. Id. Two witnesses additionally identified Fohrenkam in a
photographic lineup as the shooter. Id.
On February 16, 2022, one week after the shooting, law enforcement learned that
Fohrenkam was in custody at the Carlton County Jail for an unrelated matter but was in the
process of being released. Id. The same day, two officers went to the jail to interview
Fohrenkam. After administering a Miranda warning to Fohrenkam, the officers
interviewed him in an interview room at the jail while he was restrained with handcuffs.
Id. The interview began at approximately 2:08 p.m. —after the Carlton County District
Court had signed an order authorizing Fohrenkam’s release.
During the interview, Fohrenkam gave conflicting statements about his whereabouts
during the shooting. Id. More specifically, Fohrenkam initially told the officers that he
was in Hayward, Wisconsin, on the day of the shooting. After the officers told him that
surveillance video captured him at Wally’s Foods, Fohrenkam admitted that he was in
Minneapolis for most of the day and that he was near Wally’s Foods. Fohrenkam denied
being involved in the shooting.
The state charged Fohrenkam with one count of second-degree intentional murder
in violation of Minn. Stat. § 609.19, subd. 1(1) (2020), and one count of second- degree
unintentional murder in violation of Minn. Stat. § 609.19, subd. 2(1) (2020). Fohrenkam
4
moved to suppress the statements made during the Carlton County Jail interview. Id. at
*1. The district court denied the motion and the jury found Fohrenkam guilty of both
counts. Id. The district court convicted Fohrenkam of second-degree intentional murder
and sentenced him to 463 months in prison.
Fohrenkam appealed his conviction to this court, arguing that he was
unconstitutionally detained at the Carlton County Jail for a custodial statement and that his
statement made during that interrogation should therefore be suppressed. Id. at *2. In a
nonprecedential decision, we reversed Fohrenkam’s conviction and remanded for further
proceedings, explaining that “Fohrenkam’s statements must be suppressed as the product
of an unlawful seizure” because the state “failed to satisfy its burden of showing that
Fohrenkam’s continued detention was lawful.” Id. at *2, *6.
On remand, the state requested that the district court reopen the record by holding a
Rasmussen hearing related to the suppression motion. Specifically, the state sought to
introduce evidence which would demonstrate that Fohrenkam’s continued detention was
lawful because there was probable cause to arrest him for second-degree murder at the time
of the interview. Fohrenkam objected to holding a Rasmussen hearing, claiming that the
law-of-the-case doctrine prohibited any further litigation regarding the statement’s
admissibility. The district court agreed with Fohrenkam and rejected the state’s request to
hold the Rasmussen hearing and denied the state’s motion to reconsider its order.
The state appeals.

5
DECISION
To obtain appellate review of a pretrial order, the state must provide notice of “how
the district court’s alleged error, unless reversed, will have a critical impact on the outcome
of the trial.” Minn. R. Crim. P. 28.04, subd. 2(2)(b). For the state to obtain pretrial relief
under this framework, it “must show clearly and unequivocally that (1) the ruling was
erroneous and (2) that the order will have a critical impact on its ability to prosecute the
case.” State v. McLeod, 705 N.W.2d 776, 784 (Minn. 2005) (quotation omitted). Because
the critical-impact requirement is a “threshold issue,” id., which resolves this appeal, we
begin and end our analysis there.
To satisfy the critical- impact requirement, the state must show that the district
court’s ruling “significantly reduces the likelihood of a successful prosecution.” State v.
Rambahal, 751 N.W.2d 84, 89 (Minn. 2008) (quotations omitted). Although this
requirement “is intended to be a demanding standard,” id., the state does not need to show
“that conviction is impossible after the pretrial order.” State v. Underdahl, 767 N.W.2d
677, 683 (Minn. 2009). Because the impact of excluding a piece of evidence “depends in
large part on the nature of the state’s evidence against the accused,” appellate courts
consider “the state’s evidence as a whole.” State v. Zanter, 535 N.W.2d 624, 631 (Minn.
1995).
Different Standards
The state suggests that our analysis in Fohrenkam I supports a conclusion that
critical impact has been shown. We disagree. In Fohrenkam I , we analyzed the
significance of the improperly admitted evidence under the harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-
6
doubt standard. See 2024 WL 2721238, at *5-6. Under this standard, “the state has the
burden to show that the errors are harmless beyond a reasonable doubt by showing that the
error did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” State v. Conklin, 444 N.W.2d 268, 275
(Minn. 1989). In contrast, the critical-impact standard, as we have explained, requires the
state to show that the exclusion of the evidence “significantly reduces the likelihood of a
successful prosecution.” Rambahal, 751 N.W.2d at 89 (quotations omitted). Given this
distinction between these two standards, the unconstitutionally received custodial
interview can sufficiently impact the verdict under the harmless- beyond-a-reasonable-
doubt standard though its absence at a subsequent trial can fail to meet the critical-impact
requirement. Therefore, although we explained in Fohrenkam I that “[t]he erroneously
admitted evidence was a significant part of the state’s case,” 2024 WL 2721238, at *5, our
critical-impact analysis in the present appeal is not dictated by our harmless-beyond-a-
reasonable-doubt analysis in Fohrenkam I given the significant divergence between the
two standards.
Critical-Impact Analysis
Caselaw is instructive in determining whether the state met the critical-impact
requirement. The suppression of a confession, for example, generally satisfies the
critical-impact requirement. E.g., State v. Ronnebaum, 449 N.W.2d 722, 724 (Minn. 1990).
Additionally, in State v. Zais, the supreme court concluded that exclusion of testimony of
the defendant’s wife, who witnessed the conduct underlying the defendant’s
disorderly-conduct charge, met the critical-impact requirement. 805 N.W.2d 32, 35-36
(Minn. 2011).
7
However, in State v. Recio-Arecibia we considered the impact of an inculpatory
statement not involving a confession in which the defendant acknowledged being with his
dog in the presence of the complainant but denied sexually assaulting her. 404 N.W.2d
853, 855 (Minn. App. 1987). Because the defendant was found at the scene of the assault,
other witnesses identified him as being there, a witness stated he was with his dog, and
police found him with a dog chain, we concluded that the state failed to show critical
impact, noting that “[t]he statement . . . does not establish facts which cannot otherwise be
reasonably developed.” Id.
The state does not dispute that the primary probative evidentiary purpose of
presenting Fohrenkam’s custodial statement to the jury is to show his admission to being
near the location of the shooting on the day of the shooting. Other evidence, however,
provides similar information regarding Fohrenkam’s whereabouts. For example, an
individual matching Fohrenkam’s description is present in surveillance footage on the
morning of the shooting at Wally’s Foods. Like the footage in the shooting, this individual
is wearing a backpack. And an article of red clothing, consistent with the red pants which
the video demonstrates the shooter wearing, is present in the individual’s unzipped
backpack. Evidence also showed that a photo was posted on a Facebook profile
purportedly belonging to Fohrenkam, portraying a man matching his description and
wearing similar clothing to the man in Wally’s Foods’ surveillance video.
Additionally, a witness testified to interacting with a man wearing a “black hoodie,”
a backpack, and the distinctive red pants—matching the attire worn by the shooter—near
the shooting location shortly before the shooting. A second witness similarly testified to
8
interacting with an individual matching this description, describing the person as wearing
a “black jacket” and being near the location of the shooting shortly before the shooting.
Further, this witness identified Fohrenkam in a photographic lineup as the individual with
whom she interacted and also identified Fohrenkam in court. A third witness provided
similar information at trial, describing the pants as “orange or reddish” and the individual
as wearing a “grayish hoodie” and only having a bag, which the witness described as a
“gymnastic bag,” after the shooting. This witness additionally identified Fohrenkam in a
photographic lineup and in court. At trial, this witness testified that he was “100 percent
certain” that this individual was Fohrenkam, Fohrenkam was looking for someone who
stole his cell phone, and he saw Fohrenkam running away after the shooting. And a fourth
witness testified to observing a man wearing red pants who was “ranting and raving” about
having a cell phone stolen near the shooting location shortly before the shooting. Further,
Fohrenkam’s then-girlfriend testified that she picked him up on the day of the shooting
from downtown Minneapolis.
Although the exclusion of Fohrenkam’s custodial statement will likely have some
impact on the state’s ability to prosecute Fohrenkam, this impact is not critical. The record
contains substantial evidence, other than Fohrenkam’s custodial statement, which
demonstrates his presence near the shooting.2

2 The state separately argues that Fohrenkam’s custodial statements help identify
Fohrenkam as the shooter by showing his distinctive speaking patterns, consistent with
other witness testimony. Again, this argument focuses on the ability to show Fohrenkam’s
location near the shooting. As explained, the record includes substantial other evidence of
Fohrenkam’s presence in the vicinity of the shooting.
9
The state last contends that the custodial statement is relevant impeachment
evidence, which shows that Fohrenkam, by making conflicting statements about his
whereabouts and lying about his phone being broken, showed a “consciousness of guilt.”
Fohrenkam’s mere “consciousness of guilt,” however, when considered in tandem with the
state’s other inculpatory evidence, especially evidence regarding Fohrenkam’s location,
does not add significant probative weight to the state’s case.
When considering the evidentiary value of Fohrenkam’s custodial statement, which
we previously concluded should be suppressed, in tandem with the state’s other evidence,
we conclude that the state failed to show how this evidence would “significantly reduce[]
the likelihood of a successful prosecution.” Rambahal, 751 N.W.2d at 89 (quotations
omitted). The state therefore failed to demonstrate that the alleged error of the district
court, unless reversed, will have a critical impact on its ability to prosecute the case.
Appeal dismissed.