State of Minnesota, Respondent v. Robert Marlyn Taylor, Appellant

Summary

The court affirmed Taylor’s first-degree premeditated-murder conviction, rejecting challenges to the grand-jury proceedings, jury selection, evidentiary rulings, sufficiency of the circumstantial evidence, and alleged prosecutorial misconduct. It held that any grand-jury misconduct did not substantially influence the indictment, the prosecutor’s stated reasons for the peremptory strike were not proven pretextual, the challenged evidence was properly admitted, and the evidence supported the verdict. Justice Page, concurring in part and dissenting in part, would have found purposeful racial discrimination and ordered a new trial; Justice Anderson, concurring, disagreed with the majority’s treatment of one Batson reason but agreed with the result.