Minnesota Supreme Court upholds conviction of shooter in 2021 road rage incident

The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Chicago man in a 2021 road-rage incident when he fatally shot a youth baseball coach on his way home from a game with his son.

Jamal Lindsey Smith is serving life in prison for his Hennepin County District Court murder convictions in the death of Jay Boughton, who was shot on Hwy. 169 in Plymouth while driving with his teenage son Harrison. After the shooting, it took two months to find and arrest Smith in Illinois after a frantic search for the SUV.

In the opinion written by Justice Margaret Chutich, the court brushed aside all defense claims on appeal, including ineffective assistance of counsel and a lack of Black residents in the pool of prospective jurors. The court also said it was appropriate for Judge Nicole Engisch to allow into evidence the alleged prior crimes of the defendant.

Chief Justice Natalie Hudson joined Chutich's opinion along with Justices Anne McKeig and Gordon Moore. Justices Paul Thissen wrote and Justice Karl Procaccini signed a concurrence that highlighted a lack of representative diversity in jury pools.

"Ensuring that people of color serve as jurors is essential to the fair resolution of cases and to the public's trust in our legal system," the majority opinion read.

But in Smith's case, the court rejected his claim that the jury pool lacked proportional representation of Black residents.

In a footnote, Chutich wrote that the Legislature can make jury service "more tenable" for residents of all races and lessen the need for recusals by increasing juror pay. The court asked the 2024 Legislature to increase the daily pay from $20 to $100 to offset lost wages, child care and related costs.

Thissen and Procaccini sounded more concerned about jury diversity and wrote that when a specific group, such as people of color, fails to consistently show up for jury duty, and the state fails to consider remedies, "that failure becomes systematic exclusion at some point."

Thissen and Procaccini's concurrence also cited a pilot study in San Francisco that found increasing participation from poor residents and people of color compared to white residents when juror pay was increased from $15 to $100 a day.

"The state of Minnesota can only ignore such evidence for so long," Thissen's concurrence said.

Justice Sarah Hennesy, who recently joined the court, did not participate in the decision.