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COURT OF APPEALS
DECISION
DATED AND FILED
January 8, 2008
David R. Schanker
Clerk of Court of Appeals
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NOTICE
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This opinion is subject to
further editing. If published, the
official version will appear in the bound volume of the Official
Reports.
A party may file with the
Supreme Court a petition to review an adverse decision by the Court of
Appeals. See Wis. Stat. § 808.10 and Rule 809.62.
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Appeal No.
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STATE OF WISCONSIN
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IN COURT OF
APPEALS
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DISTRICT I
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State of Wisconsin,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
Darrell D. Griffin,
Defendant-Appellant.
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APPEAL
from a judgment of the circuit court for Milwaukee County: elsa
c. lamelas, Judge. Affirmed.
Before Curley, P.J., Wedemeyer and Fine, JJ.
¶1 PER CURIAM. Darrell Griffin appeals from the
judgment of conviction entered against him.
He argues that the evidence the State produced at his trial was
insufficient to convict him of one of the charges. Because we conclude that there was sufficient
evidence, we affirm.
¶2 Griffin
was convicted after a four-day trial of second-degree recklessly endangering
safety, while armed, two counts of possession of a firearm by a felon, and
possession of body armor by a felon, all as a repeat offender. The court sentenced him to thirteen years of
initial confinement and five years of extended supervision for the recklessly
endangering charge, six years of initial confinement and five years of extended
supervision on each of the firearm charges, and four years of initial
confinement and five years of extended supervision on the body armor
charge. All sentences were consecutive
to each other.
¶3 Griffin
argues that the State did not produce sufficient evidence at his trial to
convict him of recklessly endangering the safety of others, Wis. Stat. § 941.30(2) (2005–06). When considering a challenge to the
sufficiency of the evidence:
[A]n appellate court may not substitute its judgment
for that of the trier of fact unless the evidence, viewed most favorably to the
state and the conviction, is so lacking in probative value and force that no
trier of fact, acting reasonably, could have found guilt beyond a reasonable
doubt. If any possibility exists that
the trier of fact could have drawn the appropriate inferences from the evidence
adduced at trial to find the requisite guilt, an appellate court may not
overturn a verdict even if it believes that the trier of fact should not have
found guilt based on the evidence before it.
State v. Poellinger, 153 Wis. 2d 493, 507,
451 N.W.2d 752, 757–758 (1990) (citations omitted).
¶4 To convict someone of the crime of second-degree reckless
endangerment, the State must prove that the defendant endangered the safety of
another human being, and that the defendant did so by criminally reckless
conduct. Wis. Stat. § 941.30; Wis.
JI—Criminal 1347. “‘Criminally
reckless conduct’ means: the conduct
created a risk of death or great bodily harm to another person; and the risk of
death or great bodily harm was unreasonable and substantial; and the defendant
was aware that [his or her] conduct created the unreasonable and substantial
risk of death or great bodily harm.” Wis JI—Criminal 1347. Griffin
argues that the evidence produced at trial did not establish that his conduct
created an unreasonable and substantial risk of great bodily harm.
¶5 Griffin
was charged for having fired a gun in the direction of a police officer as the
officer pursued him. The evidence at
trial established that two police officers stopped a group of men, including Griffin, on a rainy
evening. One of the officers, Officer
Grambow, testified that after they stopped the group he attempted to pat-down Griffin, but Griffin
ran away. Grambow followed Griffin into an
alley. When Grambow entered the alley,
he did not see Griffin. Grambow, therefore, “went into search mode
for [his] safety” and took out his flashlight.
Then he saw “a hand emerge from behind” a building “and in that hand
[was] a pistol.” Grambow put his
flashlight away and took out his own pistol.
Grambow saw Griffin come out from behind
the building, Griffin
appeared to slip, and the pistol was pointed at Grambow. Grambow shouted: “Drop the gun, drop
the gun.” Griffin then turned towards Grambow, with the
pistol pointed at him, and started to back away. Grambow testified that at this point he shot
at Griffin because
he feared for his own safety. Grambow
admitted that he was the first to fire. Grambow
then saw “flashes” from the muzzle of Griffin’s
pistol and heard gunshots. Grambow,
believing he was being shot at, crouched down low, moved backwards, and
continued to shoot at Griffin.
Grambow testified that the whole
sequence took a matter of seconds, and then “it seemed as if we were having an
exchange of gun fire with each other.”
¶6 Griffin
testified that he was shot in the back before he fired his gun. He further stated that he was attempting to
throw his gun away when he slipped in the mud and fired a shot. He then tried to stand up, heard the officer
shouting at him, and so he fired off two more shots. He testified that he was not aiming at
Officer Grambow and did not intend to shoot him. The jury also heard the testimony of Griffin’s girlfriend from
the preliminary hearing. She stated that
Griffin told
her he had shot at the police and that he was not going back to jail “without
taking some cops with him.”
¶7 We conclude that this evidence was sufficient for the jury to
find that when Griffin
fired his gun, he engaged in conduct that created “an unreasonable and
substantial risk of death or great bodily harm” to Officer Grambow. Further, the jury could reasonably infer that
Griffin knew
when he fired the gun that his conduct could cause death or great bodily harm to
Officer Grambow. We conclude that there
was sufficient evidence to support the
conviction for second-degree reckless endangerment. We affirm the judgment of conviction.
By the Court.—Judgment affirmed.
This
opinion will not be published. See
Wis. Stat. Rule 809.23(1)(b)5.