The Minnesota Supreme Court upheld on Wednesday the murder conviction of Nicholas Firkus in the shooting of his wife in St. Paul.
Heidi Firkus (Courtesy of Erickson family)
Firkus’ appeal over the killing of Heidi Firkus revolved around circumstantial evidence.
Heidi Firkus was 25 when she was fatally shot at home in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood. The case went unresolved for more than a decade.
Nicholas Firkus, then 27, told police that an intruder burst in and he and the unknown man struggled over Firkus’ shotgun. He said the gun went off twice, striking Heidi in the back and wounding Nicholas in the thigh. Heidi died at the scene.
In 2021, Nicholas Firkus was charged and a jury found him guilty of first-degree premeditated murder in 2023.
Long wait for court’s decision
Nicholas Firkus, who turned 43 on Wednesday, has maintained there was an intruder in their home. At his sentencing in 2023 to life in prison without the possibility of parole, he said he “will maintain until my dying breath my innocence of this crime.”
In April 2024, as Firkus appealed his conviction, the Minnesota Supreme Court’s justices heard oral arguments from Firkus’ attorney and a prosecutor from the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.
In July 2024, the court issued an order that said, “to fully inform our consideration of this case, supplemental briefing and reargument is needed.” They asked a series of questions and requested both sides submit briefs with their legal arguments.
The reargument happened before the Minnesota Supreme Court in October 2024, and the justices issued their written decision Wednesday.
Circumstantial evidence at issue
The arguments in the Firkus case were about circumstantial evidence.
Such evidence is described by the Minnesota Judicial Branch as “facts or testimony not based on actual personal knowledge or observation, by which other non-substantiated facts can be reasonably inferred.”
For example, a person seen running away from a shooting while holding a gun is circumstantial evidence, while direct evidence could be an eyewitness testifying they saw the suspect shoot the victim.
Circumstantial evidence also includes DNA evidence on a gun: While it can link a person to a murder weapon, it doesn’t directly prove they used the gun to shoot someone.
In Minnesota, jurors are instructed to treat direct and circumstantial evidence the same, and that the law doesn’t prefer one form of evidence over the other.
When a conviction is based on circumstantial evidence and there’s an appeal, appellate courts are to use a two-step analysis, according to the Minnesota Court of Appeals standards of review.
“The first step is to identify the circumstances proved,” the standards of review says. “… We consider only those circumstances that are consistent with the verdict. This is because the jury is in the best position to evaluate the credibility of the evidence.”
“The second step is to determine whether the circumstances proved are consistent with guilt and inconsistent with any rational hypothesis except that of guilt,” the standards continue. “We review the circumstantial evidence not as isolated facts, but as a whole.”
Firkus’ attorney, Robert Richman, noted in a legal briefing that the state Supreme Court “has repeatedly refused to abandon this stricter scrutiny” of circumstantial evidence, including in their 2024 reversal of a man’s conviction for aiding and abetting murder.
The Minnesota Board of Public Defense and the Minnesota Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in their brief urged the court to “maintain its well-established circumstantial evidence standard of review.”
But the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and Minnesota County Attorneys Association asked the state Supreme Court to change the review standard for circumstantial evidence.
Related Articles
‘Horrible death’: Apple Valley man sentenced in hit-and-run killing during Bloomington pot deal
Fleet Farm settles MN lawsuit over straw purchasing, promises to make policy changes
Naked burglar who entered St. Paul home and teen’s closet sentenced to probation
Rob Reiner’s son pleads not guilty to murder in the killing of his parents
East Coast couple gets probation for MN Lululemon thefts, part of multi-state crime spree
Leave a Reply