6. Two Appeals in the Murder of Deputy Christopher Lee Dewey in Mahnomen.

THE CRIME: After a night of drinking, firing a handgun in a trailer home, a drunken car crash, and two visits by police officers, Fairbanks and a friend went to a neighbor’s home to seek more alcohol in the pre-dawn hours of February 18, 2009.  Mahnomen County Deputy Christopher Dewey rolled into the driveway, left his unit and asked the two men to raise their hands.  The friend tried to tackle Deputy Dewey, and as the officer twisted away, Fairbanks fatally shot Deputy Dewey in the face.  Dewey died of his wounds 18 months after the shooting.

Fairbanks was convicted by a Polk County jury in nearby Crookston and sentenced to life without the possibility of release in 2011.

Chief Justice Lorie Skjerven Gildea upheld Fairbanks' conviction and sentence twice.

     First, in 2014, the Supreme Court rejected Fairbanks; direct appeal.  See here. 

     First, after Fairbanks had requested a change of venue from Mahnomen County, the Supreme Court upheld the district judge's decision to move the trial to nearby Polk County for proper reasons.

     Second, the Supreme Court held that the traditional common-law rule regarding a death more than a year after the proximate cause of the death did not bar Fairbank's conviction and sentence for first-degree murder when Deputy Dewey died 18 months after he was shot.  The Supreme Court ruled that the year-and-a-day rule did not apply to the homicide statute.

     Third, the Supreme Court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting into evidence autopsy and “spark-of-life” photographs of the victim.

     Fourth, the Supreme Court held that the evidence is sufficient to support defendant’s convictions on three counts of first-degree assault of law enforcement officers.  But conviction on a fourth
count must be reversed because the evidence is insufficient to prove that defendant fired
in the direction of the law enforcement officers.

     Second, in 2016, the Supreme Court rejected Fairbanks' post-conviction appeal.  See here.

     First, the Supreme Court rejected Fairbanks' claim that he did not cause Deputy Dewey's death and that the "causation in fact" was some situation at the hospital in the 18 months between the shooting and the death.  The Supreme Court held that Dewey had waived that claim when he did not raise it during his direct appeal.

     Second, the Supreme Court rejected several other claims that had been drafted by Fairbanks himself because "none of them have any basis in law or fact."