(St. Paul, MN) — The Minnesota Supreme Court has reversed two of the convictions of a former probation officer accused of helping to kill a Minneapolis real estate agent.
The court ruled yesterday that prosecutors did not provide enough evidence to support Elsa Segura’s convictions for kidnapping and murder. Segura admitted during her trial that she helped set up a fake home showing with Monique Baugh in 2019 that directly led to the woman’s death.
“To convict Segura of aiding and abetting kidnapping and felony murder with a predicate crime of kidnapping, the State has the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Segura knew that her accomplices were going to commit kidnapping. Any reasonable hypothesis that Segura did not know about the kidnapping is thus a reasonable hypothesis of innocence. The court adopts a much too constricted view of what constitutes a rational inference; it is in essence deferring to the jury’s choice of inferences. Because it is reasonable to infer that Segura knew that she was aiding Wiggins in a crime other than kidnapping, it follows that the State did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Segura intentionally aided in the kidnapping of Baugh. Therefore, under our case law and the constitution, the State did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt an essential element of the crimes of kidnapping or felony murder with kidnapping as a predicate offense and her convictions must be reversed,” wrote Moore as part of the majority opinion of the court.
The court said Segura’s convictions for aiding and abetting Baugh’s murder and committing great bodily harm would stand. Her case will be sent back to the lower court for a possible retrial on the other charges.
You can read the Supreme Court Opinion by clicking here.
