## Facts

- Joon Kyu Kim, owner of an apartment complex, was charged with criminal sexual conduct for allegedly forcing nonconsensual sexual intercourse on the apartment manager.
- The complainant reported the incident occurred in her apartment on December 10, 1984, when she was home alone and Kim came to the apartment.
- A crime lab found semen on a bedsheet and on vaginal swabs taken at the hospital.
- The trial court ordered Kim to provide blood, saliva, and hair samples and ordered comparison samples from the complainant and her husband.
- The prosecution sought expert testimony that the semen testing was consistent with Kim’s blood type/genetic markers and that population-frequency statistics would exclude 96.4% of local males as possible sources, though Kim could not be excluded.
- Kim denied having intercourse with the complainant (consensual or otherwise), asserting he went to the apartment to terminate her employment.

## Issues

1. What standard governs the State’s pretrial appeal from a suppression/exclusion order: must the State show both clear trial court error and “critical impact” on the trial outcome?
2. Did the State make a clear and unequivocal showing that excluding population-frequency/statistical probability testimony was error and that the exclusion would have a critical impact?

## Decision

- The Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the court of appeals.
- The court reaffirmed the two-part standard for prosecution pretrial appeals: the State must show clearly and unequivocally both trial court error and that the ruling will have a critical impact on the outcome.
- The State failed to satisfy that standard as to the exclusion of the population-frequency/statistical probability testimony.
- Because only the State sought review, the court did not reach the defendant’s challenges to admission of the underlying serological “consistency” evidence.

## Legal Principles

- In a prosecution pretrial appeal, an appellate court will reverse only if the State demonstrates clearly and unequivocally (1) trial court error and (2) that, unless reversed, the error will have a critical impact on the outcome of the trial.
- “Critical impact” is shown not only where exclusion destroys the prosecution’s case, but also where it significantly reduces the likelihood of a successful prosecution.
- The State bears the burden to articulate, with specificity, why the pretrial ruling will critically affect the prosecution, particularly when other related evidence remains admissible.

## Conclusion

The court held that pretrial prosecution appeals remain limited by a demanding threshold: even if excluded evidence is probative, the State must clearly show both error and that suppression significantly weakens the likelihood of conviction; the State did not do so where non-statistical “consistency” serology and other evidence remained available.


State v. Kim, 398 N.W.2d 544 (Minn. 1987)