Schnoor’s sister looks for traction for ‘Sabrina’s Law’

If you didn’t know better, you might think Serenity Schnoor went to law school.

Turns out, she simply got a crash-course in the subtleties and vagaries of law.

“If I have a passion about something … I feel like my anger motivates that passion,” she said.

The case

Schnoor lost her only sibling when her older sister Sabrina was murdered in May 2023.

A jury last month convicted Sabrina’s former boyfriend, Jason Horner, of second-degree unintentional murder, but acquitted him of the more serious count of second-degree intentional murder.

He was also found guilty of third-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter, second-degree manslaughter and possession of a firearm after being convicted for a crime of violence.

Sentencing has been set for 10 a.m. Dec. 22; he faces at least 12 years in prison, pending the findings of the pre-sentence investigation.

Sabrina’s family and friends have said the verdict felt like a slap in the face – highlighted by a single word: unintentional.

Horner asked Sabrina to meet him that day in Owatonna, allegedly claiming he was going to kill himself if she didn’t show up. The two had had a tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship for years.

Worried friends found Sabrina’s body 24 hours later; she died of a gunshot wound to the face.

Video footage from the night of the murder showed Horner and Sabrina in a convenience store, then walking down a set of railroad tracks that lead to the spot where she was eventually found.

Horner can be seen on camera leaving the area alone; the murder weapon was never recovered, preventing a forensic exam.

Horner claimed Sabrina “found” the gun as they walked along the train tracks, then accidentally shot herself by slamming the butt of the shotgun against the ground, causing the weapon to discharge.

The issue

Within a week of the verdict, Serenity Schnoor was putting her passion to work.

At the heart of her work is Minnesota Statute §634.20 – Evidence of Conduct.

“It was written so juries could understand the real history of abuse: the threats, the fear, the escalation, the control,” Schnoor said, showing that danger may be building.

“But the law isn’t clear,” she said, “and when a law isn’t clear, judges do whatever they think it means.”

Schnoor said that between the 24 to 48 hours before her sister’s death, there were roughly 1,500 pages of messages between Horner, Sabrina and others.

In those messages, he allegedly wrote:

• “knives don’t stop bullets (and) I got ‘em.”
• “I don’t wanna hear about Sabrina unless it’s her funeral arrangements so I can (expletive) piss on her.”
• “Sabrina really (expletive) up, the lil (expletive) bitch … I’m gonna cut her tongue out her skull.”
• “Someone’s gonna get hurt real bad, i wont just let this (expletive) happen.”

In the 24 hours before Sabrina was killed, she texted Horner that she didn’t feel safe meeting him. He responded by repeatedly threatening suicide “and degrading her every time she went three minutes without responding to his messages,” Serenity Schnoor said.

“She came knowing it probably wasn’t safe, but risked it anyway because she didn’t want him to actually end up killing himself,” Schnoor said. “So she found a way to Owatonna and spent her last moments on earth with a shotgun up to her mouth.”

There was more, including prior reports and photos of alleged abuse between Horner and Sabrina, as well as Horner and other women.

Schnoor doesn’t blame the jury members or the prosecution for the verdict.

“The jury was shown a version of events stripped of the truth,” she said. “If §634.20 had been applied the way it was intended, the jury would have seen the full story.”

Some judges, Schnoor said, “let all the relationship evidence in. Others keep almost all of it out.”

Sabrina’s case “is a heartbreaking example of how the inconsistent application (of the statute) harms victims and protects offenders,” she said.

Sabrina’s Law

Though she knew little about the court system before her sister’s case, Schnoor has written a bill proposal.

She did it, she said, by “listening to what the prosecutors were saying, and how they explained stuff, and then I just… All of the information is available online, and I just took the opportunity to educate myself on it.

“The law that I proposed already exists,” Schnoor said. “It’s just so vague, and you can interpret it however you really want, and if you’re a judge…”

She recognizes that defense attorneys pull at every string they can find, but believes the judge in Horner’s case “misinterpreted some really crucial laws that we have – but who can blame him, you know? They’re so vague.”

Schnoor also believes the prosecution’s hands were tied in some of the issues.

“I give them grace,” she said. “They did the best they could with what they were given, but there’s not much (arguing) you can do in a trial because then you’re undermining a judge.”

Sabrina’s Law does not change convictions, burdens of proof, or sentencing. It addresses how courts evaluate and explain domestic-violence relationship evidence in intimate-partner homicide cases.

Included in the law would be standardized judicial guidance and training about domestic-violence dynamics, lethality factors and just what “domestic conduct” is.

In other words: context.

This week, she will meet with attorneys at Standpoint to review her proposal.

The Standpoint team, based out of St. Paul, advocates against domestic and sexual violence, and “has extensive experience in criminal and civil justice interventions and practices to help professionals and organizations in a variety of ways,” its website says.

State support

Schnoor has someone else in her corner – a potential change-maker.

Rep. Tom Sexton, R-Waseca, almost immediately responded to her plea.

“The research team is validating her proposed bill as we speak,” he said last week. “In addition, we are formulating a strategy for successfully passing as much of the proposed bill as possible in the upcoming session.”

Though lawmakers don’t convene at the Capitol until Feb. 17, the wheels of law-making are already in motion.

Still, Sexton said, “we may be working through several sets of revisions prior to getting co-author signatures, formally submitting the bill, committee hearings, etc. I suggested to Serenity that it could be a long process.”

Parts of the proposed bill could take more than one session to pass, he said, meaning there could be years of work ahead.

“It is always great to work with someone who is so passionate about fixing the law,” Sexton said. “In this case, like many others, we must start fighting for the rights of our victims and their families. We have all heard someone say, ‘If only they could have kept the perpetrator off the streets, this would not have happened.’

“Let’s make sure that we don’t have another situation like Sabrina’s case,” he said.

Steele County Attorney Robert Jarrett, who tried the case with Mary Russell, of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, said he was “unable to comment until the case is sentenced, and I would prefer to wait to comment further until the appeal period is completed.”

The Office of the Attorney General also declined to comment on the proposal, citing Horner’s pending sentencing.

Sen. John Jasinski did not respond to requests for comment.

What lies ahead

Schnoor said it’s unfortunate that it takes a tragedy to pursue change.

“I had to sit there through the whole trial, silent, because I didn’t want to (risk) the integrity of it,” she said, “but after the fact, I was like, you know, something really needs to change. Like, somebody needs to do something.

“Everybody just says that or thinks that, but who actually is going to do it? So here I am, giving it a shot.”

Even as her proposal makes its way toward the Capitol, Schnoor has requested an appellate review of her sister’s case – a process that reviews the rulings made throughout the trial.

“It’s not to redo the verdict or anything, but just to see if the trial went as fairly as it could,” she said.

“This really changed my whole outlook on the justice system,” Schnoor said. “My biggest hope is that going forward, this can be something that can be a real tool that protects victims and strengthens cases for both sides, really,” she said of Sabrina’s Law.

“I agree with her,” Sexton said. “Now we just need to get enough votes to get it across the finish line. I will be there for Serenity and her family to see it through.”

As for Sabrina, “she would call me crazy for taking on the whole state of Minnesota,” Schnoor said a bit sadly.

“She always stuck up for me, and I have to be her voice now – I feel like the only one that can, really,” she said.

“If there’s one good thing that can come out of this whole situation, it’s that Sabrina’s name can be part of something bigger, something that helps her to live on.”