State v. Guill

• Decision Date: 06 April 2010
• Docket Number: No. DA 08-0561.,DA 08-0561.
• Citation: 2010 MT 69,228 P.3d 1152,355 Mont. 490
• Parties: STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Douglas James GUILL, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Montana Supreme Court

228 P.3d 1152

2010 MT 69

355 Mont. 490

STATE of Montana, Plaintiff and Appellee, v. Douglas James GUILL, Defendant and Appellant.

No. DA 08-0561.

Supreme Court of Montana.

Submitted on Briefs February 17, 2010.

Decided April 6, 2010.

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For Appellant: William F. Hooks, Attorney at Law; Helena, Montana, Michael J. Sherwood, Attorney at Law; Missoula, Montana.

For Appellee: Hon. Steve Bullock, Montana Attorney General; Jonathan M. Krauss, Assistant Attorney General; Daniel Guzynski, Assistant Attorney General, Special Deputy County Attorney for Sanders County; Helena, Montana, Coleen Magera, Sanders County Attorney; Thompson Falls, Montana.

Justice W. WILLIAM LEAPHART delivered the Opinion of the Court.

¶ 1 Douglas Guill (Douglas) was convicted by a jury in the Twentieth Judicial District Court, Sanders County, of five counts of sexual misconduct against his daughter. Douglas appeals his conviction, arguing that the District Court committed reversible error by admitting testimony of uncharged misconduct. We affirm.

¶ 2 The sole issue on appeal is whether the District Court erred by allowing the prosecution to present evidence of uncharged misconduct.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶ 3 The events giving rise to this case go back a short lifetime. From the evidence introduced at trial, the following facts are generally undisputed. Douglas met Candace Guill (Candace) in Boise, Idaho, on Christmas Eve 1972, and the two were married ten days later. In the first decade of their marriage, they drifted around the western states (mostly in the northern Rockies), scratching out a meager existence. In the early 1980s, Douglas became a born-again Christian. In 1984 the couple had their first child, Sarah Guill (Sarah). Two years later they had their second child, Jacob Guill (Jacob). The family continued its itinerant course, living at different times in Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Montana. In 1991 they moved to Heron, Montana, and purchased property. At first they lived in a trailer house. Eventually, they built a house. They constructed the house in halves, creating front and back basements that were walled-off from each other.

¶ 4 While in Heron, Douglas, along with his friend Rick Christensen (Rick), started a successful business installing heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. Candace homeschooled the children. In 1992 Douglas started a romantic relationship with Nicole Christensen (Nicole), Rick's sister, and brought her to the Guills' property in Heron to live with the family. Douglas and Candace did not divorce until 2006. In the interim, Candace moved to separate sleeping quarters, and Nicole became Douglas's new partner. After the house was built, Candace stayed in one half of the basement. The children's rooms were in the other half of the basement. The children worked on the property in Heron. As they grew older, they began to work for their father's business. Sarah and Jacob continued to live at home after they reached majority. On September 11, 2006, at the age of twenty-two, Sarah ran away.

¶ 5 On November 3, 2006, Sarah reported to the Sanders County Sheriff's Office that Douglas had been sexually assaulting her since she was a young child. Douglas was subsequently arrested, and the State filed an information charging him with two counts of sexual intercourse without consent, two counts of incest, and one count of sexual assault, all felonies. (An additional charge for misdemeanor sexual assault was dismissed.) The State's supporting affidavit alleged that Douglas began sexually assaulting Sarah when she was six and that he began having sexual intercourse with her when she was eight. After Nicole moved to the residence, the affidavit continued, she too became involved in the sexual abuse. The alleged abuse occurred daily until Sarah was seventeen (2001), and weekly from when Sarah was seventeen until she ran away at age twenty-two (2006). Sarah had not told anyone of the abuse because Douglas had kept her isolated on their property in Heron, not allowing her to attend public school, travel off the property on her own, date boys, or access books other than the Bible and the homeschooling books she received through the eighth grade. Douglas controlled Sarah and forced her to submit to the abuse by telling her that he was God, that God told him to abuse her as he did, and that he determined who would go to heaven or hell. If Sarah told anyone about the abuse, Douglas threatened, she would go to hell, or he would kill himself, or he would harm Candace or Jacob.

¶ 6 The legal maneuvering that led to the introduction of the evidence now challenged on appeal began in the pretrial stages of this case. The State filed a notice pursuant to State v. Just (a "Just notice") that it intended to introduce evidence of "incidents of violence and religious control committed by Defendant Douglas James Guill against Sarah, Jacob and Candace Guill" other than the crimes with which Douglas had been charged. 184 Mont. 262, 602 P.2d 957 (1979), modified, State v. Matt, 249 Mont. 136, 814 P.2d 52 (1991), and overruled in part on other grounds, State v. Swann, 2007 MT 126, 337 Mont. 326, 160 P.3d 511. The notice claimed that such acts were "inseparably related to the crimes charged" and that the State would introduce evidence of such acts "to demonstrate the lack of consent as well as plan, common scheme or design to subject Sarah and Jacob Guill to repeated incidents of sexual abuse." Douglas objected to the Just notice, pointing out that the State had not specified what evidence it planned to present and arguing that the State could not introduce evidence of prior acts to show Sarah's lack of consent since he had not raised a consent defense. Subsequently Douglas moved in limine to exclude "any offense, wrongs or acts of the Defendant for which he is not charged" on the basis of Rule 404(b) of the Montana Rules of Evidence.

¶ 7 The State, in turn, filed a response to Douglas's motion in limine and a notice of its intent to introduce evidence under the so-called transaction rule (§ 26-1-103, MCA). Pursuant to this rule, the State intended to introduce evidence "pertaining to Douglas Guill's ... control of his children Sarah and Jacob and his wife Candace through the use of religion and acts of physical and verbal abuse." Such evidence, the State claimed, was "inextricably linked" to the charged offenses and "tended to explain circumstances surrounding the charged offenses." Alternatively, the State repeated its position that this evidence was admissible under the "common scheme or plan" exception to Rule 404(b). The State then specified seven prior acts of physical and verbal abuse by Douglas against Sarah, Jacob, and Candace. Notably, the State did not signal any intention to introduce evidence of Douglas's control of Nicole.

¶ 8 The parties repeated their positions on this evidentiary dispute at a pretrial hearing on February 13, 2008. Douglas, through counsel, indicated that any acts of violence against anyone other than Sarah should be excluded under Rule 404(b) or Rule 403. The State conceded that acts of violence by Douglas against third parties, which Sarah was not aware of, would be not be admissible unless Douglas broached the subject on cross-examination (or "opened the door"). The District Court indicated that it would admit evidence of violence by Douglas against family members that Sarah was aware of and exclude evidence of violence that Sarah was not aware of. In March the District Court issued a written order on the subject of evidence of other acts and the transaction rule. In its order, the District Court reasoned that evidence of violence by Douglas against family members would be admissible under the transaction rule:

Evidence of the Defendant's alleged control of his family members, his religious beliefs as imposed on or required of his family members and any acts of physical or verbal abuse are "inextricably linked" to the allegations charged against the Defendant. This sort of transactional evidence is consistent, in the experience of the Court and case law, with the power/control dynamic inherent in sexual offenses.

The District Court further held that such evidence would also be admissible under the common plan or scheme exception to Rule 404(b).

¶ 9 The case went to trial. In its opening statement, the State presented its theory: that Douglas had continually sexually abused his daughter and that he was able to do so by isolating her and controlling her through religion, physical and verbal abuse, and threats of violence to himself and other family members. In his opening statement, Douglas, through counsel, categorically denied sexually abusing Sarah and suggested that Candace and Sarah, the State's principal witnesses, had invented the allegations to get at Douglas's money and property, which he had earlier decided to bequeath to Nicole. Candace's motivation to lie, the defense suggested, was that she was facing an imminent divorce (due to her prior infidelity) that would leave her destitute.

¶ 10 It was, Douglas submits, during the following evidentiary phase of the trial that the District Court erroneously allowed the State to introduce evidence of prior bad acts. Candace, the State's first witness, testified to her history with Douglas: their marriage and peregrinations, his becoming born-again, the birth of their children, their financial hardship, and his role as the family's sole decision-maker. At one point during direct examination, the State asked Candace if she had ever tried to assert herself against Douglas. Douglas objected that allowing Candace to testify to acts of violence by Douglas that Sarah was not aware of violated the District Court's ruling on his motion in limine. The State countered that Douglas had opened the door to such testimony in his opening statement by mentioning Candace's...