State v. Koehler

• Decision Date: 12 July 2012
• Docket Number: Docket Nos. Pen–11–359,SRP–11–360.
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Colin KOEHLER.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

46 A.3d 1134

2012 ME 93

STATE of Maine

v.Colin KOEHLER.

Docket Nos. Pen–11–359, SRP–11–360.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: April 12, 2012.

Decided: July 12, 2012.

Peter J. Cyr, Esq. (orally), Law Offices of Peter J. Cyr, Portland, and Richard L. Hartley, Esq., Law Offices of Richard L. Hartley, Bangor, for appellant Colin Koehler.

William J. Schneider, Attorney General, and Donald W. Macomber (orally), Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine.

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, LEVY, SILVER, MEAD, GORMAN, and JABAR, JJ.

SAUFLEY, C.J.

[¶ 1] After a jury trial, Colin Koehler was found guilty of the intentional or knowing murder of a young woman he had known for less than a day, and the court sentenced him to life in prison. See17–A M.R.S. §§ 201(1)(A), 1251 (2011). Koehler challenges several rulings on evidence, procedure, motions, and jury instructions. He also challenges his sentence, primarily on the grounds that there was insufficient evidence of premeditation, that he has no substantial criminal history, and that his mental health evaluations failed to reveal any significant psychological or psychiatric disorders linked to criminality. We discern no error in the court's trial rulings, and we conclude that the court acted within its sentencing authority in imposing a life sentence. We affirm the judgment of conviction and the life sentence entered in the Unified Criminal Docket (Bangor, Anderson, J.).

I. BACKGROUND

[¶ 2] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the jury rationally could have found the following facts beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Severy, 2010 ME 126, ¶ 3, 8 A.3d 715.

[¶ 3] Colin Koehler first met the victim on the afternoon of August 7, 2009, when his friend, Justin Ptaszynski, brought her to Koehler's apartment. Koehler was then thirty-four years old, and the victim was nineteen. During that afternoon, Koehler had a conversation on his cell phone with Jessica Palmer, who was—or had recently been—his girlfriend. Koehler and Palmer had an argument because Palmer was jealous and angry that the victim, whom she knew, was at Koehler's apartment.

[¶ 4] Later, Koehler came up behind the victim while she was sitting in his apartment and made a stabbing motion toward her with a knife that was in a sheath. He said to Ptaszynski and another friend, “Can you imagine? What if?” The victim did not appear to have heard him and did not react in any way.

[¶ 5] Ptaszynski stayed with Koehler that night. The next morning, Saturday, August 8, the two encountered the victim while walking outdoors, and the three walked to a downtown park in Bangor together sometime before noon. They walked to the river and, after walking for about fifteen minutes, came upon a shack. The victim went inside to look around. Ptaszynski stayed outside. Koehler entered the shack after the victim. After a couple of minutes, Koehler swung a katana knife, with a blade measuring nearly ten inches, through the victim's abdomen. The victim fell on her knees crying, and Ptaszynski saw Koehler stab her in the throat while saying, “Shut the fuck up.” The victim died of these multiple sharp-force injuries.

[¶ 6] Soon thereafter, Koehler and Ptaszynski went to a supermarket to return videos that Ptaszynski had in his pocket. A security video from the supermarket shows them doing this. They then went to Koehler's residence, where Koehler cleaned off the knife in his sink. Also that day, Ptaszynski destroyed the soles of his shoes and discarded the shoes in a dumpster behind a friend's apartment.

[¶ 7] The next morning, Sunday, August 9, Koehler went to the Bangor Police Department to ask the police to drop charges that he had lodged a week earlier against Palmer's ex-boyfriend, Kenneth Creamer. At about the time that he was at the police department, he exchanged text messages with Palmer and Creamer. Koehler stated in his messages to Palmer, “U were still fuckn ken that girl told me it was her last words i warned u what would hapen to anyone that came between us boo,” and “Wana see her i dont think anyones found her yet.” He sent a text message to Creamer in which he proposed that they meet “under the 395 bridge bangor side,” to which Creamer replied, “Sorry but i was trained not to meet my enemy on their ground and terms your gonna have to do better than that.” Koehler replied, “To bad [the victim] didnt know that lol.” He then sent a text message to Palmer that said, “R u goin to the cops on me.” Time-stamped video recordings from the police station show Koehler using the buttons on a cell phone at roughly the same time of day that the text messages were sent.

[¶ 8] Koehler also called Creamer sometime around 11:45 a.m., threatened him, and said that he had killed a woman by stabbing her in the stomach. He told Creamer that she had yelled, “What the fuck?” and that he stabbed her in the throat to shut her up.

[¶ 9] Later in the evening, Palmer visited Koehler and told him that she did not believe that he had killed someone. He told her that he had stabbed the victim in the stomach and she had said, “What the fuck?”

[¶ 10] Palmer and Creamer learned the next day, Monday, August 10, that the victim was dead. They went to the police and turned over their cell phones.

[¶ 11] On the following day, Tuesday, August 11, the police interviewed Ptaszynski and the other friend who was present when Koehler made a stabbing motion behind the victim. Ptaszynski turned over his clothing from the day of the murder, and no blood was found on any of it.

[¶ 12] The police obtained a search warrant for Koehler's residence, and when they arrived there to execute it, they knocked on the door and called Koehler's cell phone repeatedly. They could hear his cell phone ringing inside the apartment, and they saw a face in a window briefly. The Special Response Team used tear gas and entered the apartment. They brought Koehler out barefoot and in handcuffs. The investigating detectives brought him to their unmarked police car and read him his Miranda rights. Koehler agreed to talk to them. The detectives took him to the police station and interviewed him for approximately three hours. Throughout the interview—including after being shown a video of him walking with the victim and Ptaszynski—Koehler consistently and calmly denied having seen the victim after the Friday night when he met her.

[¶ 13] In searching Koehler's apartment, the police found a pair of jeans that DNA testing revealed were spattered with the victim's blood. Koehler's DNA was found inside the waist and inner thigh area of the jeans, and Ptaszynski's DNA was not. In Koehler's apartment, the police also found the shirt that Koehler had been wearing, which had red-brown stains on it, and they found two Japanese swords. Between Koehler's box spring and mattress, the police found a sheet of plywood that had a human figure drawn on it. The plywood was scarred with stab and cut marks.

[¶ 14] Based on information from Ptaszynski, the police found a katana knife in a sheath in a retaining wall not far from Koehler's apartment. Koehler later told a fellow inmate at the Penobscot County Jail that he had stabbed and sliced through the victim's throat. He also told the inmate where he had hidden the weapon. A small reddish-brown stain on the knife near the hilt tested presumptively positive for blood, though the sample could not be confirmed as human blood, and no DNA was detected on the swab that was taken.

[¶ 15] Koehler was charged by complaint, and later indictment, with one count of intentional or knowing murder, 17–A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A). Koehler moved to suppress the statements that he made when the police interrogated him as well as the statements that he made to fellow inmates at the Penobscot County Jail.

[¶ 16] After evidentiary hearings on the motions, the court held that Koehler's statements to police during the interrogation were admissible, as were Koehler's statements to two fellow jail inmates. The court granted the motion to suppress a third inmate's testimony.

[¶ 17] Koehler next moved in limine to suppress photographs of the victim's body and evidence of the bladed weapons that were discovered in his apartment. The court denied these motions and also ruled that a photo of the plywood target would be admissible. The matter then proceeded to a five-day jury trial that ran from September 27 to October 1, 2010. During the trial, Koehler made several evidentiary objections that the court overruled.

[¶ 18] Both after the State's case and after his presentation of his own case, Koehler moved for a judgment of acquittal. The court denied each motion notwithstanding Koehler's argument that Ptaszynski had failed to identify him in the courtroom.

[¶ 19] Koehler objected to the reading of the State's requested instruction on accomplice liability on the ground that the State had offered no evidence that Koehler had helped someone else kill the victim. The court gave the instruction because it concluded that the jury could find, if it believed some evidence and not other evidence, that Ptaszynski had the knife and that Koehler was an accomplice in the crime.

[¶ 20] The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Before sentencing, Koehler moved for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. The court held an evidentiary hearing on the motion at which it heard testimony from another inmate who had been in jail with Koehler.¹ The inmate testified that he spent time with the victim on the morning of her death and that she walked away from him between 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. Direct examination revealed that he had, at some point before being interviewed by police, stated that he had seen the victim walk away at 11:30 with two or three men, none of whom were Koehler. The court denied the motion for a new trial on the ground that the testimony could not possibly change the outcome of the trial.

[¶ 21] The court...