State v. Waterman, Docket: Oxf-09-417
| Citation | 2010 ME 45,995 A.2d 243 |
| Decision Date | 25 May 2010 |
| Docket Number | Docket: Oxf-09-417 |
| Parties | STATE of Maine v. Duane Christopher WATERMAN. |
| Court | Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US) |
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John S. Jenness, Jr., Esq. (orally), South Paris, ME, for Duane Christopher Waterman.
Janet T. Mills, Atty. Gen., Andrew B. Benson, Asst. Atty. Gen., Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Augusta, ME, for the State of Maine.
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, LEVY, SILVER, MEAD, GORMAN, and JABAR, JJ.
¶ 1 Duane Christopher Waterman appeals from judgments entered and sentences imposed upon his conviction for two counts of murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A) (2009), following a jury trial in the Superior Court (Oxford County, Cole, J.). Waterman contends that (1) there is insufficient evidence to support his convictions; (2) the court abused its discretion when it denied Waterman the opportunity to question witnesses on an alternative suspect theory; (3) the court misapplied principles of law when it set his basic sentences at life imprisonment; and (4) the court abused its discretion when it set his maximum sentences at two concurrent life sentences. We affirm the judgments and the sentences.
¶ 2 Because Waterman challenges the sufficiency of the evidence as well as the court's rulings regarding alternative suspects, we address the facts of this case in detail. Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the jury could rationally have found the following facts beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Elliott, 2010 ME 3, ¶ 2, 987 A.2d 513, 515-16.
¶ 3 On July 26, 2008, the body of Tim Mayberry was discovered outside his home in West Paris. A trail of blood extended from his body to the house, where the body of Todd Smith was found. Both Mayberry and Smith died of multiple gunshot wounds, and the subsequent investigation focused on Waterman.
¶ 4 In the summer of 2008, Waterman lived in Sumner with his wife, their twelve-year-old son, and two younger children. Waterman and his wife were both drug addicts, and to support their drug habits, they dealt drugs and Waterman's wife shoplifted goods.
¶ 5 Mayberry was a friend of the Watermans with whom they dealt drugs. In June 2008, Mayberry gave them about $3,000 worth of oxycontin pills to resell. Instead of selling the drugs, the Watermans used them and told Mayberry that police had seized them in a drug bust. Mayberry did not believe their story about the drug bust and began pressuring the Watermans to pay him by falsely telling them that he owed the money to "bigger and badder people" who would come after Mayberry and eventually after Waterman and his children. By late July, the Watermans had reduced their debt to Mayberry to approximately $1,500.
¶ 6 In late June 2008, the Watermans traded stolen goods and cash for a Llama.380-caliber handgun. They kept the bill of sale and the manual for the gun in a safe in their home. Waterman, as a convicted felon, was prohibited from possessing a firearm. See 15 M.R.S. § 393 (2009).
¶ 7 On July 11, 2008, Waterman's wife was arrested and jailed for shoplifting. When she went to jail, she knew that Waterman still had the Llama .380. She believed that Waterman still had the gun a week before the killings because he told her that he had accidentally carried it into a store.
¶ 8 Shortly after Waterman's wife went to jail, Mayberry and Waterman had a twenty-minute screaming argument over money at a friend's house. After Mayberry left, Waterman said that "Tim was going to pay for what he was doing, treating me like that" and "if Tim keeps bugging me about the money I owe him, that, I'm going to kill him."
¶ 9 Mayberry continued to pressure Waterman to pay his debt. At the same time, Mayberry was more concerned about Waterman's wife "ratting him out" to the police about an unrelated matter. Waterman was angered by Mayberry accusing his wife of being a police informant.
¶ 10 The week before the killings, Mayberry asked to borrow a gun from a friend, who refused his request. The day before the killings, Waterman went to Mayberry's house; Mayberry hid and would not answer the door. That same day, Mayberry borrowed a twenty-gauge shotgun from another friend.
¶ 11 At around 7:00 p.m. on July 25, 2008, Mayberry and his friend, Todd Smith, went to Mayberry's house to watch some movies. At approximately 7:30 p.m., Waterman's wife phoned him from jail, and during the recorded conversation, Waterman told her:
¶ 12 Between 9:30 and 10:00 p.m., a neighbor driving by Mayberry's house heard a loud bang that could have been a gunshot or a firecracker. Around the same time, another neighbor, lying in bed, heard what sounded like three gunshots or firecrackers.
¶ 13 At about 10:15 p.m., Waterman's next-door neighbor saw Waterman driving his Jeep with his headlights off up to his house, where he backed into the driveway. There was at least one other person in the car, and Waterman got out of the car yelling, "hurry up, hurry up." The Jeep left five or ten minutes later traveling in the opposite direction from which it came.
¶ 14 On the morning of July 26, Waterman, with his children in the car, visited Mayberry's house to pick up some prescription medications that he had left there and, ostensibly, to check on him. His twelve-year-old son followed him into the house where they both observed bloodstains in many places. Waterman retrieved his prescriptions, and they left without calling the police.
¶ 15 At approximately 2:00 p.m.—before the bodies had been discovered— Waterman and his children visited Waterman's wife in jail. Waterman told her to say that she had sold the Llama .380 handgun and informed her that she would see Tim on the news.
¶ 16 After 5:00 p.m., people passing in a car noticed Mayberry's body lying on a stone wall near the road. A blood trail extended from the body to Mayberry's house, and there was a tire track in the dirt driveway. State troopers found blood on the floor in the house and discovered Smith's body lying behind a bathroom door. Detectives recovered three .380-caliber shell casings from the living room and made a cast impression of the tire track in the driveway. They also observed that the phone lines to the house had been cut.
¶ 17 The State Medical Examiner determined that Mayberry and Smith had died of multiple gunshot wounds and retrieved two bullets from Smith's body and three bullets from Mayberry's body. Detectives obtained two spent shell casings from a previous owner of Waterman's Llama.380 and three bullets that the previous owner had fired from the gun. While searching Waterman's house, detectives found three live .380-caliber bullets and the manual for a Llama .380.
¶ 18 A firearms expert determined that the bullets from the victims' bodies, the shell casings found in Mayberry's living room, and the bullets and shell casings recovered from the previous owner of the Llama were all fired from the same gun, which could have been a Llama .380. The expert also concluded that the bullets from the bodies and the shell casing from Mayberry's house were consistent with the live bullets found at Waterman's house. A physical match expert from the State Police Crime Laboratory concluded that the tire impression cast from Mayberry's driveway was consistent with the right front tire of Waterman's Jeep.
¶ 19 On August 14, Waterman's wife lied to the grand jury, testifying that she had sold the Llama .380 to Mayberry. Despite her testimony, the grand jury indicted Waterman for the murders of Mayberry and Smith.
¶ 20 At Waterman's trial in June 2008, his wife admitted that she had lied to the grand jury. Waterman testified that he had sold the Llama .380 to Mayberry after his wife had gone to jail, approximately two to two-and-a-half weeks before the killings, and that he had last seen it on the mantel in Mayberry's living room. He testified that, after the 7:30 p.m. phone conversation with his wife on July 25, he went fishing with his children in Sumner until three or four o'clock the next morning, except that he and the children returned home at one point to pick up lantern fuel, which they had forgotten. Waterman denied having killed Mayberry and Smith. Waterman's twelve-year-old son provided testimony consistent with Waterman's.
¶ 21 During the trial, Waterman attempted to question another drug dealer, Justin Elsman, on whether he killed Mayberry and Smith. Waterman had established that Elsman was involved in drug dealing with Mayberry and that Elsman knew that another drug dealer had loaned "some money" to Mayberry two days before the killings. Additionally, Waterman argued that because he had sold the Llama.380 to Mayberry, the handgun was available to Elsman at Mayberry's house. The court did not allow Waterman to question Elsman as an alternative suspect at that time, reasoning that he had not yet laid enough of a foundation to make this more than a "fishing expedition."
¶ 22 Based on this ruling, Waterman did not make an offer of proof to question another drug dealer, William Shrout, as an alternative suspect.
¶ 23...
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