Cookson v. State

• Decision Date: 03 May 2011
• Docket Number: Docket No. Pen–10–147.
• Parties: Jeffrey A. COOKSONv.STATE of Maine.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

17 A.3d 1208

2011 ME 53

Jeffrey A. COOKSON

v.STATE of Maine.

Docket No. Pen–10–147.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: Jan. 13, 2011.Decided: May 3, 2011.

Karen E. Wolfram, Esq. (orally), Daniel G. Lilley Law Offices, Portland, ME, for Jeffrey Cookson.Janet T. Mills, Attorney General, Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, ME, for the State of Maine.Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, LEVY, SILVER, GORMAN, and JABAR, JJ.Majority: SAUFLEY, C.J., and LEVY, SILVER, GORMAN, and JABAR, JJ.Dissent: ALEXANDER, J.GORMAN, J.

[¶ 1] In this post-conviction matter, Jeffrey A. Cookson challenges the decision of the Superior Court (Penobscot County, Cole, J.) denying his petition for DNA testing of items belonging to an alternative suspect in connection with Cookson's 2002 conviction of two counts of intentional or knowing murder, 17–A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(A) (1983).¹ We vacate the decision and remand for further proceedings.

I. BACKGROUND

[¶ 2] On October 15, 2002, the court entered a judgment on a jury verdict finding Cookson guilty of two counts of knowing or intentional murder, 17–A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(A), for causing the deaths of his ex-girlfriend, Mindy Gould, and the twenty-one-month-old son of Gould's best friend.² State v. Cookson (Cookson I), 2003 ME 136, ¶¶ 1–2, 837 A.2d 101, 104. The court sentenced Cookson to two consecutive life sentences. Id. ¶ 14, 837 A.2d at 106.

[¶ 3] During the trial, witness David Vantol confessed privately to Cookson's attorney and private investigator that he had committed both murders.³ Immediately after the jury returned a verdict against Cookson, Cookson's attorney disclosed the confession to the court and to the prosecutor. Later that same day, Vantol led police to a spot in the woods where he unearthed a gun that the State's testing revealed was, in fact, the murder weapon.⁴

[¶ 4] Vantol also offered to provide police with clothing he claimed to have been wearing at the time he committed the murders, and which he indicated had been buried since the murders. Although Vantol had taken investigators to the spot where the gun was hidden, he refused to take them to where the clothing was kept. Instead, two days after leading police to the murder weapon, Vantol gave the investigators a trash bag containing several clothing items, including a pair of sneakers, a jean jacket, a plaid shirt, a black wig, and an orange hat. The clothing was moldy, damp, and soiled, and appeared to have been buried for “quite some time.”

[¶ 5] During the next week, Vantol continued to confess to the murders, but because the police did not believe Vantol's confessions, they asked him to submit to a polygraph test. Some time after the police told Vantol that he had “failed” the polygraph, Vantol called one of the lead detectives, distraught that police did not appear to believe his confessions, and expressed that he was going to hurt himself or others to be taken seriously. As a result, Vantol was admitted to Acadia Hospital. Six days after entering the hospital, Vantol recanted his confessions, and told investigators that he obtained the clothing he had provided to them from a junk car and that the items were unrelated to the murders. The clothing remains in the State's possession.

[¶ 6] In December of 2004, and again in January of 2008, Cookson filed motions seeking DNA testing on the articles of clothing and other evidence provided to the investigators by Vantol pursuant to 15 M.R.S. §§ 2137, 2138 (2010). ⁵ Following a testimonial hearing, the court denied Cookson's request for DNA testing as to the bulk of Cookson's request, including the items of clothing provided by Vantol. We granted Cookson a certificate of probable cause to pursue this appeal pursuant to 15 M.R.S. § 2138(6) and M.R.App. P. 19.

II. DISCUSSION

[¶ 7] Cookson challenges the court's interpretation of 15 M.R.S. § 2138, which dictates the process by which a defendant may seek DNA analysis of evidence by post-conviction motion. See James v. State, 2008 ME 122, ¶ 11, 953 A.2d 1152, 1155. Section 2138 requires the court to order DNA analysis if the moving party presents prima facie evidence of five criteria:

A. A sample of the evidence is available for DNA analysis;

B. The evidence to be tested has been subject to a chain of custody sufficient to establish that the evidence has not been substituted, tampered with, replaced or altered in a material way;

C. The evidence was not previously subjected to DNA analysis or, if previously analyzed, will be subject to DNA analysis technology that was not available when the person was convicted;

D. The identity of the person as the perpetrator of the crime that resulted in the conviction was at issue during the person's trial; and

E. The evidence sought to be analyzed, or the additional information that the new technology is capable of providing regarding evidence sought to be reanalyzed, is material to the issue of whether the person is the perpetrator of, or accomplice to, the crime that resulted in the conviction.

15 M.R.S. § 2138(4–A).

[¶ 8] “Prima facie” in this context regards the preliminary burden of production of evidence; it requires proof only of “enough evidence to allow the fact- trier to infer the fact at issue and rule in the party's favor.” ⁶ Anderson v. State, 831 A.2d 858, 865–66 (Del.2003) (quotation marks omitted); accord Tex. Dep't of Cmty. Affairs v. Burdine, 450 U.S. 248, 254 n. 7, 101 S.Ct. 1089, 67 L.Ed.2d 207 (1981). Prima facie evidence requires only “some evidence” on every element of proof necessary to obtain the desired remedy. Weldon v. Hawkins, 183 Ill.App.3d 525, 131 Ill.Dec. 876, 539 N.E.2d 229, 231 (1989). Thus, prima facie proof is a “low standard” that does not depend on the reliability or credibility of the evidence, all of which may be considered at some later time in the process. Id.; Zapata–Matos v. Reckitt & Colman, Inc., 277 F.3d 40, 44 (1st Cir.2002).

[¶ 9] In evaluating whether a moving party has satisfied all five criteria on a prima facie basis, section 2138 expressly requires that “[t]he court shall state its findings of fact on the record or shall make written findings of fact supporting its decision to grant or deny a motion to order DNA analysis.” 15 M.R.S. § 2138(5). When findings are required by statute, they “must be stated with sufficient specificity to permit understanding and meaningful appellate review.” Schwartz v. Unemployment Ins. Comm'n, 2006 ME 41, ¶ 10, 895 A.2d 965, 970. In denying Cookson's motion as to Vantol's clothing, however, the court gave only a legal analysis of the statute and its ultimate conclusion that Cookson failed to meet the chain of custody requirement of section 2138(4–A)(B); the judgment contains no findings of fact as to chain of custody, or findings or conclusions as to any of the other criteria of section 2138(4–A). We must therefore vacate the court's judgment and remand the matter to the Superior Court for it to issue the findings required by section 2138(5) as to all five criteria on Cookson's post-conviction DNA motion.

[¶ 10] We also clarify the requirement of chain of custody in section 2138(4–A)(B) because, despite the lack of findings, the court's legal interpretation of that criterion is squarely presented to us. We examine de novo the meaning of section 2138(4–A)(B) by looking first to its plain language in light of the whole statutory scheme. See State v. Aboda, 2010 ME 125, ¶ 10, 8 A.3d 719, 722.

[¶ 11] Although the post-conviction DNA statute does not define “chain of custody,” the phrase is a legal term of art. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is credited with the first statement of the chain of custody requirement: “Before a physical object connected with the commission of a crime may properly be admitted in evidence there must be a showing that such object is in substantially the same condition as when the crime was committed.” Gallego v. United States, 276 F.2d 914, 917 (9th Cir.1960). Maine Rule of Evidence 901 likewise requires that, to be admissible at trial, evidence must be authenticated in a manner “sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims,” State v. Thompson, 503 A.2d 689, 691 (Me.1986) (quotation marks omitted), by establishing a “continuity of possession,” State v. Thibodeau, 353 A.2d 595, 602 (Me.1976) (quotation marks omitted), that “account[s] for the custody of the object from the time it figured in the events in question until its appearance in the courtroom,” Field & Murray, Maine Evidence § 901.3 at 542 (6th ed.2007).

[¶ 12] Identifying the initial link in the chain of custody, i.e., from what time the proponent must account for the item's whereabouts and safekeeping, is a matter of dispute in the instant appeal. The State concedes that an adequate chain of custody exists from the time that police took possession of the clothing provided by Vantol, but the State and Cookson disagree as to whether the two years that passed between the time of the crime itself and the time Vantol gave the clothing to police is relevant to the chain of custody requirement for post-conviction DNA testing purposes.

[¶ 13] Many decisions from Maine and elsewhere discuss chain of custody only from the time an item comes into police possession. See, e.g., State v. Lobozzo, 1998 ME 228, ¶ 10, 719 A.2d 108, 110 (considering the chain of custody in terms of the collection of the evidence by police from the crime scene, transportation of the evidence to the police station, and maintenance of the evidence in police storage); State v. Vanassche, 566 A.2d 1077, 1079 (Me.1989) (discussing “[w]hether the exhibits had been tampered with while in the custody of the police” (quotation marks omitted)); Illinois v. Moore, 377 Ill.App.3d 294, 316 Ill.Dec. 367, 879 N.E.2d 434, 438 (2007) (referring to the defendant's duty to “establish a chain of custody from the Chicago police department”).

[¶ 14] In...