State v. Burton, Docket: Pen-18-2
| Decision Date | 11 December 2018 |
| Docket Number | Docket: Pen-18-2 |
| Citation | 198 A.3d 195 |
| Parties | STATE of Maine v. Robert BURTON |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
Jeremy Pratt, Esq. (orally), and Ellen Simmons, Esq., Camden, for appellant Robert Burton
Janet T. Mills, Attorney General, and Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.
[¶ 1] In the early hours of June 5, 2015, Robert Burton entered the home of his former girlfriend and shot her three times in the back, killing her. He fled into the woods and evaded law enforcement officials for sixty-eight days before turning himself in. Burton was charged with, and found guilty of, intentional or knowing murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A) (2017), and possession of a firearm by a prohibited person (Class C), 15 M.R.S. § 393(1)(A-1) (2017). Burton appeals from the resulting judgment of conviction (Penobscot County, Mullen, J. ), presenting two arguments. He first asserts that the court erred by rejecting six questions that he sought to have included in the written jury selection questionnaire and by not giving the prospective jurors the option of answering any of the questions with "not sure" as an alternative to "yes" or "no." Second, Burton contends that the court erred by admitting evidence of two prior burglary convictions to impeach his trial testimony. See M.R. Evid. 609. Finding no error, we affirm the judgment.
[¶ 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." State v. Fortune , 2011 ME 125, ¶ 3, 34 A.3d 1115.
[¶ 3] Burton and the victim began a romantic relationship in the spring of 2013. Shortly thereafter, Burton moved into the victim's home in Parkman, where they lived together with her two children. By May of 2015, Burton was acting increasingly suspicious of the victim's activities. After a confrontation on May 30, the victim ended their relationship and directed Burton to move out of her home.
[¶ 4] Burton then began living in his truck in the woods. On June 5, 2015, shortly after midnight, Burton left his truck parked on a tote road and walked to the victim's house. Armed with a knife and wearing a shirt to which he had affixed strips of duct tape, Burton entered the victim's house through a bedroom window. A struggle between Burton and the victim ensued, and Burton fatally shot the victim three times in the back with the victim's own handgun. Burton, who sustained a minor gunshot wound
during the altercation, fled into the woods. Despite an intensive search by law enforcement officers, it was two months before he was arrested, after emerging from the woods clean-shaven and with his gunshot wound nearly fully healed and turning himself in to the Piscataquis County Jail.
[¶ 5] Three days after the homicide, while Burton was still at large, he was charged by complaint with one count of intentional or knowing murder. See 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A). That October, the Piscataquis County grand jury indicted Burton for that charge and one count of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person. See 15 M.R.S. § 393(1)(A-1). Burton pleaded not guilty to each charge. The court later granted Burton's motion to change venue, and the case was transferred to the Unified Criminal Docket in Penobscot County. As part of the pretrial proceedings, Burton moved in limine for the court to exclude evidence of his prior criminal convictions for impeachment purposes, see M.R. Evid. 609, and the parties agreed to defer the issue to the time of trial.
[¶ 6] The trial was held in late September and early October of 2017. Burton elected to have the court adjudicate the firearms charge and proceeded with a jury trial on the murder charge.
[¶ 7] Jury selection encompassed two days. Burton submitted a list of twenty-one voir dire questions that he requested the court include in a written questionnaire that was to be distributed to the members of the jury pool. Each of Burton's proposed questions was followed by three possible answer choices: "yes," "no," and "not sure." Over Burton's objection, the court declined to include "not sure" as an answer and also declined to include the following six questions proposed by Burton that are at issue on this appeal:
[¶ 8] The written questionnaire distributed to members of the jury pool explained the presumption of innocence, the State's burden to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt, and the legal recognition of the justification of self-defense. Additionally, the questionnaire asked the potential jurors to state whether they would be able to apply the law as explained by the court despite any personal disagreements with the law. After the court and the parties reviewed the answers to the written questions, the court conducted individual voir dire of a number of potential jurors regarding their answers. During that process, the court permitted both Burton and the State to ask questions of those potential jurors. None of the jurors who were eventually seated was challenged for cause by either party.
[¶ 9] The jury was impaneled, and the court proceeded to hold an eight-day trial. After the State rested its case-in-chief, and with the parties' anticipation that Burton would testify, the court heard argument from the parties on the admissibility of evidence of Burton's prior criminal convictions to impeach his testimony. See M.R. Evid. 609. The State identified ten prior convictions, all entered against Burton in 2003, that satisfied the criteria for admissibility prescribed in Maine Rule of Evidence 609 : possession of a firearm by a prohibited person; criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon; four burglaries; and four thefts, three of which were punishable by at least one year in prison and the fourth by less than one year of incarceration. Of the ten convictions, the State agreed not to seek the admission of evidence of the convictions for possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and the lesser theft. Beyond that, the court excluded evidence of the conviction for criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon, finding that it was too similar to the crime charged and not sufficiently probative of Burton's credibility as a witness. Over Burton's objection, the court ruled that, if he were to testify, it would admit evidence of convictions for two burglaries and two thefts.
[¶ 10] In conjunction with its ruling to admit evidence of those four convictions, the court offered to give the jury a limiting instruction—that evidence of Burton's prior convictions could be considered only in assessing the credibility of his testimony—when the evidence was presented or as part of its final instructions to the jury. Burton requested the latter.
[¶ 11] Burton testified the next day, and on direct examination defense counsel elicited evidence of the four prior convictions that the court allowed. During its lengthy cross-examination of Burton, the State did not inquire into his convictions, nor did it directly address that evidence in its closing argument.
[¶ 12] The jury found Burton guilty of murder, and the court found him guilty of the firearms charge. After a sentencing hearing held in December of 2017, the court imposed a fifty-five-year prison sentence on the murder charge and a concurrent four-year sentence on the firearms violation. Burton filed a timely appeal from the judgment. See 15 M.R.S. § 2115 (2017) ; M.R. App. P. 2B(b)(1).
[¶ 13] Burton challenges the trial court's decision not to include in the juror voir dire questionnaire six of his proposed juror questions and, in addition to the "yes" and "no" answer choices on the written questionnaire, a third option of "not sure." He also challenges the admission of evidence of the two burglary convictions for purposes of impeachment. See M.R. Evid. 609. We discuss these arguments in turn.
[¶ 14] Burton does not challenge the inclusion of any particular juror on the jury panel but rather asserts that the court erred in the way it conducted voir dire. Challenges to the way a court conducts voir dire are reviewed for an abuse of discretion. State v. Roby , 2017 ME 207, ¶ 11, 171 A.3d 1157.
[¶ 15] We have held that "the purpose of the voir dire process ‘is to detect bias and prejudice in prospective jurors, thus ensuring that a defendant will be tried by as fair and impartial a jury as possible.’ " Id. (quoting State v. Lowry , 2003 ME 38, ¶ 7, 819 A.2d 331 ). In conducting voir dire, the court is also responsible for "balancing the competing considerations of fairness to the defendant, judicial economy, and avoidance of embarrassment to potential jurors." Id. ¶ 12 (quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, so long as the voir dire process is "sufficient to disclose facts that would reveal juror bias," id. ¶ 13 (quotation marks omitted), the court has "[c]onsiderable discretion over the conduct and scope of juror voir dire," id. ¶ 12 (alteration in original) (quotation marks...
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