State v. Carrillo

• Decision Date: 01 April 2021
• Docket Number: Docket: Wal-20-103
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Sharon CARRILLO
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

248 A.3d 193

STATE of Maine

v.Sharon CARRILLO

Docket: Wal-20-103

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: November 17, 2020

Decided: April 1, 2021

Laura P. Shaw, Esq., and Christopher K. MacLean, Esq. (orally), Camden Law LLP, Camden, for Appellant Sharon Carrillo

Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Leanne Robbin, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine

Panel: GORMAN, JABAR, HUMPHREY, HORTON, and CONNORS, JJ.

Majority: GORMAN, HUMPHREY, HORTON, and CONNORS, JJ.

Dissent: JABAR, J.

GORMAN, J.

[¶1] On February 25, 2018, ten-year-old Marissa Kennedy died after enduring months of physical abuse by her mother, Sharon Carrillo,¹ and Carrillo's husband, Julio Carrillo. In December of 2019, a jury found Carrillo guilty of the depraved indifference murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B) (2020), of her daughter, and the court (Waldo County, R. Murray, J. ) later entered a judgment of conviction on the verdict, sentencing Carrillo to forty-eight years in prison.

[¶2] In this appeal from her conviction and her sentence, Carrillo challenges the court's denial of her motion to suppress statements she made to law enforcement, the jury instructions, the court's denial of her motion for a mistrial, and the court's calculation of both the basic and maximum sentence. We affirm the judgment and the sentence.

I. BACKGROUND

[¶3] 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. Ouellette , 2019 ME 75, ¶ 11, 208 A.3d 399. Marissa died as a result of heart failure associated with battered child syndrome after suffering months of physical abuse. On the day of Marissa's death, and again the next day, Carrillo confessed to police that she had participated in the abuse that caused her child's death. Carrillo was arrested on February 26, 2018, and, in March of 2018, a grand jury for Waldo County indicted her for depraved indifference murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B), a charge to which Carrillo pleaded not guilty.

[¶4] Carrillo later moved to suppress the statements that she had made to law enforcement officers on February 25 and 26, 2018, on the ground that she did not make those statements voluntarily. During the two-day testimonial hearing held on that motion, the State presented testimony from the law enforcement officer who first responded to the Carrillo home on February 25, 2018; the detectives who questioned Carrillo; and a neuropsychologist who evaluated Carrillo's ability to voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently waive her Miranda rights. Carrillo testified and also presented testimony from a clinical psychologist who had been asked to evaluate her for criminal responsibility and a forensic psychologist who had been asked to testify about how Carrillo's vulnerability to influence by her husband and the detectives played a role in her confessing. After considering all of the evidence and arguments presented, the court found the following facts, which are supported by competent evidence in the suppression record.

[¶5] On February 25, 2018, Carrillo's husband called 9-1-1 to report that Marissa Kennedy had been found bleeding and barely breathing in the basement of the Carrillo home in Stockton Springs. Law enforcement officers responding to the call found the child already dead. After some nonsubstantive conversations, detectives asked Carrillo and her husband to meet them at a nearby public safety building in order to discuss the circumstances of Marissa's death; Carrillo and her husband agreed and followed the detectives in a separate car. At the public safety building, the detectives conducted three separate interviews: one with Carrillo, a second with her husband, and then the third again with Carrillo.

[¶6] The first interview with Carrillo lasted around two hours and was conducted in a room with the door closed but not locked. At the outset of the first interview, Carrillo was informed of her Miranda rights, acknowledged that she understood those rights, and then agreed to answer questions. Carrillo remained calm during the interview and did not appear confused. When asked to explain what had happened, she "described Julio bringing Marissa upstairs from the basement, after which Marissa started spitting up blood from her mouth." Carrillo made no inculpatory statements during the first interview and responded in the affirmative when asked whether she felt safe around her husband.

[¶7] During his interview with the detectives, Carrillo's husband presented a very different version of events. He reported that he and Carrillo had engaged in regular physical abuse of Marissa. After hearing from Carrillo's husband, the detectives brought Carrillo back to the interview room.

[¶8] The second interview with Carrillo lasted approximately an hour. She was given a second Miranda warning and again agreed to talk to the detectives. During the first portion of this interview, the detectives told her that her husband had admitted to a series of beatings. Carrillo initially continued to deny any involvement in Marissa's death but soon described actions that she and her husband had taken, implicating both of them in Marissa's death. Although many of Carrillo's responses during the second interview simply confirmed what detectives said, she was able to answer open-ended questions with additional detail. For example, Carrillo admitted that the beatings, which sometimes involved the use of a belt, had begun approximately three months earlier. At one point during this interview, Carrillo gave the unsolicited response, "I feel terrible ... I killed my own child." At no time between the first and second interviews were Carrillo and her husband alone together.

[¶9] The next day, Carrillo and her husband agreed to be interviewed by the Maine State Police Major Crimes Unit at the barracks in Bangor. At the start of that interview, Carrillo was again provided with a Miranda warning and accurately described what she believed each section of the warning meant. In this interview, which lasted less than three hours, Carrillo again made numerous incriminating statements about her role in the abuse of Marissa.

[¶10] In discussing the interrogations and the confessions, the court found that the tone of the interviews was "generally calm and conversational," that Carrillo responded cogently to questioning, and that she became emotionally upset at times but not "to the point that her emotional stability appeared to be in question." The court also found that none of the interrogations was overly long, and there was no evidence of trickery, threats, or promises by the detectives who interviewed her. Despite the testimony suggesting that Carrillo's confessions had resulted from her "acquiescent response style" and cognitive limitations, the court found that Carrillo "had cognitive limitations but was not intellectually disabled" and exhibited no signs that she suffered from major mental illness. Based on these findings and its review of all of the evidence and arguments presented, the court found beyond a reasonable doubt that Carrillo's statements to police were voluntary, and it denied Carrillo's motion to suppress those statements. See State v. Hunt , 2016 ME 172, ¶ 17, 151 A.3d 911.

[¶11] The court conducted a nine-day jury trial in December of 2019. Among the defense witnesses called by Carrillo was psychologist Sarah Miller, Ph.D., the director of the State Forensic Service. During her direct examination of Miller, Carrillo focused on the psychologist's assessment of the likelihood that Carrillo's confessions had been false. During the State's cross-examination of Miller, the following exchange occurred regarding inculpatory statements that Carrillo had allegedly made to her prison cellmate, Shawna Gatto, which Gatto then reported to authorities:

Q: And you're aware that Shawna Gatto told the police that Sharon Carrillo, shortly after she was placed under arrest, that she participated in the abuse of Marissa Kennedy?

A: I recall listening to the interview with Shawna Gatto. That's not the part that stands out the most. I'm sorry, could you repeat the --

Q: That Sharon Carrillo told Shawna Gatto shortly after she was arrested that she participated in the -- I believe the report said sexual and physical abuse of Marissa Kennedy?

A: I don't recall that specifically, but there were generally discussions of that nature, yes.

Carrillo objected and moved for a mistrial on grounds that the State had elicited inadmissible hearsay evidence and that the State also acted in bad faith by doing so because "there's no good faith reason to believe that what Shawna Gatto provided is true or even credible." The court sustained the objection but denied Carrillo's motion for a mistrial, opting instead to instruct the jury, "[Y]ou may recall there was an objection raised as it related to a question or question or two regarding a purported statement by Shawna Gatto that related to a statement allegedly made -- she made involving a statement allegedly made by the defendant to her. That question and those answers are being stricken and you are being specifically instructed to disregard that question and any such answer by the witness that related to that topic and to give it no weight whatsoever." While giving its final jury instructions the next day, the court again instructed, "Where there's been an objection which I sustained and ordered you to disregard particular testimony or questions associated with that, that testimony and the questions are no longer evidence and you can give it no weight at all."

[¶12] Among the instructions that Carrillo later requested that the court provide to the jury was one regarding the justification of duress, see 17-A M.R.S. § 103-A (2020), and another stating that a victim of domestic abuse cannot be an accomplice to the same course of conduct that led to her abuse, see 17-A M.R.S. § 57(5) (2020). The...