State v. Coyle

• Decision Date: 12 May 2005
• Docket Number: No. 2004-098,2004-098
• Citation: 878 A.2d 1062
• Parties: State of Vermont v. Bradford Coyle
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

878 A.2d 1062

State of Vermont v. Bradford Coyle

No. 2004-098, NOVEMBER TERM, 2004

Supreme Court of Vermont

May 12, 2005

ENTRY ORDER

In the above-entitled cause, the Clerk will enter:

¶ 1. Defendant appeals the Windsor District Court's conclusion that he violated a condition of his probation by failing to complete sex offender treatment. The court found that the director of the treatment program discharged defendant from the group because of his willful failure to follow the group's rule that specifically prohibits unapproved contact with defendant's victims and other minor children. Defendant claims that the trial court erred by failing to make an express finding that defendant's contact with his victim was intentional and not inadvertent. Defendant claims that, without such a finding, his termination from his sex offender treatment program in violation of his probation cannot be upheld. We conclude that the court did in fact make the required, adequately-supported findings and conclusions. Therefore, we affirm.

¶ 2. In 1997, defendant pled guilty to and was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct with his nine year old stepdaughter J.N. He received a sentence of three to five years in prison, which was all suspended. In lieu of incarceration, the court placed defendant on supervised probation.

¶ 3. The court imposed a number of standard and special probation conditions including condition 14, which required defendant to "attend, [and] participate in sex offender treatment as directed by your probation officer." Special condition 4 elaborated on defendant's obligation under condition 14, mandating that defendant "shall attend and satisfactorily participate in sexual behavior counseling and will not be discharged without satisfactory completion all as determined by your counselor and probation officer." In addition, special condition 14 prohibited defendant from having "contact with the victim(s) in this case," including "any physical, visual, written or telephone contact with such persons." (Emphasis added).

¶ 4. By April 2003, Mr. Coyle had been on probation for a period of six years. During that time, he had participated in the sex offender treatment program run by Kieran Zito. Though he had moved on to the aftercare phase of the program, an incident in Feburary 2003, involving unsupervised contact with a minor, led Zito to impose a stricter supervision regime requiring defendant to report on his progress weekly instead of monthly. Despite defendant's relative success in the program, he did have a history of violating the group's child contact guidelines, and as a result had been warned or placed on probation several times.

¶ 5. On April 10, 2003, defendant was arrested for violating, among others, special condition 14's prohibition against all forms of contact with any of defendant's victims. J.N. complained of the contact after encountering defendant at the Price Chopper. She averred that she was getting out of her car in the Price Chopper parking lot when defendant's car pulled in diagonally across from hers. J.N. testified that defendant made eye contact with her and walked into the store directly behind her. She further stated that as she walked to the customer service desk, defendant followed her and stood directly behind her in the line. Her statement gives no indication that he made any attempt to initiate conversation or further eye contact with her once inside the store, although he did have to move out of her way as she was leaving the customer service area. When the police arrived to arrest defendant later that day, he claimed that he was oblivious to any victim contact that happened earlier that day. When he was told that it occurred at the Price Chopper, he insisted that he had not recognized any of his victims there.

¶ 6. Following defendant's arrest for the alleged contact violation, Zito sent a letter to defendant's probation officer, advising that he was terminating defendant from the treatment group. The letter states that the "basis for this termination arises from Mr. Coyle's recent unapproved contact with a minor child, it's important to note that this contact involved his victim of record." The letter goes on to recount another incident involving unsupervised contact with a minor earlier that year, and concludes with Zito's observation that "Mr. Coyle appears to be engaging in a willful pattern of disregard for his treatment guidelines prohibiting contacts with minors." Based on this notice of termination, defendant was charged with a second violation of probation, specifically condition 14's requirement that defendant participate in sex offender treatment as directed by his probation officer.

¶ 7. The district court held a violation of probation merits hearing on both the alleged contact and termination of treatment violations. During the hearing, the court heard testimony from Zito, J.N., and defendant. The testimony focused on two main areas: defendant's performance history in the treatment group, and the events surrounding the alleged Price Chopper contact with J.N. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court ruled that the State had met its burden by showing that defendant had been terminated from his sex offender treatment program in violation of condition 14. The court made no determination on the alleged violation of the no-contact probation condition, although it did consider whether the evidence supported Zito's conclusion that defendant violated the no-contact policies of the treatment group. The court then considered whether defendant had persuaded the court that his termination from the group was not the result of his willful conduct, but instead resulted from factors beyond his control. After recounting defendant's history of violating the treatment group's no-contact policies, the court analyzed the two incidents specifically referenced in Zito's letter of termination. The court found that defendant's assertion that he did not recognize J.N. at the Price Chopper lacked credibility. Accordingly, the court held that defendant had not met his burden of showing that his expulsion from treatment resulted from factors beyond his control because his failure to remove himself from proximity to J.N. after recognizing her was contrary to group policy and amply justified Zito's decision to terminate him.

¶ 8. The State bears the burden of proving probation violations by a preponderance of the evidence. State v. Austin, 165 Vt. 389, 398, 685 A.2d 1076, 1082 (1996). This is a mixed question of fact and law. Id. The court must make a factual determination of what actions the probationer took, and then an "implicit legal conclusion that certain acts constitute a violation of the probationary terms." Id. (quotations omitted). The State makes out its prima facie case by showing that there has been a violation of a probation condition whose requirements were known to the probationer. Id. If the State meets its initial burden, the probationer must show that his violation was not willful, but instead resulted from factors beyond his control and through no fault of his own. Id. The intent element in no-contact cases safeguards a defendant's constitutional right to due process by ensuring that a defendant's probation is not violated because of accidental or inadvertent conduct. See Benson v. Muscari, 172 Vt. 1, 4-5, 769 A.2d 1291, 1295 (2001) (recognizing that a probationer cannot be criminally convicted for violating an abuse prevention order containing a no-contact buffer zone around the victim unless the State can show that probationer intended to place himself within the prohibited distance from the victim); see also State v. Bubar, 146 Vt. 398, 405, 505 A.2d 1197, 1201-02 (1985) (noting that compliance with probation conditions "may not be put beyond the probationer's control."). For example, n State v. Danaher, we affirmed the trial court's conclusion that the probationer had violated the no-contact condition of his probation because circumstantial evidence supported the trial court's finding that the alleged contact incidents were "not inadvertent, but intentional." 174 Vt. 591, 594, 819 A.2d 691, 695 (2002) (mem.).

¶ 9. When determining the merits of a probation violation based on a probationer's expulsion from a court-ordered treatment program, the ultimate question for the court is whether the probationer participated satisfactorily in the program. State v. Masse, 164 Vt. 630, 631, 674 A.2d 1253, 1255 (1995) (mem.). Here, however, as Zito's letter of termination and his testimony at the merits hearing makes explicit, the issue of defendant's satisfactory participation is linked directly to his alleged inability to abide by the group's no-contact rules. Thus, even though the trial court did not announce a conclusion on the alleged violation of the no-contact probation condition, our analysis must heed the constitutional considerations involved in normal no-contact condition cases. See id. at 631-32, 674 A.2d at 1255-56 (rejecting claim that termination-from-treatment violations are reviewed for an abuse of the terminating officer's discretion, and noting specifically that trial court's decision properly avoided considering reasons for termination that might have implicated probationer's constitutional rights).

¶ 10. Defendant argues that the trial court erred in finding a violation because the State failed to show that the contact with J.N. at the Price Chopper was intentional as required by Danaher. In light of the evidence presented on defendant's familiarity with J.N. generally; his ability, one day later, to specifically describe her physical appearance at the Price Chopper on the previous day in spite of his claim not to have recognized her; the group's contact guidelines, the boundaries of which defendant was undisputably aware; and defendant's history of similar incidents while in the group, we hold that the trial court's findings are sufficient to support...