State v. Crocker
| Decision Date | 18 September 1981 |
| Citation | 435 A.2d 58 |
| Parties | STATE of Maine v. Vinal R. CROCKER. |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
William R. Stokes (orally), Charles K. Leadbetter, Michael E. Saucier, Linda S. Crawford, Asst. Attys. Gen., Augusta, for plaintiff.
Paine & Lynch, Martha J. Harris (orally), Bangor, for defendant.
Before McKUSICK, C. J., and WERNICK *, GODFREY, NICHOLS, GLASSMAN ** and CARTER, JJ.
A Penobscot County jury found defendant Vinal Crocker guilty of murder, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201 (Supp. 1980), in connection with the death of his five-year-old stepson, Timothy. On his appeal, defendant raises numerous claims of error. We affirm his conviction.
On Friday evening, November 24, 1978, five-year-old Timothy Crocker was brought by his mother, Martha Crocker, to the emergency room of St. Joseph's Hospital in Bangor. At the time, Timothy was comatose, having suffered an injury to the right side of his head, resulting in severe brain damage. That entire side of his head was covered with bruises. Both eyes were deeply bruised, as was much of his body. There were also various scrapes, abrasions, and burn marks on his body. His heels and other parts of his body had pressure sores, apparently resulting from his having been bedridden without attention for an extended time. He was also severely malnourished and dehydrated, conditions consistent only with a lengthy period of food deprivation and with water deprivation for several days.
Later the same evening of Friday, November 24, Timothy was transferred to Eastern Maine Medical Center, also in Bangor. He never regained consciousness, and died there on December 5, 1978. At the time of his death, he weighed only 31 pounds, about three quarters the normal weight for a child his age. An autopsy established that the cause of death was a combination of starvation and the head injury.
In a two-count indictment, defendant was charged with murder, and his wife Martha with manslaughter. 1 Defendant, who had already been arrested and committed to Bangor Mental Health Institute, was evaluated by six psychologists and psychiatrists and found competent to stand trial. He elected to undergo a bifurcated trial as permitted by 17-A M.R.S.A. § 59. In the first half of that trial, a jury found him guilty of murder. In the second half, the presiding justice sitting without a jury ruled that defendant had failed to sustain his burden of proving that he lacked criminal responsibility within the meaning of 17-A M.R.S.A. § 58(1). After denial of his motion for a new trial, defendant appealed to this court.
I.The Challenges to the "Depraved Indifference" Murder Statute, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(B).
Defendant was charged, in a single-count indictment, with two alternative forms of murder: (i) intentional or knowing killing under paragraph A of 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1), and (ii) "depraved indifference" killing under paragraph B of that section. Section 201(1)(B) provides that a person is guilty of murder if:
He engages in conduct which manifests a depraved indifference to the value of human life and which in fact causes the death of another human being.
On appeal, defendant asserts that the term "depraved indifference" used in paragraph B of section 201(1) is unconstitutionally vague and that his conviction obtained under an indictment alleging a depraved indifference killing therefore deprived him of due process. 2 Nothing in the record shows that this issue was raised in the trial court; accordingly, even though it purports to be of constitutional dimension, we review it only for "obvious error affecting substantial rights." State v. Flick, Me., 425 A.2d 167, 174 (1981); M.R.Crim.P. 52(b).
As we understand defendant's claim on appeal, the issue of whether the depraved indifference portion of the murder statute is unconstitutionally vague raises two separate questions. The first question, to which defendant adverted for the first time in his appellate brief, is whether a " 'person of ordinary intelligence' could ... 'reasonably understand' that (the depraved indifference murder statute) forbids the conduct for which he is criminally charged," State v. Parker, Me., 372 A.2d 570, 573 (1977), citing and quoting United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617, 74 S.Ct. 808, 811, 98 L.Ed. 989 (1954). We recently answered that very question in State v. Flick, supra. There we held that section 201(1)(B) did not fall so far short of the standard articulated in State v. Parker, supra, as to have deprived the defendant of a fair trial. The holding in State v. Flick, supra, squarely controls our resolution of this first question.
The second question raised as a result of defendant's attack on the constitutionality of the depraved indifference murder statute, also not timely preserved for appellate review, was not before this court in State v. Flick. Under our Criminal Code, both depraved indifference murder and the lesser-included offense of criminal negligence manslaughter, cf. State v. Goodall, Me., 407 A.2d 268, 280 n. 17 (1979), consist of 1) the causation by the accused of the death of another human being and 2) the presence of some objectively measured standard of criminal culpability derived from the circumstances surrounding the victim's death. 3 The position advanced on behalf of defendant at oral argument was that the depraved indifference murder statute requires no greater quantum of proof to secure a conviction than does the criminal negligence manslaughter statute. According to that viewpoint, the two offenses, purportedly different and carry penalties of different severity, compare 17-A M.R.S.A. § 1251 with id. §§ 203(3), 1252(2)(A), are in reality the same; and any murder conviction that might be founded on the depraved indifference portion of the statute is arbitrary and thus invalid.
We start from the fundamental precepts that courts will, if possible, "construe legislative enactments so as to avoid a danger of unconstitutionality" and that that the central purpose of statutory construction is "to save, not to destroy." State v. Davenport, Me., 326 A.2d 1, 5-6 (1974). In order to determine whether depraved indifference and criminal negligence are in fact one and the same, we must first examine the respective definitions of each of those terms.
The term "depraved indifference to the value of human life" as employed in 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(B) is nowhere defined in the Criminal Code. However, this court has on several recent occasions construed the depraved indifference murder statute, and our constructions "become a part of the statute as definitely as if the Legislature itself had amended the statute to reflect expressly the judicial construction," State v. Davenport, supra at 6. As we have consistently said, a verdict of guilty of depraved indifference murder is appropriate where the accused's conduct, "objectively viewed, created such a high tendency to produce death that the law attributes to him the highest degree of blameworthiness." State v. Lagasse, Me., 410 A.2d 537, 540 (1980). Put differently, death-producing conduct will justify a verdict of guilty of depraved indifference murder if a jury could find that that conduct was "so heinous in the eyes of the law as to constitute murder." State v. Woodbury, Me., 403 A.2d 1166, 1173 (1979). The accused must consciously have engaged in conduct that he should have known would create a "very high degree" of risk of death or serious bodily injury and "it must also under the circumstances (have been) unjustifiable for him to take the risk." W. LaFave & A. Scott, Jr., Criminal Law § 70 at 542 (1972).
When the legislature added the charge of depraved indifference murder to the Criminal Code as part of its 1977 revision of the homicide laws, P.L. 1977, ch. 510, §§ 38-43, it returned from the 1976 Code's six degrees of homicide which provided for conviction for murder only of persons who were shown to have killed another human being with the requisite subjective state of mind, see 17-A M.R.S.A. §§ 201-206 (Supp. 1976) to the pre-Code law of murder and manslaughter. See State v. Woodbury, supra at 1173. In enacting the depraved indifference murder statute as part of its return to the earlier classification of homicides, see 1977 Me. Leg. Rec. 2257 (remarks of Rep. Spencer), the legislature among other things reinstated the objective standard of culpability that governed the pre-Code offense of "implied malice" murder. Under that pre-Code standard, a jury's finding that the accused had engaged in conduct objectively manifesting a high tendency to cause death had sufficed to sustain a conviction for murder. See, e. g., State v. Lewisohn, Me., 379 A.2d 1192, 1207 (1977). Under the new statute, "conduct (manifesting) a depraved indifference to the value of human life and ... in fact (causing) the death of another human being" was punishable as murder. This court's consistent interpretations, for more than a century, of the former law relating to the objective standard of implied malice thus aid us in interpreting the present Code's standard of depraved indifference.
Prior to the 1975 enactment of the Criminal Code, the former murder statute, 17 M.R.S.A. § 2651 (1965), provided that
Whoever unlawfully kills a human being with malice aforethought, either express or implied, is guilty of murder ....
That statute and its predecessors incorporated in turn the common law of murder, cf. State v. Conley, 39 Me. 78, 87 (1854). Both at common law and under the statutes, malice was implied "from any deliberate, cruel act, committed by one person against another, suddenly, without any, or without a considerable provocation." State v. Neal, 37 Me. 468, 470 (1854).
This court recently has said that malice aforethought "is implied when there is no showing of actual intent to kill, but death is caused by acts which the law regards as manifesting such an abandoned state of mind as...
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