State v. Gatto
| Decision Date | 12 May 2020 |
| Docket Number | Docket: Lin-19-293 |
| Citation | 232 A.3d 228 |
| Parties | STATE of Maine v. Shawna GATTO |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
Jeremy Pratt, Esq., and Ellen Simmons, Esq., Camden, for appellant Shawna Gatto
Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine
Panel: GORMAN, JABAR, HUMPHREY, HORTON, and CONNORS, JJ.
[¶1] Shawna Gatto appeals from a judgment of conviction of murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B) (2020), entered by the trial court (Lincoln County, Stokes, J .) following a jury-waived trial. Gatto contends that the trial court erred in finding her guilty of murder pursuant to 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B) because the State did not present sufficient evidence such that the fact-finder could have found each element proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Gatto also argues that the trial court erred and abused its discretion when it limited her cross-examination of the State's Chief Medical Examiner. We affirm the judgment.
[¶2] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the fact-finder could have found the following facts beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Cummings , 2017 ME 143, ¶ 3, 166 A.3d 996. In December 2017 Gatto was forty-three years old and living in Wiscasset. She lived in a mobile home with her fiancé and her fiancé’s four-year-old granddaughter, the victim.
[¶3] Gatto and her fiancé cared for the victim full-time, and had done so for more than two years. Gatto also provided daily childcare for her two biological grandchildren. Gatto's fiancé worked full-time at Bath Iron Works. On the days he worked, he left the house around 6:00 a.m. and returned around 3:30 p.m.
[¶4] On December 8, 2017, Gatto's fiancé arrived home from work at approximately 3:25 p.m. When he entered the house, Gatto's grandchildren were in the living room and Gatto was in the kitchen. Gatto told her fiancé that the victim was in the tub because she had soiled herself, and directed him not to go into the bathroom because the victim was in timeout. After working in his bedroom for a few minutes, Gatto's fiancé left the house to go to the hardware store. At 4:28 p.m., before he left the property, Gatto called him and told him to come back to the house because something was wrong with the victim.
[¶5] Gatto's fiancé reentered the house and went to the back bathroom.1 He found the victim lying motionless and naked on the bathroom floor. He moved the victim to the living room and began performing CPR. Gatto's fiancé suggested that someone needed to call 911, and then moved the victim again, this time to the master bathroom, where he continued performing CPR.
[¶6] At 4:35 p.m., Gatto's fiancé called 911, telling the dispatcher that the victim was unresponsive. The dispatcher spoke to Gatto and to Gatto's fiancé, and instructed them in performing CPR. Emergency responders arrived a few minutes later. When they entered the house, they found Gatto's fiancé performing CPR on the victim in the master bathroom. The first responders found the victim cold to the touch. Her face was heavily bruised, and her head was misshapen and swollen. The first responders transported her to the hospital, where she was declared dead at 5:43 p.m. Neither the first responders nor the emergency room physicians ever detected any signs of life from the victim.
[¶7] Gatto gave several statements to law enforcement regarding the victim's injuries. While on the phone with the 911 dispatcher, Gatto said that the victim had fallen two days ago but was "fine" just ten minutes before she found her unresponsive in the tub. After the victim was transported to the hospital, Gatto rode with a detective to the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department. She told the detective that the victim was very accident prone, fell often, and did not protect herself when she fell. She also claimed that the victim had been perfectly happy and active all during that day, and again stated that the victim was fine just moments before Gatto found her in the tub.
[¶8] Later that evening, a Maine State Police detective interviewed Gatto at the Lincoln County Sheriff's Department. Asked to describe the victim, Gatto painted a picture of an injury-prone child whose clumsiness and lack of any self-protective instincts led to bumps, bruises, and cuts on a daily basis. Gatto listed several recent instances in which the victim had serious falls that resulted in black eyes, cuts, and bruises. The detective asked Gatto to describe what happened on December 8. According to Gatto, the victim had soiled herself, which she said was a common occurrence, and Gatto had put her in the tub without water. Gatto said that she went to fetch the victim a drink and returned moments later to find the victim unresponsive in the tub.
[¶9] Late on the night of December 8, detectives with the Maine State Police searched Gatto's home pursuant to a search warrant. In the child's bathroom they found evidence of blood and signs of an attempt to clean up the blood. They identified blood stains on a sponge and shirt in the tub, on paper towels in a trash bag, on towels and bedding, and on a set of child's pajamas found soaking in a bucket of water. Detectives noticed a dent in the drywall of the back bedroom in the shape of a child's head, stained with blood and embedded with hair. The hair belonged to the victim.2
[¶10] The State of Maine's Chief Medical Examiner, Mark Flomenbaum, M.D., conducted an autopsy of the victim's body. He documented at least fifteen injuries to the victim's head and face, including serious bruises and deep lacerations
. He found that the victim was very small for her age, with patchy, thin hair. He also determined that although her skull was not fractured, she had a significant accumulation of blood under her scalp and a buildup of scar tissue from a head injury. Her brain had swollen due to oxygen deprivation. He opined that the victim suffered from Child Abuse Syndrome and had sustained numerous nonfatal injuries that contributed to her death from a separate, ultimately-fatal injury.
[¶11] The autopsy also revealed that the victim's abdomen was distended, but did not show bruises or other external signs of injuries. Dr. Flomenbaum concluded that internal injuries resulted in internal bleeding, and that about one-third of the victim's blood had accumulated in her abdominal cavity, along with gastric contents. Her intestines were torn and her pancreas lacerated. The loss of blood had caused her brain to be starved for oxygen and swell, and eventually caused her heart to stop.3
[¶12] The Maine State Police detective interviewed Gatto again on December 10. Gatto repeated her story regarding her final minutes with the victim. She explained the victim's many bruises and injuries with a litany of stories about the victim's clumsiness and frequent falls, but reported that she never felt a need to take the victim to a doctor. She denied inflicting any of the victim's injuries.
[¶13] On January 13, 2018, a Lincoln County grand jury indicted Gatto on one count of murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B). Gatto pleaded not guilty and waived her right to a jury trial. M.R.U. Crim. P. 23(a). On July 13, 2018, Gatto moved in limine to be permitted to cross-examine Dr. Flomenbaum regarding his termination from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Massachusetts, and to be permitted to introduce extrinsic evidence regarding Dr. Flomenbaum's termination if the need arose. The trial court took the motion under advisement, but deferred ruling until the matter was closer to trial. The trial court held a five-day trial between April 1 and April 8, 2019. After the State completed its direct examination of Dr. Flomenbaum, the court heard argument from the parties regarding Gatto's motion in limine and subsequently denied the motion.
[¶14] On April 30, 2019, the trial court returned its verdict, finding Gatto guilty of depraved indifference murder pursuant to 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B). The court later sentenced Gatto to fifty years’ imprisonment. Gatto timely appealed from the judgment of conviction.4 M.R. App. P. 2B(b)(1).
[¶15] Gatto contends that the trial court erred in finding her guilty of murder as defined in 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B) because the State did not present sufficient evidence to support the fact-finder's determination that the State had proved each element beyond a reasonable doubt. Specifically, Gatto argues that the trial court could not have found her guilty without direct evidence linking her conduct to the infliction of the victim's fatal injury. Contrary to her contentions, however, the record evidence is sufficient to support the court's findings, even absent direct evidence that Gatto inflicted the fatal injury. See Cummings , 2017 ME 143, ¶ 14, 166 A.3d 996 ().
[¶16] "When reviewing a judgment for sufficiency of the evidence, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the State to determine whether the fact-finder could rationally have found each element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt." Id. ¶ 12 (alterations omitted) (quotation marks omitted). "We defer to all credibility determinations and reasonable inferences drawn by the fact-finder, even if those inferences are contradicted by parts of the direct evidence." Id . (quotation marks omitted).
[¶17] A person is guilty of depraved indifference murder if the person "engages in conduct that manifests a depraved indifference to the value of human life and that in fact causes the death of another human being." 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(B). "A person acts with depraved indifference to the value of human life in Maine if the person's conduct, objectively viewed, created such a high...
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