State v. Goyette

CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)
Citation407 A.2d 1104
PartiesSTATE of Maine v. Martial C. GOYETTE.
Decision Date09 November 1979

John D. McElwee, Dist. Atty., Thomas L. Goodwin, Deputy Dist. Atty. (orally), Houlton, for plaintiff.

Paine & Lynch by Martha J. Harris, Errol K. Paine (orally), Bangor, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., POMEROY, WERNICK and ARCHIBALD, JJ., and DUFRESNE, A. R. J.

DUFRESNE, A. R. J. 1

Martial C. Goyette, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, was charged by complaint 2 with the violation of 12 M.R.S.A., § 2467 3 in that "on or about the 24th day of November 1977 in Township 17, Range 4 County of Aroostook and State of Maine, the above named defendant Martial C. Goyette did unlawfully have in his possession two moose." An Aroostook County jury on July 12, 1978 returned a verdict of guilty as charged against the defendant and he appeals from the ensuing judgment of conviction. We deny the appeal.

Facts

Mindful of the rule that an appellate court must view the evidence and such inferences as may be reasonably inferred therefrom in a light most favorable to the verdict reached by the jury, 4 we find that the trial record discloses the following sequence of events.

Thanksgiving Day 1977 was ideal for hunters in northern Maine; the soft blanket of freshly accumulated white snow covering the ground readily revealed the tracks left behind by wild animals as they scrambled for safety from their pursuers and the low ceiling atmospheric condition during the light snow-storm tended to mute the cacophony of forest noises during open hunting season. One Roger Ringuette, a resident of Sinclair, knew the neighboring forest well and, faced with the existing excellent weather conditions, decided to try his luck with his 12 gauge shotgun and bird shots at fetching some partridge that afternoon. 5 Ambling along a snowmobile trail, he first heard two shots which seemed to have been fired from a location not too far distant. A few minutes later he noticed two moose tracks in the snow. Leaving the trail to follow the moose tracks, he had walked only about one hundred yards, when he came upon the tracks of a man which at that point joined the moose tracks, heading in the same direction towards the woods. Shortly thereafter Goyette appeared, and Ringuette asked him if he had seen any deer, to which the defendant, unknown to Ringuette at the time, told him that he had "just dropped" a moose. Both then repaired to the fallen beast, and Goyette gutted the animal while Ringuette watched him do it. When Ringuette started to leave the area, the defendant extracted from him a promise not to tell anyone about the moose.

Ringuette immediately came out of the woods and contacted Gary Pelletier, the local game warden. They went directly to the site of the slain moose. The warden did observe distinctive boot print impressions in the snow as he followed the route to the dead moose; he further noticed the same set of tracks extending some one hundred and fifty feet beyond; tracking the same, he found another smaller cow moose, also all dressed up. Both had been killed, so Pelletier testified, by single shots from a high powered rifle. According to Ringuette and Pelletier, both carcasses were still warm.

The veteran warden then set out to track down the hunter described by Ringuette, i. e. the fellow who had gutted the first moose. Within the hour of his investigation at the wooded area, Pelletier accosted the defendant, read him the Miranda warnings, and, after obtaining the defendant's waiver of his Miranda rights, got the defendant's side of the story.

Goyette denied shooting the moose and informed the officer that he had come upon the dead animals in the course of his hunting for deer. He conceded that he had dressed the moose, but only with the intent to preserve the meat for the time being and then refer the matter to the proper authorities.

Unconvinced by the defendant's alleged innocent motive, the officer, with some resistance from Goyette, confiscated the defendant's gun, an Elite 308 Model 99C rifle with lever action and a Weaver 4-power scope, and placed him under arrest.

Two days later, Warden Pelletier and several of his colleagues returned to the area of the slain moose and searched the surroundings with a metal detector. In a small thicket roughly 110 feet from one moose and 185 feet from the other, the warden discovered two spent shell casings. According to Pelletier, anyone standing on the spot where the casings were found would have "a very good line of sight" on both moose. Sergeant Richard Arnold, a ballistics expert employed by the Maine State Police, stated that his testing revealed that the shell casings had been fired from the same rifle confiscated from the defendant.

The defendant took the stand in his own defense and gave an account substantially in accord with the one he gave to the warden immediately preceding his arrest. He added further that, in this opinion based on many years of hunting in Canada and New England, the moose had been dead for about three hours by the time he came upon the scene.

Admissibility of rifle and shell casings

After a proper foundation had been laid, the Court admitted in evidence, over defense objection, the .30 calibre rifle taken from the defendant and the two spent shell casings found at the scene. The defendant renews on appeal the same objection he raised at trial, that the rifle and shell casings, although tending to show that the defendant had shot the moose, were irrelevant to the issue of possession of the moose, the crime with which Goyette was charged. Alternatively, he argues that, even if relevant, this real evidence was so highly prejudicial in its impact on the jury that it should have been excluded under Rule 403, M.R.Evid. 6 We disagree.

Evidence is relevant if it tends to prove or disprove the matter at issue. Here, proof that the two shell casings found in the area of the dead moose had been fired from the defendant's gun and that it was the defendant who had "dropped" these moose, would suggest to a rational jury that the defendant had taken possession of these wild animals, intending to circumscribe their free lance movements in the world of the wilds to the narrow confines of his personal control. This logical link in the claim of circumstantial evidence with respect to the issue of possession made the evidence admissible within judicial discretion, unless excludable by reason of some particular rule or principle of law. State v. Brown, Me., 321 A.2d 478, 482 (1974).

And, the mere fact that the proffered evidence tended to prove the commission of another crime is not per se a sufficient reason for its exclusion. It may be admissible if it is probative of some element of the crime for which the defendant is being tried. State v. Grant, Me., 394 A.2d 274, 276 (1978); State v. Heald, Me., 393 A.2d 537, 542 (1978); State v. Cugliata, Me., 372 A.2d 1019, 1029 (1977), cert. denied 434 U.S. 856, 98 S.Ct. 177, 54 L.Ed.2d 128.

This Court has held on numerous occasions that rulings of the trial court in connection with relevancy of evidence will not be disturbed on appeal, unless it can be said that the presiding justice abused his discretion. State v. Morton, Me., 397 A.2d 171, 178 (1979).

In making the balancing test between the impact which relevant evidence may have upon the jury and the degree of probative value of such evidence, the trial justice is allowed a broad range of discretion. State v. Doughty, Me., 399 A.2d 1319, 1323 (1979); State v. Mitchell, Me., 390 A.2d 495, 500 (1978); State v. Gagne, Me., 343 A.2d 186, 196 (1975). Rule 403, M.R.Evid., is declaratory of existing Maine law: the issue is, the risk of unfair prejudice of the relevant evidence, its tendency to confuse the jury or the need to exclude it to prevent a sheer waste of the court's time. See Advisers' Note, Maine Rules of Evidence, p. 14.

We hold in the instant case that evidence of the gun and spent shell casings, which tended to prove that the defendant had killed the moose, was properly admitted on the crucial issue of possession, first, as bearing on the credibility of Ringuette's testimony that Goyette alone gutted the moose, and, secondly, in support of the State's theory that Goyette's dressing of the moose was criminally motivated, contrary to the innocent orientation placed upon his conduct by the defendant's post-factum statements. Again, the mere fact that the evidence suggested the commission of a crime different from that charged against the defendant did not raise an automatic barrier to its admissibility, and we cannot see how its presentation to the triers of fact in this case would be likely to inflame the passions of any reasonable jury. There was no violation of Rule 403, M.R.Evid.

Sufficiency of Evidence of Possession

Having discussed the admissibility of the defendant's gun and spent shell casings in connection with the issue of unlawful possession of the two moose, the crime charged against Goyette, we will now take out of order his argument, raised for the first time in this appeal, that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury finding beyond a reasonable doubt that Goyette, on November 24, 1977, "did unlawfully have in his possession two moose."

The issue of the sufficiency of the evidence to support a guilty verdict was not advanced before the trial Court by motion for judgment of acquittal, either at the close of all the evidence, M.R.Crim.P., Rule 29(a), or after jury verdict, M.R.Crim.P., Rule 29(b), nor did the defendant move for a new trial under Rule 33, M.R.Crim.P. In these circumstances, our review of such issue is limited to the "manifest error-serious injustice" standard, i. e. whether there was error which deprived the defendant of a fundamentally fair trial. State v. Boyer, Me., 392 A.2d 41 (1978); State v. Mimmovich, Me.,377 A.2d 116, 118 (1977); State v. Hanson, Me., 331 A.2d 375, 378 (1975).

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