State v. Hagan

• Decision Date: 21 July 1987
• Citation: 527 A.2d 1308
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Richard HAGAN.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 1308

527 A.2d 1308

STATE of Maine v. Richard HAGAN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued June 10, 1987.

Decided July 21, 1987.

William R. Anderson, Dist. Atty., Geoffrey Rushlau (orally), Asst. Dist. Atty., Bath, for plaintiff.

John T. Voorhees, Jr. (orally), Brunswick, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., and NICHOLS, GLASSMAN, SCOLNIK and CLIFFORD, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

After a jury-waived trial the Superior Court (Sagadahoc County) convicted defendant Richard Hagan of criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon, 17-A M.R.S.A. §§ 209, 1252 (1983). On appeal the sole question is whether the trial justice's finding of fact that Hagan placed the victims in subjective fear of imminent bodily injury was adequately supported by the whole record, despite the victims' own denial at trial that they had been "afraid" of Hagan. The record contains abundant evidence, including the victims' own specific description of their reactions to Hagan's threatening actions, justifying the justice's factual conclusion. We therefore reject defendant's sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge to his conviction of criminal threatening.

Early in April 1985, William Lenfest (aged 67) gave defendant Hagan (aged 27) and his girlfriend a notice to quit a wooded piece of land in North Bath on which the couple had lived in a teepee for some two years. Later that month Lenfest, accompanied by his neighbor Donald Freeman (aged 73), approached the teepee to check on the couple's progress in moving off the land. Hagan and his girlfriend met the two older men a short distance from the teepee. A heated dispute followed. In the course of the argument Hagan pointed a rifle at close range at Lenfest and Freeman and ordered them to get off "his land." At the time the rifle was cocked and Hagan had his finger on the trigger. As fast as they could disengage themselves, Lenfest and Freeman left the teepee area and proceeded directly to the Bath police station. Within a half hour Lenfest and Freeman came back with two Bath police officers. Lenfest and Freeman waited some distance away as the officers went to the teepee and took the gun away from Hagan. The officers discovered that Hagan's rifle was loaded and had no mechanical safety.

Under 17-A M.R.S.A. § 209, "[a] person is guilty of criminal threatening if he intentionally or knowingly places another person in fear of imminent bodily injury." Hagan argues on appeal that the State failed to prove the fear element of the offense of criminal threatening because Lenfest and Freeman each asserted at trial that he had not been "afraid." In spite of that isolated statement made by both, the trial justice from other evidence found as a fact that defendant Hagan had put the victims in actual, subjective fear of imminent bodily injury. The justice specifically found "that [Hagan] succeeded in placing them in fear of imminent bodily injury ... in the sense that they both perceived a very real danger [of] an accidental killing ... or serious injury taking place by having a weapon pointed right at their eyes three feet away, [a] cocked weapon."

A finding that a victim was put "in fear" by the defendant's acts need not rest upon the victim's characterizing himself as having been afraid. In State v. Lindsey, 447 A.2d 794, 796 (Me.1982), evidence that the defendant had behaved in a threatening manner toward victims on two (uncharged) prior occasions was admissible to show that the victims were placed in fear when the defendant threatened them a third time. See also United States v. Kimball, 555 F.Supp. 1366, 1371 (D.Me.1983) (conclusion that "officers had in fact feared imminent bodily injury" based on evidence that officers had reacted to shots fired toward them by moving their vessel out of range). Furthermore, the fact that a victim showed courage at the time the offense was committed does not preclude a factfinder from concluding that the victim was placed "in fear" by the...