State v. Inman

• Decision Date: 02 January 1976
• Citation: 350 A.2d 582
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Robert P. INMAN.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 582

350 A.2d 582

STATE of Maine v. Robert P. INMAN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Jan. 2, 1976.

Richard S. Cohen, Deputy Atty. Gen., Charles K. Leadbetter, Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, for plaintiff.

Marshall A. Stern, Twitchell, Gray & Linscott, by Frederick J. Badger, Jr., Bangor, for defendant.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK, ARCHIBALD and DELAHANTY, JJ.

WEATHERBEE, Justice.

A Penobscot County jury found the defendant guilty of felonious homicide in the penalty degree of murder. The defendant has appealed. We deny his appeal.

The victim was Miss Charlotte Dunn, an elderly lady, who lived alone in an apartment in Bangor. Sometime about midnight on May 31, 1971, residents of other apartments in the building heard sounds of a struggle, a woman's screams and 'growling noises' coming from the vicinity of the victim's apartment. None of them reported or made any effort to determine the nature of the woman's distress.

The next morning the victim's seminude, badly beaten body was found sprawled on the floor of her apartment. She had been strangled. It was evident that the victim had also been cruelly sexually mistreated. A latent palm print was mistreated. A latent palm print was

The defendant had occupied an apartment in that building some seven or eight months before. His name was given to the police as a suspect soon after the discovery of the crime.

Lieutenant Bruton of the State Police assumed charge of the investigation and that evening he sent a State Police detective and another officer to the defendant's home in East Holden to ask the defendant to come with the officers to the Bangor Police Department for questioning. A third officer met them in East Holden to direct them to the defendant's home. During the trip to the Police Station the defendant made an exculpatory statement which the defendant moved unsuccessfully to suppress because of the failure of the detective to have explained to the defendant his rights under the rule of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966).

At the Police Department, Lieutenant Bruton noted what appeared to be scratches on the defendant's hands, face and neck and 'floor burns' on his elbows. The defendant was not placed under arrest until a time several weeks later when the police obtained his plam print and were satisfied that it matched the latent print which had been found beside the body.

The defendant was indicted upon a charge of murder. Before trial the defendant moved to suppress the plam prints of the defendant which the State had obtained. The Justice in the Superior Court, utilizing the provisions of M.R.Crim.P., Rule 37A(a) reported to us the issue of the validity of the procedure by which the palm prints were obtained by the police. We denied the motion to suppress. State v. Inman, Me., 301 A.2d 348 (1973). Trial then proceeded in the Superior Court and the defendant was found guilty. We will consider separately the several errors claimed by defendant on appeal.

The Failure of the Justice to Give an Instruction on Manslaughter

At the conclusion of the evidence defense counsel requested that the jury be instructed as to the elements of manslaughter, apparently referring to voluntary manslaughter.

We held in State v. Park, 159 Me. 328, 333, 193 A.2d 1, 4 (1962) that there was no error in refusing to instruct on manslaughter 'in the absence of any evidence from which a jury could find (the elements which would have reduced the crime to) manslaughter.' See also State v. Hilliker, Me., 327 A.2d 860 (1974). At the time of the Park decision, Maine Law for more than a centrury had placed upon the defendant the burden of demonstrating by a fair preponderance of the evidence that the crime was committed in a heat of passion on sudden, adequate provocation if an intentional felonious homicide was to be punished as manslaughter instead of murder. State v. Hilliker, supra.

Since then, of course, in Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975) the United States Supreme Court held that the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment requires the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of heat of passion on sudden, adequate provocation when the issue is properly presented in a homicide case.

We are aware of no policy consideration that would justify our moving from the basic position we took in Park to the effect that a defendant is not entitled to an instruction on voluntary manslaughter in every murder trial, and nothing in Mullaney v. Wilbur mandates that we do so. In fact, the Court in Mullaney v. Wilbur specifically disclaimed any intention to affect existing State rules that require the defendant to show 'some evidence' of the factors reducing to voluntary manslaughter before requiring the State to negate them.

We must bear in mind, however, that when Park spoke of 'evidence from which a jury could find manslaughter' the opinion was speaking of evidence which could satisfy the jury by a fair preponderance because such was the defendant's burden of proof prior to Wilbur. The mandate of Wilbur is that due process requires the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the absence of causative heat of passion on sudden adequate provocation 'when the issue is properly presented.' 421 U.S. at 704, 95 S.Ct. at 1892, 44 L.Ed.2d at 522. This federal constitutional principle does not demand that the State should anticipate and negate all possible sources of provocation which could have induced a theoretical heat of passion but only that when some evidence of heat of passion arising from such sudden, adequate provocation has actually been presented, the defendant is entitled to a verdict of manslaughter unless the jury is satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that such passion was not the cause of the defendant's homicidal conduct. State v. Stackpole, Me., 349 A.2d 185 (1975).

We do not feel that either precedent or policy considerations necessitate or would justify an interpretation of our own constitution that would place a heavier burden upon the State than that which Wilbur imposed through federal constitutional principles. The Wilbur rule is, in fact, much the same as that which we have found to be fair and workable in the analogous situation of self-defense. State v. Millett, Me., 273 A.2d 504 (1971).

But the Park holding must now be translated into the principles of Wilbur by redefining the quantum of evidence necessary to require a manslaughter instruction. To paraphrase the language we used in Millett to describe the defendant's burden of production of evidence which would generate the issue of self-defense, our rule may be stated to be that the defendant 'assume(s) the burden of going forward with evidence ¹ of such nature and quality as to raise the issue of (heat of passion upon sudden adequate provocation) and justify a reasonable doubt' (emphasis added) (273 A.2d at 507) that the defendant's conduct was uncontrolled by the passion.

Therefore, no instruction on voluntary manslaughter need be given unless the jurors have heard such evidence as would generate the issue (as we have defined it) in the minds of reasonable men and women. Whether there was evidence that would require the giving of the manslaughter instruction was a question of law for the determination of the Court. State v. Park, supra, 159 Me. at 333, 193 A.2d at 4.

Such evidence was completely absent here and the Justice's refusal to give the instruction was not error.

There was no request for an instruction on involuntary manslaughter, no doubt because the trial in this case took place beofore our holding in State v. Northup, Me., 318 A.2d 489 (1974) that the State must the trial in this case took place before distinguished from involuntary. However, here-as in Northup-we find no manifest error in the Justice's failure to give such an instruction because we see no reasonable possibility that the jury, if so instructed, would have found that the killing of the victim was unintended.

The defendant further contends that manslaughter is a traditional area of compromise for jurires in murder cases and that the defendant was entitled to have it available to the jury as an acceptable third alternative to those of a conviction for murder or an immediate return of the defendant into society as not guilty.

We categorically reject this theory and adhere to the concept that it must be presumed that the jurors will remain faithful to their sworn obligations and that they will return a verdict of manslaughter only if they find facts justifying it upon judicially recognized principles of law. State v. Carey, Del.Supr., 6 W.W.Harr, 521, 178 A. 877 (1935).

The Taking of Judicial Notice of the Reliability of Plam Prints and the Justice's Instruction Thereon

Midway in his instructions the Justice told the jury:

'Now it may be that the Court will take judicial notice of certain facts. I believe before I am finished I will. . . .'

At the conclusion of his instructions he said:

'I indicated that I would ask you to take judicial notice of one thing. I now say that I have taken judicial notice that fingerprinting, which includes palmprinting, is the most accurate present means of identification, and that it is universally used in cases of this kind, but I also say to you that fingerprint and palmprint analysis requires greater skill than that which the ordinary witness has.

And in this connection, you are to assume that I have taken judicial notice and hand it to you that the fingerprint method of identification is accurate and no two sets of fingerprints or palmprints are exactly alike.'

The defendant objected to the giving of this instruction. He now urges us that the reliability of the palm print method of identification is not subject to judicial notice and is a question of fact for jury determination upon adequate evidentiary proof.

We said in State v. Rush, Me., 324 A.2d 748, 750 (1974):

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