State v. Joubert

• Decision Date: 21 February 1992
• Citation: 603 A.2d 861
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. John J. JOUBERT, IV.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 861

603 A.2d 861

STATE of Maine v. John J. JOUBERT, IV.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Jan. 10, 1992.

Decided Feb. 21, 1992.

Michael E. Carpenter, Atty. Gen., Wayne S. Moss (orally), Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, for State.

Jens-Peter W. Bergen (orally), Hodsdon & Associates, Kennebunk, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C.J., and ROBERTS, WATHEN, GLASSMAN, CLIFFORD and COLLINS, JJ.

McKUSICK, Chief Justice.

Defendant John J. Joubert, IV, appeals his conviction for murder entered in the Superior Court (Lincoln County, Bradford, J.) after a jury trial. We affirm.

During the evening of August 22, 1982, 11-year-old Ricky Stetson was murdered while jogging around Back Cove in Portland. He was killed by a combination of a stab wound to the chest and strangulation. In addition, he suffered a distinctive wound of a human bite mark on the back of his right leg, on top of which were a stab wound and crisscross slashes, an apparent attempt to cover up the bite mark. The next morning, August 23, Ricky Stetson's body was discovered by a passerby on the grass near Tukey's Bridge.

As a result of information supplied by several people who had been in the Back Cove area at the time of the murder, the police investigation eventually came to focus on defendant Joubert. Nineteen years old at the time of the murder, he grew up in Portland, graduated from a local high school, and worked at various jobs. In December of 1982, just over three months after the Stetson murder, Joubert left Portland to join the Air Force and later was stationed in Nebraska. In 1984, Airman Joubert was arrested in Nebraska and charged with the separate murders of two young Nebraska boys, both of whom had been stabbed to death. He pleaded guilty to both crimes and on October 9, 1984, was sentenced to death on both charges. An automatic appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court ensued.

On January 8, 1986, a Cumberland County grand jury indicted Joubert for Ricky Stetson's murder. In January 1990, Joubert, then still sitting on death row in Nebraska while pursuing post-conviction relief, was transferred to Maine for trial on the Stetson indictment. The Superior Court moved the venue of Joubert's trial to Lincoln County, where jury selection began on October 2, 1990. After nine days of trial the jury on October 15 found Joubert guilty, and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. Joubert filed a timely appeal. ¹

I. Alleged Speedy Trial Violation

Joubert first contends that the 57-month delay between January 8, 1986, when he was indicted for the Stetson murder, and October 2, 1990, when his trial began, violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial guaranteed by the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and article I, section 6, of the Maine Constitution. We do not agree.

The analysis of a speedy trial claim is identical under both the Federal and the State Constitutions. See State v. Beauchene, 541 A.2d 914, 918 (Me.1988). That fact specific analysis, set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514, 92 S.Ct. 2182, 33 L.Ed.2d 101 (1972), requires us to apply a "delicate balancing test that takes into account all of the circumstances of the case at hand." State v. Murphy, 496 A.2d 623, 627 (Me.1985). While there is no exhaustive list of factors to be considered, the Supreme Court identified four: "Length of delay, the reason for the delay, the defendant's assertion of his right, and prejudice to the defendant." Barker, 407 U.S. at 530, 92 S.Ct. at 2192. The first Barker factor can be dispositive in that if the delay between indictment and trial in the particular case is not sufficiently long to raise an inference of prejudice to defendant, "there is no necessity for inquiry into the other factors that go into the balance." Id.; see also Beauchene, 541 A.2d at 918. In the circumstances of the case at bar, where Joubert while imprisoned in Nebraska was indicted in Maine for a murder that had occurred 3 1/2 years before, a delay of nearly five years in bringing Joubert to trial is plainly long enough to raise an inference of prejudice and thereby to necessitate further analysis using the other three Barker factors. Mindful of the fact that "these factors have no talismanic qualities," Barker, 407 U.S. at 533, 92 S.Ct. at 2193; see also Beauchene, 541 A.2d at 915, but rather are part of a sensitive and delicate ad hoc balancing, we conclude from a full Barker analysis that Joubert's right to a speedy trial was not violated.

Following his 1984 convictions in Nebraska on his guilty pleas to the two Nebraska murders, Joubert challenged his two death sentences by a succession of direct appeals and of petitions for post-conviction relief. The Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed his convictions on December 29, 1986, and the denial of his petitions for post-conviction relief on May 5, 1990. During this time, starting in January 1986 when Joubert was indicted in Maine and concluding four years later, the Attorneys General of Maine and Nebraska tried in good faith to work out an agreement between the Governors of those states by which Nebraska would transfer Joubert to Maine to stand trial and Maine would after trial return him promptly to Nebraska for the carrying out of his Nebraska death sentences. In those negotiations Nebraska officials expressed reluctance to release Joubert from their custody because of concern that he might not be promptly returned to Nebraska after his Maine trial.

It was not until September 1989 that Joubert, while still in Nebraska awaiting the Nebraska Supreme Court's decision on his petitions for post-conviction relief, first asked to be transferred to Maine, and on November 7, 1989, he filed a motion for a speedy trial in the Maine Superior Court and formally requested the disposition of the Maine charges against him. Finally, in January 1990 the two States worked out an executive agreement and Joubert was transferred to Maine later that month.

The second Barker factor, the reasons for the delay in bringing Joubert to trial, provides no basis for finding a speedy trial violation here. During the time between the indictment and Joubert's request to be returned to Maine for trial, he was incarcerated in Nebraska for the two murders he had pleaded guilty to having committed in that state. From the time Joubert's Maine indictment was returned until late 1989, the Maine Attorney General's Office actively pursued an agreement with the State of Nebraska in order to have Joubert transferred here. During that time Nebraska authorities informed Maine authorities that Joubert intended to fight extradition. Thus, the delay until at least his September 1989 request to be returned to Maine weighs heavily against Joubert. See Beauchene, 541 A.2d at 919 (fighting extradition and time spent handling defendant's motions attributable to defendant). Even after Joubert's September 1989 request for trial in Maine, he could not be returned until the State of Nebraska was willing to release him, and that agreement did not come until January 1990. A later 5-month delay in the trial originally scheduled for July 1990 resulted from a continuance granted on Joubert's own motion. That delay is also attributable to him. See id. Thus, at most the 10 months between Joubert's first request to return to Maine (September 1989) and the originally scheduled trial date (July 1990) can be charged in any way to the State. Even in that period, trial was delayed by a succession of pretrial motions filed by Joubert.

In our analysis of the reasons for the 57-month delay, it is also significant that in this record we can find no sign of "any bad faith or improper motive on the State's part" to delay Joubert's trial. State v. Goodall, 407 A.2d 268, 281 (Me.1979). Defendant's argument that the State is responsible for the delay because it did not inform him of the charge and so did not afford him an opportunity to apply pressure to be returned to Maine to face a speedy trial, misapprehends the process involved. The State of Maine did not have it within its power to bring Joubert back to Maine. His return depended entirely on whether, and when, the State of Nebraska decided to release Joubert to the Maine authorities.

Consideration of the other two Barker factors confirms that the Superior Court correctly denied Joubert's speedy trial motion. The third Barker factor, defendant's assertion of his right to a speedy trial, does not help Joubert. He made no request to come back for trial in Maine until September 1989, 44 months after his indictment. Although that fact does not count heavily against Joubert because until May 1989 he did not have Maine counsel and was not given formal notice of the nature and extent of the Maine charge until still later, see State v. Steeves, 383 A.2d 1379, 1383 (Me.1978), Joubert at the same time draws no benefit from the third Barker factor. Finally, on the fourth Barker factor of prejudice, Joubert makes only a speculative contention that the 57-month delay may have prejudiced him by resulting in the unavailability of defense witnesses who could have testified for him had the trial been held soon after the 1986 indictment. Joubert, however, comes forward with no specification of any witness who would have provided him an alibi or have contradicted the State's case against him. In light of the overwhelming evidence linking Joubert to the Stetson murder and the entirely speculative nature of the alleged lost testimony, the degree of prejudice from the delay, if any existed, weighs little in Joubert's favor in the Barker analysis.

In sum, on a full analysis of the circumstances of this case under the four Barker factors, Joubert falls far short of showing any violation of his constitutional right to a speedy trial.

II. Nebraska Journalist's Interview of Joubert

During Joubert's Maine trial, the court admitted the testimony of Nebraska journalist Mark Pettit who, in the course...