State v. Kelley
| Decision Date | 31 July 1973 |
| Citation | 308 A.2d 877 |
| Parties | STATE of Maine v. Gerald KELLEY. |
| Court | Maine Supreme Court |
William S. Broderick, Asst. Atty. Gen., Augusta, for plaintiff.
Daniel G. Lilley, Steven P. Sunenblick, Portland, for defendant.
Before DUFRESNE, C. J. and WEBBER, WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK and ARCHIBALD, JJ.
Before a jury in Lincoln County Superior Court defendant was given a consolidated trial upon two separate indictments each charging defendant with the unlawful killing of a human being in manner punishable as 'murder'-one indictment alleging the other of Marion Yeaton, her daughter. th other of Marion Yeaton, her daughter. On July 7, 1971 the jury returned verdicts that defendant was guilty of the felonious homicides to be punished as 'murder.' Defendant has appealed from the judgments of conviction.
Evidence adduced at the trial would warrant a reasonable fact-finder in arriving at the following conclusions beyond a reasonable doubt.
On September 5, 1970 the badly burned bodies of two women, identified as Mrs. Abbie Simmons, aged 79, and her daughter, Marion Yeaton, aged 58, were discovered in the charred ruins of a fire which had ravaged Mrs. Simmons' house on Storer Road in Bremen, Maine. An investigation was conducted by Detective George Massie of the Maine State Police and culminated in a report, filed on September 8, 1970, with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation that:
Because of this finding of an absence of 'foul play' there wree no immediate postmortem examinations.
On September 30, 1970, approximately three weeks after his initial report, Detective Massie re-opened his investigation. He ascertained that Elmer Genther, nephew of Mrs. Simmons, had been among the first to come to the burning house and had attempted rescue efforts but was frustrated by the intense heat. To effect an entry into the house he had been obliged to kick open the front and side doors (the only entrances); the doors did not open when the door knobs were turned. While participating in a search of the ruins, Mr. Genther had found a hoe head (the handle of which had been burnt off) and a lock assembly. Mr. Genther delivered these items to Detective Massie on October 5, 1970.
When Mr. Genther had found the lock assembly, the bolt was positioned for the lock to be open. The hoe head had been discovered in Mrs. Simmons' bedroom, off the kitchen, in the vicinity of a desk in which Mrs. Simmons kept money; it was also near the spot at which the body of Marion Yeaton had been found. Mrs. Simmons was 'very particular' about maintaining specific locations for specific items, and she had always kept the hoe by the front entrance door-a place substantially distant from the bedroom in which Mr. Genther had found the hoe head.
On October 8, 1970 the remains of the two victims had been exhumed and examined by the Chief State Medical Examiner, Dr. Charles F. Branch, a pathologist. A significant fracture of the skull of Marion Yeaton was disclosed. In Dr. Branch's expert opinion, which he supported on both direct and cross-examination by a reasoned analysis of the date derived from observations in the post-mortem examination, the skull fracture had been caused by a blow inflicted before Marion Yeaton had died of asphyxiation and burning. 1 In Dr. Branch's opinion the blow was not caused by accidental means (such as falling out of bed, falling down stairs or being hit by a falling beam) but resulted from an externally directed blunt force inflicted by a person's use of an instrument of a type consistent with the handle belonging to the hoe head found by Mr. Genther. Further, it was a blow of sufficient severity to have rendered Marion Yeaton unconscious and thus helpless should a fire attack her in such state.
Blake McKay, the Chief Electrical Examiner of the State, had examined all the wiring and the fuse box found at the Simmons residence. He found that all of the wiring in the house conformed to the electrical code, only two 15 amp plug fuses had been blown and the conductors leading into the fuse box were in satisfactory condition. It was Mr. McKay's opinion, on the basis of his experience, that a short circuit, by itself, will not produce an electrical fire. He had been unable to discover additional factors, such as the malfunctioning of any of the electrical equipment or wiring, which, in conjunction with the occurrence of a short circuit, would indicate a fire of electrical origin. 2
Additionally relevant to the question of whether the fire had an electrical origin was the testimony of Elmer Genther who had been in the practice of visiting the house on the average of twice a week during the summer months to assist his aunt with her affairs. He stated that within at least a week prior to the day of the fire there were only two electrical appliances in operating condition in the house, a hot plate for cooking and a radio. As to any non-electrical instrumentalities capable of producing an accidental fire by non-electrical means, Mr. Genther testified that neither Mrs. Simmons nor Marion Yeaton smoked, and the only item in the house entailing use of flame was a wood stove which his aunt used to provide heat in cold weather and, in an emergency if the hot plate was broken, for cooking.
One of defendant's contentions on appeal is that various extra-judicial inculpatory statements made by him were, over his objection, erroneously allowed into evidence as to each indictment. The error claimed is that the evidence aliunde the internal substantive content of the inculpatory statements was insufficient to establish, by the legally requisite quantum of proof, the 'corpus delicti'-thereby to render admissible in evidence the statements of defendant. 3 Defense counsel had raised this issue at a time after the purported foundational evidence (as described ante) had been presented and when the State was preparing to offer defendant's statements in evidence. 4
Relying upon the recognized standard of proof as reaffirmed in State v. Wardwell, 158 Me. 307, 183 A.2d 896 (1962), the presiding Justice held that, independently of the inculpatory extra-judicial statements of defendant, the corpus delicti as to each indictment had been setablished, and he admitted defendant's statements into evidence as to each indictment.
The ruling of the presiding Justice was correct.
'a ruling of the trial court admitting a voluntary confession or admission will not be reversed.' (p. 676)
Independently of defendant's inculpatory statements, the evidence adduced by the State was sufficient to support as reasonable, a really substantial belief, as distinguished from a mere surmise or suspicion, that: (1) a human agency had inflicted serious bodily injury upon Marion Yeaton; (2) this, conjoined with the occurrence of a fire not readily susceptible of explanation as of accidental origin and with the 'foul play' inflicted upon Marion Yeaton, shows a deliberately set fire (to conceal the 'foul play' or otherwise); (3) the set fire caused the death of Marion Yeaton and also of Abbie Simmons because both women were trapped in the set fire-Marion Yeaton because she had been rendered unconscious by the foul play and Abbie Simmons either because of panic, or because of general lack of mobility caused by her age or other physical condition or because she, too, had been struck, and rendered helpless, by the same person who had attacked Marion Yeaton (the blow to Abbie Simmons being impossible of discovery on post-mortem examination because of the extensive deterioration of her skull in contradistinction to the lack of deterioration of Marion Yeaton's skull); and, therefore, (4) by the application of the 'felony (or arson)-murder' doctrine the killing of each of the women as the result of the deliberately set fire was not only the unlawful killing of each woman but had become an unlawful killing punishable as the most severe grade of felonious homicide-i. e., as 'murder.' 5
Defendant's other claim of error concerns an instruction by the presiding Justice to the jury.
Although the presiding Justice had himself found an adequate independent showing of corpus delicti and had admitted defendant's extra-judicial inculpatory statements into evidence, he gave to the jury the role of determining the same evidentiary admissibility issue do nove. To control the jury in this function the presiding Justice told them that as to:
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