State v. Lagasse

• Citation: 410 A.2d 537
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Melvin B. LAGASSE, Jr.
• Decision Date: 24 January 1980
• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US)

Page 537

410 A.2d 537

STATE of Maine v. Melvin B. LAGASSE, Jr.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Jan. 24, 1980.

Charles K. Leadbetter (orally), John S. Gleason, Asst. Attys. Gen., Augusta, for plaintiff.

Isaacson, Isaacson & Hark by Robert S. Hark (orally), Gaston Dumais, Lewiston, for defendant.

Before WERNICK, GODFREY, NICHOLS and GLASSMAN, JJ.

GLASSMAN, Justice.

By indictment returned on January 9, 1979, the defendant, Melvin B. Lagasse, Jr., was charged with murder in violation of 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(A) and (B). Following a jury trial in the Superior Court, Androscoggin County, the defendant was found guilty of the lesser included offense of manslaughter. 17-A M.R.S.A. § 203. On appeal from this conviction the defendant alleges numerous errors. We affirm the judgment of conviction of manslaughter.

About 8:30 on the evening of December 29, 1978, the defendant and his girl friend, Jane, were engaged in a heated argument on the sidewalk next to a theater on Pine Street in Lewiston. The decedent, Albert Pepin, and a female companion were hitchhiking on the other side of the street when they observed the defendant holding Jane against a parked car and slapping her across the face. The decedent shouted to the defendant to leave the young woman alone; the defendant told the decedent to mind his own business. The decedent ran across the street and struck the defendant in the face. During the fight that ensued, the defendant claims he saw the decedent reach into his pocket and, believing the decedent was pulling out a jackknife, the defendant withdrew a jackknife from his own pocket. He opened this knife, placing it in his left hand with the blade toward his palm, and then grappled with the decedent. In the course of this struggle, the defendant had the decedent in a headlock with his right arm and punched the decedent's chest with his left hand. Discovering that the jackknife had closed on and cut his fingers, the defendant released the decedent and shook the knife free from his injured left hand. The decedent fell to the ground mortally injured by a single stab wound in his chest. Only one knife was found at the scene of the altercation.

I

Both by a pre-trial motion to dismiss and by a post-verdict motion in arrest of judgment, the defendant attacked the sufficiency of the indictment. 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201 requires that the conduct of the accused cause "the death of another human being." The defendant argues that the indictment charging him with a violation of that statute was fatally defective because it failed to allege an essential element of the offense: Although identifying the decedent as Albert F. Pepin, the indictment failed to charge that Pepin was Another human being.

We have previously rejected this identical argument in State v. Hachey, Me., 278 A.2d 397, 398 (1971). Although that case arose prior to the enactment of our new Criminal Code, the murder statute then in effect also required that the killing be of "a human being." ¹ Therefore, the principles enunciated in Hachey are equally applicable to a charge of homicide under our new code. The defendant's contention is without merit.

II

The indictment charged the defendant alternatively with intentional or knowing murder, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(A), and with depraved indifference murder, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 201(1)(B). Prior to trial, the defendant moved to strike as surplusage the alternative charge of depraved indifference murder or to compel an election on the ground that the evidence adduced in a pre- trial hearing on bail and on motions to suppress evidence could not support the alternative charge. This motion was denied. It is the defendant's contention that the Superior Court Justice erred and that the reading of the alternative charge to the jury at the commencement of the trial was highly prejudicial.

The defendant's pre-trial motion was, in effect, a motion to dismiss a portion of the indictment based on the insufficiency of evidence produced at a pre-trial hearing. A pre-trial motion addressed to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the indictment is unknown to our criminal procedure. ² In any event, no prejudice resulted to the defendant from the reading of the entire indictment to the jury at the commencement of the trial since at the conclusion of all of the evidence the presiding Justice properly declined to instruct the jury on the theory of depraved indifference murder, finding that the evidence was insufficient to support that charge.

Despite our conclusion that in this case the defendant was not prejudiced by the inclusion of the alternative charge of depraved indifference murder, we are constrained to utter a word of caution to prosecutors. We recognize that at the time a case is presented to a grand jury the prosecutor may not be in full possession of all of the evidence relating to the manner in which the homicide was committed and that, therefore, in an excess of caution the prosecuting attorney may seek from the grand jury an indictment charging murder in the alternative form of depraved indifference as well as intentional and knowing murder. Nevertheless, by the time the case is ready to start trial, the prosecutor should be fully informed as to all of the circumstances surrounding the particular homicide and should carefully evaluate his evidence to determine whether in fairness to the defendant the charge of depraved indifference murder ought to be dismissed before the trial commences. The statute recognizing the crime of depraved indifference murder is not a catchall enacted to make it easier to secure convictions. The purpose of the statute is to deal with those few instances in which, although the defendant did not act intentionally or knowingly, his conduct, objectively viewed, created such a high tendency to produce death that the law attributes to him the highest degree of blameworthiness. See State v. Woodbury, Me., 403 A.2d 1166, 1173 (1979). In fulfilling their ethical responsibility, ³ prosecutors must recognize that depraved indifference murder constitutes a narrow and limited exception to the fundamental principle of our Criminal Code that a person may not be proven guilty of a crime without proof that he possessed one of the enumerated culpable states of mind. See 17-A M.R.S.A. § 11(1).

III

At the defendant's trial, the State offered into evidence a jackknife marked State's exhibit no. 1. Over the defendant's objection of a lack of foundation and undue prejudice, the knife was admitted into evidence. On appeal the defendant contends that the presiding Justice abused his discretion because the knife was not properly authenticated and because its prejudicial effect outweighed its probative value. These two distinct contentions must be examined separately.

M.R.Evid. 901(a), which governs authentication, provides: "The requirement of authentication or identification as a condition precedent to admissibility is satisfied by evidence sufficient to support a finding that the matter in question is what its proponent claims." The following evidence was received to identify State's exhibit no. 1: A witness testified that shortly after the altercation between the defendant and the decedent he found the jackknife identified as State's exhibit no. 1 as he was leaving the theater near the scene of the fight. This witness testified that he retained the knife in his custody until he turned it over to the police five days later. A stipulation was entered into between counsel that there was a proper chain of custody of the knife while it was in the possession of the police. Thus, there was sufficient evidence to support a finding that State's exhibit no. 1 was the knife found at the scene of the crime. See State v. Beaudoin, Me., 386 A.2d 731, 733 (1978).

Turning to the other ground of the defendant's objection, the defendant does not contend that the knife was not relevant but rather that although relevant its prejudicial effect outweighed its probative value and therefore it should have been excluded under M.R.Evid. 403. The probative value of State's exhibit no. 1 becomes apparent when one examines the record. There was testimony that the defendant was involved in an altercation with the decedent at the time Pepin received the fatal stab wound. Medical testimony was received that Pepin's death was caused by a single stab wound and that the width of this stab wound was consistent with the blade dimensions of State's exhibit no. 1. There were admissions by the defendant that he had pulled a knife from his pocket and had jabbed the decedent, cutting his own hand in the process. There was testimony that the knife had been found at the scene of the crime shortly after the incident and had been turned over to the police five days later. Police officers testified that although they had conducted a search of the scene the night of the incident and the following morning no other weapon was found. Finally, there was expert testimony that bloodstains were present on the knife but that the sample was insufficient to permit blood-typing. This evidence was sufficient to permit the jury to infer that State's exhibit no. 1 was the weapon that caused the decedent's death and that it was also the weapon which the defendant admittedly had taken from his pocket and held in his hand when he had jabbed the decedent. When we examine the alleged prejudicial effect of State's exhibit no. 1, we find the defendant's argument is predicated upon the proposition that real evidence, I. e., physical evidence, has a greater potential for prejudice than does testimonial evidence. Although as a general proposition real evidence may present a greater potential for prejudice than testimonial evidence, particularly when the real evidence is a gruesome photograph or a part of a human body, we are at a loss to understand why allowing State's exhibit no. 1 into evidence is any more prejudicial than allowing the testimony concerning it to be...