State v. MacNeill
| Decision Date | 16 March 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 20140873-CA,20140873-CA |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Appellee, v. Martin J. MACNEILL, Appellant. |
| Court | Utah Court of Appeals |
B. Kent Morgan, Salt Lake City and Jonathan T. Nish, Woods Cross, Attorneys for Appellant.
Sean D. Reyes, Salt Lake City and Tera J. Peterson, Attorneys for Appellee.
Opinion
¶1 Martin J. MacNeill was convicted of murdering his wife by overmedicating her then drowning her in a bathtub. At trial the prosecution presented testimony from five jailhouse informants, all of whom reported hearing MacNeill admit or imply that he had killed his wife. MacNeill's principal claim on appeal is that the prosecution team withheld information about promises of assistance the State's lead investigator, Jeff Robinson, had made to one of the jailhouse informants. After meticulous analysis, the trial court agreed with MacNeill that the prosecution had wrongly suppressed relevant impeachment evidence, but concluded that the evidence would not have altered the trial outcome. We affirm.
¶2 MacNeill lived with his wife, Michele, and their four minor daughters in Pleasant Grove, Utah. The MacNeills also had three adult children; two lived in Utah and one attended graduate school out of state. MacNeill practiced psychiatry, and Michele tended to their home and children.
¶3 MacNeill met Gypsy Gillian Willis online, and the two began an affair in November 2005. In March 2007 Michele expressed concern to her adult daughter, Alexis, who attended graduate school, that MacNeill might be having an affair. After reading through his telephone records, Michele discovered the identity of MacNeill's girlfriend.
When she confronted MacNeill, he claimed she was being "ridiculous." Shortly after this confrontation, MacNeill surprised Michele with a facelift as a "present." He also indicated that he wanted to take her on a two-week cruise after her surgery.
¶4 Around the same time, during a "heartfelt, tearful lesson" at church, MacNeill announced that he had cancer
and had "less than a year" to live. His health appeared to deteriorate—he began limping, walking with a cane, and wearing a surgical boot. Despite his claim to neighbors that he "had some procedures done [and] was having some complications," MacNeill painted a somewhat different picture of his condition at work. He told one colleague that he had a "peripheral neuropathy" in his toe that "wouldn't get better," another colleague that he had "cancer in his big toe," and yet another colleague that he had a "neurological ... problem similar to MS." But despite his scattered claims of various illnesses during that spring, MacNeill remodeled his basement on his own and appeared to have no difficulty carrying "giant [slabs] of sheet rock" down the stairs.
¶5 MacNeill scheduled a consultation with a plastic surgeon in March 2007 and attended the consultation with Michele. MacNeill was the "dominant personality" at the appointment and did "more of the talking" than Michele. Although Michele was nervous about having surgery and concerned about the associated risks, the recovery, and the downtime, she agreed to schedule comprehensive facial surgery for the following month.
¶6 MacNeill next scheduled an examination for Michele with a primary care physician to determine if it was safe for her to proceed with surgery. MacNeill was anxious to complete the evaluation so Michele could proceed with the surgery without delay. At the appointment, the three discussed Michele's high blood pressure
. The primary care physician said that it would be ideal to control Michele's blood pressure before surgery and suggested that she postpone the operation. MacNeill expressed disappointment with this suggestion. Other than Michele's elevated blood pressure, the primary care physician determined that she was in "excellent health." An EKG revealed that Michele's heart was normal without any arrhythmias or evidence of heart disease.
¶7 Although the primary care physician recommended that Michele delay the procedure, Michele and MacNeill kept the appointment for the preoperative evaluation with the surgeon. Alexis came home from graduate school to attend the appointment with them. Before the appointment, Alexis saw MacNeill in his room writing down medications that he wanted the doctor to prescribe, using a "dusty" reference book that she hadn't seen him use in perhaps ten or fifteen years. On the way to the appointment, Michele said that she wanted to push the appointment back until summer so she could make sure her blood pressure would be under control. MacNeill became angry, raised his voice, told Michele she could not do that, and said, "If you don't have the surgery now, you're not getting it."
¶9 Consulting the list he brought with him, MacNeill requested four deviations from the surgeon's usual protocol. First, he requested an additional, stronger pain reliever, oxycodone
, also known as Percocet. Second, he requested Lortab in liquid form. Third, he requested more than the typical amount of Phenergan, and he requested it in suppository form. Finally, he requested the anti-anxiety drug, Valium. MacNeill said that "he was just concerned that [Michele] wouldn't do well without having these other options available," and that he wanted to have "all of the options available to [him]," even though Michele had told him that she didn't like to take a lot of medicine. The surgeon complied with MacNeill's requests and gave Michele instructions to take one pill at a time and "certainly" to avoid taking all of them together. Michele assured the surgeon she "was going to try and minimize the amount of medication that she took."
¶10 Two days later, MacNeill drove Michele and Alexis to the surgical facility for the operation. The surgery lasted all day, but the surgeon told Alexis that he was happy with the results. Michele was "in a little bit of pain and groggy" and "wanted to stay the night at the hospital." MacNeill returned to drive Michele and Alexis home. When Michele said she wanted to stay the night, he became angry and told Michele that they needed to go home. But he acquiesced when the surgeon explained that he prefers to keep his patients overnight. The surgeon released Michele the next morning.
¶11 On the day Michele returned home, Alexis acted as her caregiver, giving her medications, dressing
her wounds, and helping her to the bathroom, because Michele was "effectively blind." Alexis kept a log of Michele's medications on a pad of paper and included the time she took each pill and the dose. Alexis also kept a log of Michele's vital signs and food intake in what she called her "little black book." She later combined the two logs and placed the pad of paper in a drawer next to Michele's bed. That evening MacNeill insisted that Alexis leave the room because he would be taking over Michele's care. Alexis left and slept in her youngest sister's room.
¶12 The next morning Alexis entered her mother's room and noticed that she "appeared to be very sedated." When Alexis tried to wake Michele, she stirred a bit but did not wake up. Alexis asked MacNeill what had happened, and he responded that he "must have given her too much medicine." When Alexis pressed further, he said he had given Michele Lortab
, Valium, and Ambien, at which point Michele threw up. He then gave her Phenergan, Percocet, and more Lortab. Alexis told her father that he was "not to give her any more medicine," because she (Alexis) was "taking over."
¶13 Later that evening Michele told Alexis that MacNeill "kept giving [her] medication" and "telling [her] to swallow," and when she started to throw up he gave her more and more medication. Michele stated that she did not want MacNeill to give her any more medicine; she felt each different pill "so that if [MacNeill] tried to give her anything, she would know what he was giving her."
¶14 Alexis continued to care for her mother. Once Michele's bandages came off, her recovery accelerated. By April 10 Michele was able to walk around and care for herself. She took no Valium
, Phenergan, or Ambien. Because Michele was sensitive to medications, she tried to take less than the prescribed dosage. Although Michele was tapering off her medications, MacNeill called the surgeon and asked him to refill Michele's prescriptions for Percocet and Phenergan, which he did at a follow-up appointment. Alexis attended the appointment with Michele, then returned to school.
¶15 The next day MacNeill took the couple's younger daughters to school. Before leaving for school, one of the girls entered Michele's room and found her mother sitting on the couch in front of her TV. The girl noticed "nothing odd about [Michele's] behavior." The two "had a perfectly ... normal conversation" before the girl said goodbye and went to school. Alexis called at 8:45 a.m. and Michele said she was "doing great" and planned to pick the girls up from school. She did not sound confused, and her speech did not sound slurred. At 9:15 a.m., MacNeill called Alexis and left a voicemail urging her to call her mother and tell her to stay in bed. Alexis found this strange in light of her earlier phone conversation with her mother. Alexis called her m...
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