State v. Mahaney

• Decision Date: 01 December 1981
• Citation: 437 A.2d 613
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Gary MAHANEY and David Bradbury.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 613

437 A.2d 613

STATE of Maine v. Gary MAHANEY and David Bradbury.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued Sept. 15, 1981.

Decided Dec. 1, 1981.

Charles K. Leadbetter and William R. Stokes, Asst. Attys. Gen. (orally), Augusta, for plaintiff.

Daniel G. Lilley (orally), Portland, for Mahaney.

Richardson, Tyler & Troubh, Thomas L. Goodwin (orally), Portland, for Bradbury.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and GODFREY, NICHOLS, ROBERTS, CARTER and WATHEN, JJ.

WATHEN, Justice.

Appellants were indicted in November, 1979 by a Grand Jury in Aroostook County for the 1974 murder of Randy Blanchard. ¹ Venue having been transferred to Kennebec County, jury trial was held and both defendants were convicted of murder. This appeal follows their convictions. We deny the appeals.

The issues raised on appeal are: (1) whether defendants were unfairly restricted in their cross examination of a firearms expert; (2) whether the admission of statements of the deceased that he thought he was going to be killed was harmful error; (3) whether the court's supplementary instructions requiring the jury to continue deliberating after it had reported a deadlock were impermissibly coercive; (4) whether Gary Mahaney should have been provided with a transcript of the Grand Jury proceedings; (5) whether the trial judge erred in instructing the jury that it could find David Bradbury guilty as a principal in the second degree; (6) whether Bradbury was denied his right to a speedy trial; and (7) whether there was sufficient evidence to support the verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The essential facts, as the jury would have been warranted in finding them, can be briefly summarized as follows. At the time of the homicide in 1974 a feud was in progress in the Mars Hill area between the Smith family and the Mahaney family. The victim, Randy Blanchard, a friend and associate of both factions found himself deeply embroiled in the dispute. He had participated in the burning of Gary Mahaney's trailer a few months prior to the homicide. Blanchard spent the evening of December 14 drinking beer with both defendants. The Smiths were also looking for him on that night. Testimony indicated that Blanchard was afraid of both defendant Mahaney and Jeff Smith.

The body of Randy Blanchard was found in his car on December 16, 1974, in a remote area of Westfield, Maine, called the burntlands. The examining pathologist recovered six bullets from the body and attributed the death to gunshot wounds to the head. The estimated time of death was between midnight and 2:00 A.M. on December 15, 1974.

The State presented Corporal William J. Manduca, a firearms identification expert who testified that in his opinion the murder weapon was a gun shown by other evidence to have been purchased by Jonathan Spicer, loaned to Gary Mahaney's brother in July, 1974, and returned to Spicer by another of Mahaney's brothers in 1977. Two defense experts testified that the Spicer gun was not the murder weapon.

The State also presented evidence of admissions made by the defendants several years after the body of Blanchard had been found. Defendants' statements, introduced at trial through other witnesses, acknowledged that either one or the other of them had shot Randy Blanchard. According to the witnesses, Mahaney at one point said Bradbury had shot Blanchard, and another time said that he himself had shot a man and left him in a car in the burntlands. Another witness testified that Bradbury claimed he had shot Blanchard. Other relevant facts will be noted hereafter in conjunction with the discussion of the issues raised in this appeal.

Restriction of Cross-Examination.

Defendants argue that they were unfairly restricted in their opportunity to attack the credibility of Corporal William Manduca through cross examination of Manduca and through direct testimony of an investigating officer in another homicide case. Manduca, a State firearms identification expert for thirteen years, testified that in his opinion the bullets extracted from Randy Blanchard's body had been fired from the .357 Magnum which had been given to one of Gary Mahaney's brothers in July 1974 and returned to its owner by another brother in 1977. Manduca's identification of the murder weapon was subsequently contradicted by two defense firearms identification experts.

On cross examination, Manduca was asked by defense counsel:

"Q. Do you recall any instances where you testified under oath, as you're doing here today, identifying a weapon as having fired a particular projectile and subsequently found out you were wrong?"

"A. No, sir.

"Q. Do you remember the Poitraw homicide.

"A. Yes, sir, very clearly.

"Q. Are you saying that that didn't happen in the Poitraw homicide?

"A. No, sir, it did not."

The court sustained the State's objection to that line of questioning citing M.R.Evid. 403. "I am only going to try this case, not on that ...."

Defendants argue that the trial justice erred in curtailing further inquiry of Manduca concerning his testimony in the unrelated homicide case. Because Manduca was the only expert identifying the gun traced to Mahaney's brothers as the murder weapon and because his identification was disputed by two other firearms identification experts, defendants argue that an attack on Manduca's credibility was highly important to the establishment of their defense.

M.R.Evid. 403 permits a trial judge to exercise his discretion and exclude even relevant evidence

"if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence."

See State v. Poland, Me., 426 A.2d 896, 898 (1981); State v. DiPietro, Me., 420 A.2d 1233, 1235 (1980). In making its 403 determination the Court asked defense counsel if they were prepared to put on evidence of what happened in the Poitraw case. At three points in the record, counsel for the defendants made what they deemed an offer of proof regarding the matter. First, counsel stated that "more than one police official" had told him that Manduca had made "some conclusions under oath that had to do with firearms identification ... and his conclusions were completely in error." Next he stated that "various police officials" had indicated to him that Poitraw had been indicted for murder on the basis of Manduca's testimony before the Grand Jury and had subsequently pled to a lesser offense when Manduca switched his testimony. Finally, when the State sought to attack the qualifications of a defense firearms expert by questioning him on his participation at another trial, defendants renewed their offer of proof, stating that Detective Camick was willing to testify about Manduca's role in the Poitraw case:

"I would like to add to that offer of proof by indicating that ... I have inquired of the investigating officer in that case who has informed me that in fact Corporal Manduca misidentified the weapon in that case, turned around and identified another weapon after he had misidentified and testified to another weapon in that case."

There was nothing in the offer of proof that could enhance the probative value of the proposed line of questioning. There was no indication of the source of Detective Camick's information; neither was there any indication that the evidence proffered to rebut Manduca's denial would be admissible. An offer of proof must not only detail the proposed testimony but must also support the admissibility of that testimony. State v. Mishne, Me., 427 A.2d 450, 455-56 (1981); State v. Flemming, Me., 409 A.2d 220, 224 (1979).

The record before us does not justify a finding that the trial justice abused his discretion by excluding testimony of Manduca's alleged misidentification of a firearm in the Poitraw case. The offer of proof was not adequate to support the admission of the excluded testimony. Moreover, Corporal Manduca had qualified as an expert in Maine courts approximately four hundred times. Therefore, even if the proffered testimony were admitted and believed, it would merely have demonstrated that once out of those four hundred times, Manduca had made a mistake. ² Unlike a showing of bias or prejudice, the probative value of this type of discreditation is not so great that it substantially outweighs the danger of misleading the jury and the undue delay that would be occasioned by the introduction of extensive evidence of the other trial. The trial justice therefore did not abuse his discretion in balancing relevance against potential delay and confusion. While the record does not articulate extensively the trial justice's analysis, it does make clear that the justice considered the relevance of the proffered testimony as against the delay and confusion resulting from a trial within a trial. See State v. Poland, supra.

Admission of Deceased's Statements.

Defendant Mahaney argues that the admission of statements of the deceased that he was afraid he was going to be killed and from which it could be inferred that he thought defendant Mahaney was going to kill him constituted harmful error. Although we agree that the admission of the statements was error, we find that error harmless.

Donny Rideout testified that at 9:30 P.M. on December 14, he had had a conversation with Randy Blanchard about the burning of Gary Mahaney's trailer, in which, according to Rideout, both he and Blanchard had participated. Rideout testified that Blanchard said "he thought someone was going to get shot right off, and he thought it was going to be him." Initially the court admitted the evidence over defense objections as proof of the corpus delicti and as "evidence of the motive of the person who may ultimately have committed the crime." Later the State sought to introduce a statement through Randy Blanchard's mother that Blanchard had been carrying a gun because he was afraid. The...