State v. Nightingale
| Citation | 2023 ME 71 |
| Docket Number | Aro-22-415 |
| Decision Date | 09 November 2023 |
| Parties | STATE OF MAINE v. BOBBY L. NIGHTINGALE |
| Court | Supreme Judicial Court of Maine (US) |
Argued: September 14, 2023
Verne E. Paradie, Jr., Esq. (orally), Lewiston, for appellant Bobby L. Nightingale
Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Leanne Robbin, Asst. Atty Gen. (orally), Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine
Panel STANFILL, C.J., and MEAD, JABAR, HORTON, CONNORS, LAWRENCE and DOUGLAS, JJ.
[¶1] Bobby L. Nightingale appeals from a judgment of conviction of two counts of murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A) (2023); a count of criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon (Class C), 17-A M.R.S. §§ 209(1), 1604(5)(A) (2023); and two counts of possession of a firearm by a prohibited person (Class C), 15 M.R.S. § 393 (1)(A-1) (2018),[1] entered by the trial court (Aroostook County, Nelson, J.) after a jury trial on the murder charges and a bench trial on the other charges. Nightingale contends that the court erred by denying his request to present evidence to the jury that a State investigator had monitored telephone calls between Nightingale and his attorney while Nightingale was in pretrial detention, by not granting a mistrial based on a prosecutor's improper comments made during the State's closing arguments, and by giving a jury instruction on accomplice liability when it was not generated by the evidence. Nightingale also appeals from his life sentences on the murder charges on the ground that the court failed to consider comparable sentences in its sentencing analysis. We affirm the judgment in all respects.
[¶2] "[T]he jury could rationally have found the following facts beyond a reasonable doubt." State v. Athayde, 2022 ME 41, ¶ 2, 277 A.3d 387.
[¶3] In the early morning of August 13, 2019, the Aroostook County Sheriff's Department received a 9-1-1 call from a resident of Castle Hill who reported hearing gunshots after seeing that a pickup truck had stopped along the road in front of his house. When officers responded to the 9-1-1 call, they found Roger Ellis and Allen Curtis dead inside Ellis's red pickup truck. An all-terrain vehicle (ATV), later identified as belonging to Nightingale, was wedged under the truck's front bumper.
[¶4] Ellis and Curtis had died of gunshot wounds, having been shot multiple times. All of the shots had been fired through the passenger side window. Spent cartridge cases of two different calibers-.45 and .380-were found at the scene. Six bullets were recovered from the interior of the truck. The person who made the 9-1-1 call saw something pass in front of the truck's headlights and then saw something pass the other way and heard multiple gunshots. Another person in the area heard the noise of a loud ATV traveling fast and then heard multiple gunshots and someone shouting an expletive.
[¶5] Earlier in the night that they were killed, Ellis and Curtis had attended a party at a friend's home to celebrate Curtis's birthday. A few days before, Ellis and the friend had helped Nightingale's girlfriend move out of the home she and Nightingale had shared. While Ellis and the friend were helping the girlfriend move her belongings to Ellis's truck, Nightingale remained inside the home, extremely upset and "screaming." The girlfriend camped out in the woods behind the friend's home after leaving the home that she had shared with Nightingale. The next day, Nightingale went to the friend's home and threatened the girlfriend. The friend's husband responded by brandishing an axe handle, and Nightingale drew a firearm. After the friend threatened to call 9-1-1, Nightingale left.
[¶6] Initially, the law enforcement officers investigating the murders were unable to find Nightingale. Nightingale left a voicemail for one of the officers indicating that he was "running" from the people who had committed the murders. When officers located Nightingale, on August 17, 2019, he tried to flee but was apprehended and placed under arrest. When he was apprehended, Nightingale was carrying a backpack containing a .380 Jimenez handgun. The gun was later subjected to ballistics testing and determined to have left the markings found on the fired .380 cartridge cases recovered from the scene of the murders. Also in the backpack was a letter Nightingale had written to his attorney that accused others of killing Ellis and Curtis. After his arrest, Nightingale told an investigator that "two Mexicans" had kidnapped him and implied that they murdered Ellis and Curtis. Nightingale had also sent text messages to acquaintances stating that another person had stolen his ATV and committed the murders. On the day after the murders, Nightingale's girlfriend texted him: "[I do not know] why you wanted to do this." He responded,
[¶7] In a search of Nightingale's residence, officers discovered a spent .45 cartridge casing that further testing indicated had been fired from the same gun that fired the .45 casings found at the murder scene. However, no .45-caliber weapon was ever found. Data from Nightingale's cell phone account revealed that around the time of the murders his phone traveled from the vicinity of Nightingale's home in Mapleton to the vicinity of where Ellis and Curtis were found dead inside Ellis's truck.
[¶8] On October 10, 2019, an Aroostook County grand jury issued an eight-count indictment against Nightingale.[2] At his arraignment, Nightingale pleaded not guilty.
[¶9] On July 6, 2022, Nightingale filed a motion for discovery or dismissal of the State's case pursuant to Maine Rule of Unified Criminal Procedure 16(a). He asserted that while he was in jail awaiting trial, law enforcement officers had listened "to one or more phone calls between [him] and his attorneys." He sought discovery on which calls had been monitored and disclosure of any notes or memoranda made in the course of listening to them, or dismissal of the charges against him. The State opposed the motion, asserting that it had fully "complied with its discovery obligations." The State's opposition included affidavits from the prosecutor and the Maine State Police investigator assigned to monitor Nightingale's telephone calls. After holding a nontestimonial hearing on the motion, the court denied it, concluding that "[p]rudent steps were promptly taken by the prosecutors to address the inadvertent disclosure" and that there was no evidence that there were notes or other documentation of any calls between Nightingale and his attorney.
[¶10] In mid-August 2022, the court held a jury trial on the murder charges. The court admitted in evidence several photos of the scene of the murders, objects found at the scene of the murders, photos of messages that Nightingale sent to acquaintances regarding the night of the murders, and the letter from Nightingale to his attorney found in Nightingale's backpack. The State introduced testimony from a DNA expert, a detective who obtained cell phone record information to track the location of Nightingale's phone on the night of the murders, officers involved in Nightingale's arrest and detention, and acquaintances of Nightingale. The State presented evidence that Nightingale had stated in text messages and other communications to others that his ATV had been stolen and used in connection with the murders and that he had told an investigator he had been kidnapped by "two Mexicans" who committed the murders.[3]
[¶11] Nightingale did not present evidence or testify at trial. However, he sought to question, in the presence of the jury, the Maine State Police investigator who had listened to Nightingale's jail telephone calls, specifically on whether the investigator had kept any notes of the calls. The court denied the request, pointing out that it had already determined that the State had not acted improperly and had complied with its discovery obligations regarding the calls. Relying on Maine Rule of Evidence 403, the court indicated that
[¶12] During its initial closing argument, the State summarized the evidence and said that after evaluating the evidence the jury would Nightingale objected and orally moved for a mistrial based on prosecutorial error. The court denied the motion. Later, in its rebuttal argument, the State encouraged the jury to focus on "the good evidence, not the trash evidence or the speculation evidence," and commented on the jury's civic responsibility before urging the jury to find Nightingale guilty.
[¶13] The State asked the court to instruct the jury on accomplice liability, pointing out that two guns were used in the murder, that the one found in Nightingale's backpack might not have been the one that fired the fatal shots, and that Nightingale had repeatedly stated that others had committed the murders. Nightingale objected to the instruction. The court overruled the objection, citing the evidence that the murders were committed with two different weapons and the witness testimony about two shapes passing in front of the truck headlights, and included an accomplice liability instruction in its instructions to the jury.
[¶14] The jury found Nightingale guilty of both counts of murder. In a separate bench trial, the court found Nightingale guilty of Count 4, criminal threatening with a dangerous...
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