State v. Stackpole

• Decision Date: 12 December 1975
• Citation: 349 A.2d 185
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Michael D. STACKPOLE.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 185

349 A.2d 185

STATE of Maine v. Michael D. STACKPOLE.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Dec. 12, 1975.

Charles K. Leadbetter, Chadbourn H. Smith, Asst. Attys. Gen., Augusta, Anthony J. Cirillo, County Atty., Skowhegan, for plaintiff.

Eames & Eames by Donald E. Eames, Skowhegan, Bernard R. Cratty, Waterville, for defendant.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEATHERBEE, POMEROY, WERNICK, ARCHIBALD and DELAHANTY, JJ.

DELAHANTY, Justice.

Michael D. Stackpole was indicted by the Somerset County Grand Jury for a felonious homicide punishable as murder. From a jury verdict finding him guilty of that crime, he has appealed. We deny the appeal.

The trial jury which decided the defendant's guilt was entitled to find the following facts.

The defendant, an eighteen-year-old farmhand with a seventh-grade education and an estimated I.Q. of 76, was a second cousin and acquaintance of the victim, a ten-year-old female named Roxanne Gilkey. Shortly after 3:00 p. m. on January 31, 1972, on a clear, but cold day, the defendant visited the home of Emma Williams, the victim's grandmother, with whom Roxanne was then living. Roxanne asked Mrs. Williams's permission to go for a ride in Stackpole's snowmobile, and the pair left the Williams house. With the exception of the defendant, Mrs. Williams was the last person who saw Roxanne alive.

Roxanne's body was discovered by a search party, tied to a tree in a wooded area known as Baird's Bog at approximately 8:30 p. m. that same day. The temperature at that time was approximately zero degrees. The victim's hands were tied together with baling twine, which had then been wrapped tightly around her neck and secured to the tree. She had been struck twice in the head. The body was unclothed from the waist down, although the victim's slacks were draped across her legs. Her boots were lying in the snow about three feet from the body, her leotards were hanging in a nearby tree, and her underpants, both sides torn out of them, were found in the snow at a distance of seventeen feet from the body. The leather belt which Roxanne had been wearing lay in two pieces near the foot of the body.

Roxanne's death was caused by an acute heart failure brought on by a combination of strangulation and exposure to the elements. Although the twine around her neck was insufficient to cause immediate death by strangulation, it would have been effective to bring about death over a longer time period. That Roxanne was left partially underssed in sub-freezing temperatures served to hasten the process.

The defendant appeared at the Bemis farm, where he was employed parttime, at approximately 4:30 p. m. While he was there, Roxanne's grandmother, concerned about the girl's whereabouts, called on the phone and Stackpole spoke briefly with her. When he hung up the phone, Mrs. Bemis asked the defendant about Roxanne, and his only response was, 'She might be dead now.'

The defendant was first questioned by police officers concerning Roxanne on the evening of January 31, before her body was found. He admitted having taken her for a snowmobile ride that afternoon, but said that he had left her with a 'hippy' who came along on another snowmobile and offered to give Roxanne a ride home after Stackpole's vehicle developed engine problems. After the body was discovered, Stackpole was again questioned, this time by two officers in a police car, with the defendant's father also present. It was on this occasion, after he had been given Miranda ¹ warnings by one of the officers, and with some minimal prompting by his father, that the defendant volunteered, 'I did it; I didn't mean to do it; I don't know why I did it.' Moments later, in response to a question from one of the officers, the defendant admitted that he had 'killed' Roxanne Gilkey. He was then placed under arrest.

At trial the defendant offered an exculpatory scenario as to what had occurred between the victim and himself in the Baird's Bog area. The essence of Stackpole's story was that the ten-year-old Roxanne had made sexual overtures toward him. The defendant claimed that he protested, but that Roxanne taunted him. Her remarks, Stackpole testified, angered him, and caused him to strike her in the head with his hand, tie her to the tree, and abandon her at Baird's Bog.

Defendant's appeal assigns the following four principal errors to the trial court:

(1) Omission of a cautionary jury instruction as to the 'gruesomeness' of certain photographs which were admitted into evidence;

(2) Improper expression of an opinion regarding the facts of the case in the charge to the jury;

(3) Instruction to the jury that the burden was on the defendant to reduce the charge from murder to manslaughter; and,

(4) Omission of an instruction on involuntary manslaughter.

I.

The ommission of an instruction as to the photographs.

The defendant argues that the presiding Justice should have included in his charge to the jury, a cautionary instruction regarding two 'gruesome' photographs which were admitted into evidence. The defendant failed to request such an instruction from the presiding Justice, nor did he interpose a specific objection to the charge as given. ² The omission of such an instruction would be grounds for reversal only in the rare circumstance that it amounted to an 'obvious' error 'affecting substantial rights.' M.R.Crim.P. 52(b). State v. Armstrong, Me., 344 A.2d 42, 49 (1975); State v. Scott, Me., 343 A.2d 177, 178 (1975); State v. Collins, Me., 297 A.2d 620, 631 (1972).

The photographs were relevant to the issues before the court and their probative value was not outweighed by the danger of prejudice to the defendant. This Court has repeatedly held that the admissibility of potentially prejudicial photographic evidence is a matter within the discretion of the trial court. State v. Berube, Me., 297 A.2d 884, 888 (1972); State v. Rollins, Me., 295 A.2d 914, 917 (1972); State v. Coty, Me., 229 A.2d 205, 214 (1967). One of the photographs, which depicted the neck and head of the victim, was introduced for the purpose of aiding the jury to understand the testimony of the State's medical expert as to the cause of death. When this photograph was introduced, the presiding Justice cautioned the jury that they were to consider the photograph only as it related to the testimony of the medical expert. ³ The trial court's prompt and apropriate admonition was entirely adequate to mitigate any asserted prejudice that the introduction of the photograph might have worked on the defendant. The second photograph depicts the victim's body and the immediate surroundings at the scene of the crime. The presiding Justice did not abuse his discretion in admitting the photographs. The defendant's argument that he was substantially prejudiced by the absence of a jury instruction as to the photographs is rejected.

II.

The allegedly improper expression of opinion by the

presiding justice as to the facts of the case.

The presiding Justice gave, inter alia, the following instruction to the jury:

Now in Maine, unlike other states that have murder in the first, second and third degree, we don't. We have when there's an unlawful killing, unjustified either because of self-defense, and there's no such issue here, or because of not guilty by reason of insanity, and that's been removed; if a person is unlawfully killed, the defendant is guilty of either murder or manslaughter.

Appellant claims that this portion of the charge contains an expression of opinion by the trial court on the facts of the case in violation of 14 M.R.S.A. § 1105. ⁴ The defendant isolates the phrases 'when there's an unlawful killing'; 'there's no such issue here'; 'that's been removed'; and 'the defendant is guilty of either murder or manslaughter,' and asserts that the combined effect is an impermissible expression of the trial court's opinion. We reject this sort of piecemeal attack on the presiding Justice's charge. We have consistently held that the propriety of an instruction must be analyzed by looking at the charge as a whole rather than taking individual statements out of context. Scott, supra, 343 A.2d at 179 (1975); State v. Devoe, Me., 301 A.2d 541, 546 (1973).

The jurors were made sharply aware of the fact that the responsibility of decision was theirs and theirs alone. We said in State v. Jewell, Me., 285 A.2d 847, 852 (1972), where as in the case at bar, the defendant argued that the trial court had improperly expressed the opinion that the defendant was guilty, 'We have carefully reviewed the charge and find that no reasonable jury could properly infer from its language any such expression of opinion in violation of 14 M.R.S.A., § 1105.' ⁵

III.

The instruction that placed the burden on the defendant to

reduce the charge from murder to voluntary manslaughter.

The trial court gave instructions on the elements of both murder and voluntary manslaughter, ⁶ and explained that, if the jury concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had unlawfully killed the victim, they might then find him guilty of either of these offenses. ⁷ The court additionally instructed the jury that the burden was on the defendant to prove, 'by the greater weight of the evidence,' that he acted in the heat of passion in order to reduce the offense from murder to voluntary manslaughter. This instruction embodied the then Maine rule that the State having proved, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant had committed a voluntary and intentional homicide, not justifiable or excusable, the defendant was then required to prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the homicide had been committed in the heat of passion on sudden provocation in order to reduce the offense from murder to voluntary manslaughter. In Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975), ⁸ this rule was held to violate the Fourteenth Amendment in that it failed to comport with the requirement, inherent in the Due...