State v. Williams

• Decision Date: 03 November 2020
• Docket Number: Docket: Cum-19-399
• Citation: 241 A.3d 835
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. John D. WILLIAMS
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

241 A.3d 835

STATE of Maine

v.John D. WILLIAMS

Docket: Cum-19-399

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued September 15, 2020

Decided: November 3, 2020

Revised: December 1, 2020

Verne E. Paradie, Jr., Esq. (orally), Paradie & Rabasco, Lewiston, for appellant John D. Williams

Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine

Panel: MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HUMPHREY, HORTON, and CONNORS, JJ.

HUMPHREY, J.

[¶1] On an April night in 2018, a deputy sheriff attempted to arrest John D. Williams on drug charges outside a home in Norridgewock. Early the following morning, the deputy sheriff's body was found on the lawn of that home. Williams now appeals from the judgment of conviction entered by the court (Cumberland County, Mullen , J. ) after a jury found him guilty of intentional or knowing murder of the deputy sheriff. See 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A) (2020). Williams raises three issues in this appeal challenging the court's admission of in-court demonstrations of the possible circumstances of the shooting, the court's partial denial of a motion to suppress statements he made to detectives after his arrest, and, finally, the court's sentencing proceedings and the length of the sentence it imposed. We affirm the judgment and the sentence.

I. BACKGROUND

A. Facts

[¶2] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the jury rationally could have found the following facts beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Ouellette , 2019 ME 75, ¶ 11, 208 A.3d 399.

[¶3] On April 21, 2018, Somerset County Deputy Sheriff Corporal Eugene Cole and another deputy stopped Williams's car because they saw that it was being driven by his girlfriend, whose driving privileges they knew were suspended. Williams was a passenger in the vehicle. Williams's girlfriend was arrested for operating a vehicle while her license was suspended. The deputies determined that Williams could not drive the vehicle from the scene because he appeared to be under the influence of drugs and the vehicle's insurance had lapsed. Williams left the scene with a friend who arrived to pick him up.

[¶4] Arrangements were made for the car to be towed from the scene. When illegal drugs were found during a subsequent search of the vehicle, a supervising officer authorized Corporal Cole and the other deputy to arrest Williams on drug charges.

[¶5] On the night of April 24, 2018, Williams was using drugs at a friend's house when he asked another friend to drive him to a home in Norridgewock where he had lived for a period of time when he was growing up. Williams wanted to borrow the homeowner's car to transport some of his guns to a location in Old Town because he had to be in court in Massachusetts the following day and he wanted to make sure his weapons were safe. The friend agreed to drive Williams to Norridgewock.

[¶6] While parked at the home in Norridgewock, Williams and his friend saw Corporal Cole's police truck slow down as it passed the house. Williams removed a duffel bag containing his guns from the trunk of his friend's car and placed them next to the vehicle he planned to borrow. The friend then left.

[¶7] Williams climbed the front steps of the home and tried to enter, but the door was locked. At that point, Corporal Cole approached Williams from behind and asked if he was John Williams. Once Williams confirmed his identity, Corporal Cole told Williams that he was under arrest and attempted to grab his wrist to take him into custody. Williams pulled away and drew a 9mm pistol from his waistband. Corporal Cole stepped back and then slipped and fell on a grassy slope. Williams shot Corporal Cole once in the right side of the neck at close range.

[¶8] Williams fled in Corporal Cole's police truck and drove to a nearby Cumberland Farms store, where he stole a bottle of water, cigarettes, and a lighter. The store clerk called 9-1-1, and the dispatcher notified another deputy to respond to the store.

[¶9] After Williams left the store, he called a friend and told him that he had shot Corporal Cole. Williams then asked his friend to meet him on Martin Stream Road, where Williams hid the police truck behind a house. As the friend was driving to meet Williams, he saw a deputy sheriff at the nearby Cumberland Farms store and pulled over to tell him that the person who shot Corporal Cole was on Martin Stream Road. The friend then continued on to meet Williams.

[¶10] When the friend arrived, Williams asked if he could use his car. The friend refused, and Williams asked to borrow his cell phone, saying that he was going to go into the woods, use the phone to make a confession, and then kill himself. The friend let Williams take his phone and then dropped him off near some train tracks about a half-mile away on Martin Stream Road.

[¶11] The State Police Tactical Team was called in to locate both Corporal Cole and Williams. Based on the information that Williams's friend had provided, team members located Corporal Cole's police truck. Law enforcement also set up a command post at a fire station in Norridgewock. The fire station was across the street from the house where Corporal Cole had been shot.

[¶12] In the morning hours of April 25, 2018, the owner of the Norridgewock house went outside and saw a body on her lawn. She screamed and called for help, attracting the attention of officers at the fire station, who came over and saw Corporal Cole's body, with an apparent gunshot wound to the neck. Members of the State Police Evidence Response Team arrived and found a bullet and casing on the lawn and a bulletproof vest, shotgun, holster, and a backpack containing ammunition in a car on the property.

[¶13] Corporal Cole's body was taken to the State Medical Examiner's Office. An autopsy concluded that the cause of death was a close-contact gunshot wound to the right side of the neck below the ear "which perforated the cervical spinal cord."

[¶14] Meanwhile, a manhunt for Williams was underway. On April 28, 2018, officers came upon a remote camp in the area of Bear Mountain Road and set up a perimeter. The officers heard a banging noise and saw Williams come out of the camp shirtless, carrying a clear plastic tote, and wearing only a pair of long johns. Officers quickly surrounded Williams. He was taken to the ground and placed under arrest.

[¶15] While placing handcuffs on Williams, one of the officers punched Williams in the head "two or three times" when it appeared that he was refusing to move his right hand.¹ One officer pulled down Williams's long johns to make sure he did not have a gun in his waistband and, observing that Williams had defecated, removed the long johns. A photo was taken showing an officer pulling Williams's head up by his hair while he was lying on his stomach. The officers then reported to the command post that they had Williams in custody.

[¶16] After approximately twenty minutes, a tactical team arrived and walked Williams out of the woods.² Williams remained naked and barefoot while waiting for the tactical team to arrive and for most of the ten-minute walk, but he was wrapped in a blanket before exiting the woods. Two Major Crimes Unit detectives who met Williams near the edge of the woods said they would like to speak with him, and Williams agreed. The detectives—who had not been involved in the arrest—took custody of Williams from the arresting officers and walked him to their cruiser.

[¶17] The detectives drove Williams to the Waterville Police Department. He was alert and responsive to the detective's questions about his physical condition, reporting that while he was not injured,³ he was cold and hungry, and his hands hurt.

[¶18] The detectives brought Williams to an interrogation room at the police department, where he was examined by emergency medical personnel and medically cleared. The detectives then interviewed Williams and gave him food, water, fruit punch, and clothing. The detectives began the interview by reading Williams his Miranda rights and confirmed that he understood them. Approximately nine minutes after waiving his Miranda rights, Williams confessed to killing Corporal Cole. Later, approximately ninety minutes into the interview, Williams described and participated in a reenactment of the shooting with the detectives and other officers.

B. Procedural History

[¶19] On April 25, 2018, Williams was charged by complaint with intentional or knowing murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A), and with the consent of the parties, the court ordered that the case be transferred from Somerset County to Cumberland County on April 30, 2018. M.R.U. Crim. P. 21(b)(2). Later, on June 7, 2018, the Cumberland County Grand Jury handed down an indictment charging Williams with intentional or knowing murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A). Williams pleaded not guilty.

[¶20] On August 27, 2018, Williams moved to suppress his confession and other statements to the detectives, including the reenactment of the shooting, arguing that they were not voluntarily given because he was fatigued, hungry, suffering from drug withdrawal, and fearful for his safety because he had been "beat[en] and pummeled" by officers during his arrest. The court held hearings on Williams's motion to suppress on February 28, March 1, and April 8, 2019. The court granted the motion in part, suppressing only (1) statements made by Williams later in the interview, (2) Williams's participation in the reenactment of the shooting at the police station, and (3) the statements Williams made during that reenactment and afterward.⁴

[¶21] A six-day jury trial took place in June 2019. During the trial, the court allowed the State to introduce expert testimony from Investigator Larry Morrill of the Office of the State Fire Marshal describing how the shooting may have occurred. Based on Morrill's testimony, the court permitted the State to conduct a courtroom reenactment of the shooting. Before the reenactment began, the...