State v. Wyman

• Decision Date: 12 November 1970
• Citation: 270 A.2d 460
• Parties: STATE of Maine v. Joseph A. WYMAN.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 460

270 A.2d 460

STATE of Maine v. Joseph A. WYMAN.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Nov. 12, 1970.

Robert T. Coffin, County Atty., Portland, for plaintiff.

Grover G. Alexander, Gray, for defendant.

Before DUFRESNE, C. J., and WEBBER, MARDEN, and WEATHERBEE, JJ.

DUFRESNE, Chief Justice.

Defendant Wyman was indicted under 17 M.R.S.A., § 2656 for the crime of assault upon one William H. Thurston while armed with a dangerous weapon, to wit, an automobile, with intent to kill and slay the said Thurston. Tried before a Cumberland County jury, the defendant was found guilty as charged, sentenced to a term in the Maine State Prison, from which judgment of conviction he has appealed to this Court. The appeal must be sustained.

In his points on appeal, the defendant Wyman claims error in the admission of evidence at trial in the following particulars, (1) when the Court below permitted the State over objection to introduce the circumstances surrounding the defendant's manner of driving of the automobile, its speed and its near-running down of other persons sometime following the alleged assault upon Thurston, and (2) when the Court allowed the prosecutor to bring out Wyman's marital status, again over strenuous objections, where the evidence unequivocally showed that the defendant prior to the criminal conduct with which he was charged in the indictment was on the campus of Gorham State College for the purpose of picking up his 'date' and was more or less flirting with other girl students at that institution.

We discuss the evidence only to the extent it is necessary to understand the issues raised on appeal. Through several eyewitnesses, the investigating officer and Thurston, the victim of the alleged assault, the State developed before the jury the following facts: the defendant on May 3, 1968 shortly before 6:30 p. m. was on the Gorham State College campus driving a white Corvette which belonged to his friend who accompanied him on this occasion. Since it was too early to call on a girl-friend student with whom he had made a date for the evening, Wyman drove toward the dormitories where he engaged in conversation with female students who had been attracted to the car from their respective room-windows overlooking the area, to the extent that one of the girls was on her way to the car when a loud and vulgar exchange of words of the cursing and swearing variety took place between Thurston and Wyman. The evidence discloses that at the car, there was some physical contact between Wyman and Thurston; whether Thurston was punched in the face or whether his face was pushed out of the car was for jury determination. At any rate, these events were merely preliminary to the alleged criminal conduct charged against the defendant Wyman. Once Thurston's head was out of the car, Wyman started to drive away while Thurston who was then standing in the open roadway was challenging him to come back and was hurling vulgar language at the receding automobile. Instead of leaving the area, Wyman turned the car around and was moving slowly in the direction of Turston, when, so the witnesses testified, at a short distance away from him, Wyman gunned the car directly at Thurston who, by reason of the impact, was capapulted over the windshield to the ground. His subsequent transportation to the hospital revealed that the injuries suffered were not serious. The defendant denied that he intentionally ran Thurston down with the car. The State, in order to show purposeful action or intent on the part of Wyman in the Thurston case, offered evidence of subsequent similar conduct within an hour of the alleged assault on Thurston through the testimony of another student at Gorham State College. Charles Gordon testified that between 7:15 and 7:30 p. m. of May 3, 1968 when he and John Craig were walking on campus in the Russell Hall parking lot area, so-called, the white Corvette operated by the defendant was coming towards them accelerating its rate of speed to about 30 or 35 miles per hour until such time as both had to jump out of its way to avoid being struck, the car swerving when it reached them. Gordon stated that Wyman hollered 'Do you want to be No. 2?' The car was said to have missed Gordon by 3 feet and Craig by 1 1/2 or 2 feet. It came close enough to scare the witness.

As stated in State v. Acheson, 1898, 91 Me. 240, 39 A. 570, '(i)t is an elementary principle in the law of evidence that when a respondent stands charged with the commission of a particular criminal act, evidence that he did a similar thing at some other time is generally deemed irrelevant and inadmissible.' But evidence of conduct of precisely similar nature to that charged, even though not connected with it and inadmissible as such to prove the commission of the act involved in the substantive charge, is uniformly received for the limited and specific purpose of aiding to determine the quality of the act and the legal character of the offense by illustrating the intent with which the act was committed. In the instant case, similar conduct of the defendant in the driving of his car within a relatively short time of the events of the main charge, after he had been twice ordered from the campus and while still on campus grounds, coupled with the driver's statement 'Do you want to be No. 2?,' was relevant evidence for consideration of the jury to the limited extent of its shedding some light upon the intent of the operator of the automobile in the Thurston episode. Introduction of this type of evidence should always be carefully guarded, and the Court in the instant case fully instructed the jury respecting the limited purpose for which this evidence was received. Where the intent of a party forms a part of the matter in issue, evidence of other similar acts, not in issue, may be introduced, provided they tend to establish the intent of the party in doing the acts in question. See, State v. Smith, 1944, 140 Me. 255, 37 A.2d 246; State v. O'Toole, 1919, 118 Me. 314, 108 A. 99; State v. Buckwald, 1918, 117 Me. 344, 104 A. 520; State v. Bennett, 1918, 117 Me. 113, 102 A. 974; Nichols v. Baker, 1883, 75 Me. 334; 29 Am.Jur.2d Evidence, § 366. Remoteness of time and the possible innocuousness of the defendant's statement made in the course of the second incident were matters initially for the consideration of the Justice at trial in the exercise of discretion in ruling upon the admissibility of such evidence, and ultimately for jury evaluation within the limited purposes for which the evidence was received. We cannot say that the Court below erred in this respect under the particular circumstances of this case.

The prosecutor's purpose in introducing in evidence the fact that the defendant was still married on May 3, 1968 at the time of the conduct charged against him in the present indictment, when immediately prior thereto he was on the Gorham State campus to pick up a 'date' and was otherwise flirting with other female students at that institution, was solely to attack defendant's credibility respecting his version of the events of that evening and especially concerning his stated innocent intent in the whole affair. When he first sought to get his evidence from the defendant's girl friend in cross-examination, the State's attorney, in an offer of proof made in the absence of the jury, candidly claimed that the evidence was admissible as bearing on the defendant's credibility when he testifies. The defendant's marital status was allowed to go to the jury only after the defendant took the stand and through cross-examination by the State. The jury was not instructed specially regarding the...