State of Maine v. Alan D. Perkins, 107 A.3d 636

On May 21, 2013, employees of Crowley Seafood discovered Alan D. Perkins inside the locked warehouse removing live elvers (juvenile eels) into a bucket; Perkins fled when confronted and was later arrested.
The warehouse contained over fifty pounds of elvers valued at about $100,000; only licensed sellers could lawfully sell to Crowley and Perkins had not sold to them before.
At arrest, Perkins told Officer Mote he went to get water for elvers in a dry bag, denied having a screwdriver, admitted running, and said he ran “because of his reputation and that he was on bail conditions.”
Perkins was indicted for burglary, theft by unauthorized taking, and violation of a condition of release; following a jury trial he was convicted of burglary and theft, and the court found him guilty of the release-violation count.
Pretrial, the court excluded Perkins’s prior burglary and theft convictions but ruled that, if Perkins testified, the State could impeach him with two other convictions (falsifying physical evidence and negotiating a worthless instrument) and could elicit the reason he gave to Officer Mote for running.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the trial court’s reserved/incremental ruling on impeachment improperly chilled Perkins’s right to testify	State: court appropriately reserved ruling and limited evidence in its case-in-chief	Perkins: reservation effectively forced him to choose between testifying and exposing excluded prior convictions, so he was deprived of a fair trial	No obvious error; court permissibly reserved ruling and Perkins failed to preserve the issue for appeal by not renewing the motion or testifying
Whether the evidence was sufficient to support convictions for burglary and theft	State: testimony and physical evidence permitted a rational jury to find all elements beyond a reasonable doubt	Perkins: challenged sufficiency of evidence	Guilty verdicts supported; viewed in State’s favor the testimony showed unlawful entry, taking elvers, and flight, satisfying elements

State v. Crossman, 790 A.2d 603 (Me. 2002) (standard for viewing trial evidence in sufficiency review)
State v. Holland, 34 A.3d 1130 (Me. 2012) (preservation requirement when in limine ruling is not absolute)
State v. Ayers, 468 A.2d 606 (Me. 1983) (trial court may reserve ruling on motions in limine)
State v. Hayden, 86 A.3d 1221 (Me. 2014) (reciting sufficiency-of-evidence standard and inferences available to jury)
State v. Billadeau, 597 A.2d 414 (Me. 1991) (Rule 12(c) permits trial court to reserve ruling on motions in limine)
State v. Dwyer, 985 A.2d 469 (Me. 2009) (review of admissibility where defendant did not testify is for obvious error)