STATE OF MAINE v. ANDREW B. MADERIOS
Docket: Som-15-492
Supreme Judicial Court of Maine
October 18, 2016
2016 ME 155 | 148 A.3d 1224 | 1145
Argued: September 14, 2016
Maeghan Maloney, District Attorney, (orally), Prosecutorial District IV, Skowhegan, for appellee State of Maine.
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.
MEAD, J.
[¶1] Andrew B. Maderios appeals from a judgment of conviction entered by the trial court (Somerset County, Mullen, J.) after a jury found him guilty of two counts of aggravated assault (Class B),
I. BACKGROUND
[¶2] On September 4, 2014, Maderios was indicted for alleged crimes committed against the victim, his then-girlfriend. The indictment charged Maderios with three counts of aggravated assault (Class B),
[¶3] Before trial, Maderios moved to allow two of the victim‘s former boyfriends and her ex-husband to testify to what Maderios claimed was the victim‘s pattern of making false accusations when relationships ended on terms not to her liking. He supported his motion with a detailed offer of proof.
[¶4] Maderios also moved in limine, relying on
[¶5] On August 28, 2015, the court held a hearing on the pretrial motions. The court denied Maderios‘s motion to allow the testimony of the victim‘s former partners on the ground that its admission would create “a classic example of ... a trial within a trial,”5 and was therefore properly excluded pursuant to
[¶6] The case went to trial on August 31-September 4, 2015. The audio recordings that the victim made of a January 25, 2014, incident, which was the basis of Counts IV and V of the indictment, and of a March 23, 2014, incident, which was the basis of Counts VI and VII, were admitted and played for the jury. Several photographs taken by the victim with her cell phone showing injuries resulting from those incidents were also admitted.
[¶7] The jury returned verdicts of guilty on Counts IV, V, VI, and VII, and not guilty on the remaining counts. At the sentencing hearing the court denied Maderios‘s motion for a new trial, entered judgment on the verdicts, and imposed consecutive sentences on the aggravated assault convictions resulting in an aggregate sentence of fifteen years’ imprisonment, with all but three years suspended, and six years of probation. On the domestic violence assault convictions, the court imposed a sentence of six months to be served concurrently with the other sentences. Maderios appealed.
II. DISCUSSION
A. Evidence of Prior Relationships
[¶8] Maderios argues that evidence of how the victim acted in prior relation
[¶9] Although “[e]vidence of a crime, wrong, or other act is not admissible to prove a person‘s character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character,”
[¶10] The trial court is “afforded wide discretion to make Rule 403 determinations.” State v. Filler, 2010 ME 90, ¶ 17, 3 A.3d 365 (quotation marks omitted). Even if “evidence tending to show that a witness has a motive for falsifying or exaggerating trial testimony is relevant to credibility, relevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, among other grounds,” including instances where “[p]resenting evidence related to the truth or falsity of the victim‘s allegations ... would have confused the issues, creating a trial within a trial regarding whether the victim or [another witness] was telling the truth.” Ericson, 2011 ME 28, ¶ 22, 13 A.3d 777 (citations and quotation marks omitted).
[¶11] Here, for several reasons, the court did not abuse its broad discretion in ruling that admission of the evidence contained in Maderios‘s offer of proof would be “a classic example of ... creating a trial within a trial,” and that “any probative value is substantially outweighed by confusion of the issues, misleading the jury [and] unfair prejudice.”
[¶12] First, unlike in Filler, where we concluded that it was an abuse of discretion to limit the defendant‘s cross-examination of his accuser concerning evidence of contemporaneous events relevant to her motivation to fabricate allegations of abuse against him, 2010 ME 90, ¶ 19, 3 A.3d 365, here Maderios sought to have third-party witnesses testify concerning the victim‘s alleged motivation to make accusations against those witnesses—not against Maderios. Second, the three witnesses would have testified about relationships that had ended between four and ten years earlier, lessening any potential relevance. Third, resolving the question of which witnesses were accurately describing the victim‘s conduct when her prior relationships ended would, as demonstrated by the State calling two witnesses at the motion hearing to contradict the three prospective witnesses discussed in Maderios‘s offer of proof, require what the court accurately
[¶13] Finally, again unlike the situation in Filler, where the “relevant evidence would have required only a few minutes of trial time to be fully explored,” id. ¶ 20, here the court was faced with at least five witnesses, apart from the principal parties, who would contradict each other concerning the victim‘s alleged character trait for vindictiveness and her propensity to make false allegations in the face of a failing relationship. That prospect posed an obvious danger of “confusing the issues” for the jury,
[¶14] For these reasons, the court did not abuse its “wide discretion,” Filler, 2010 ME 90, ¶ 17, 3 A.3d 365, in excluding the prospective testimony of the witnesses discussed in Maderios‘s offer of proof pursuant to
B. Best Evidence Rule
[¶15] Maderios next contends that the court abused its discretion in denying his motion to exclude the audio recordings and photographs on the ground that their admission violated the “best evidence” rule, which states that “[a]n original writing, recording, or photograph is required in order to prove its content unless these rules or a statute provides otherwise.”
[¶16] The record reveals no error in the court‘s decision. By rule, “[a]n original is not required and other evidence of the content of a writing, recording, or photograph is admissible if ... [a]ll the originals are lost or destroyed, and not by the proponent acting in bad faith.”
[¶17] The court found that “the State has negated bad faith to the extent it‘s alleged.” That finding is supported by the victim‘s testimony at the hearing. Accordingly, Rule 1004(a) was satisfied, and the court‘s decision to admit the evidence over Maderios‘s best evidence objection, subject to the jury‘s evaluation of its weight at trial, was not an abuse of the court‘s discretion.
[¶18] Furthermore, when Maderios testified at trial he did not dispute the accuracy of the recordings; rather, he said that he was not touching the victim when she made gagging noises and said “you strangled me,” “ow, ow, ow,” etc.—in other words, Maderios said that what the jury heard on the recordings was the victim‘s attempt to make it sound as if an assault
C. Prosecutorial Misconduct
[¶19] Maderios finally asserts that statements made by the prosecutor during the State‘s closing and rebuttal arguments constituted misconduct and required the court to declare a mistrial. Before closing arguments began, the court reminded the attorneys of our review in State v. Dolloff, 2012 ME 130, ¶¶ 42-43, 58 A.3d 1032, of conduct that may be regarded as improper.
[¶20] Despite the trial court‘s sound, timely guidance, the prosecutor made statements that could be characterized as giving her personal opinion concerning the evidence and/or vouching for the credibility of witnesses. The court responded with immediate, correct, and strongly-worded curative instructions, however, that the jury is presumed to have followed. Id. ¶ 72. In Dolloff, we said that
[w]hen an objection has been made to a prosecutor‘s statements at trial, we review to determine whether there was actual misconduct, and, if so, whether the trial court‘s response remedied any prejudice resulting from the misconduct. We generally defer to the determination of a presiding Justice, who has the immediate feel of what is transpiring, that a curative instruction will adequately protect against the jury‘s giving consideration to matters which have been heard but have been stricken as evidence. Any concern created by improper statements made by a prosecutor is likely to be cured by a prompt and appropriate curative instruction, especially when such an instruction is specifically addressed to the prosecutor‘s misconduct. Finally, we determine whether, if error exists, it was harmless. Only where there are exceptionally prejudicial circumstances or prosecutorial bad faith will a curative instruction be deemed inadequate to eliminate prejudice.
Id. ¶ 32 (citations, footnote, and quotation marks omitted).
[¶21] Here the court declined to grant a mistrial, ruling, “I don‘t find the [p]rosecutor‘s conduct was deliberate, and I don‘t think it is likely any prejudice could survive the instruction or could [a]ffect the outcome of the case.” On this record, where the court found that exceptionally prejudicial circumstances or prosecutorial bad faith were not present, its decision not to grant a mistrial was within its discretion.8 See State v. Frisbee, 2016 ME 83, ¶ 28, 140 A.3d 1230 (“[W]e review the trial court‘s decision on whether or not to grant a mistrial under the familiar standard of abuse of discretion.“).
The entry is:
Judgment affirmed.
MEAD, J.