State of Maine v. George Jaime , 2015 Me. LEXIS 25 ( 2015 )

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions
Decision: 2015 ME 22
Docket: Aro-14-31
Argued: November 5, 2014
Decided: March 10, 2015
Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, and JABAR, JJ.*
STATE OF MAINE
v.
GEORGE JAIME
SAUFLEY, C.J.
[¶1] In the fall of 1998, thirty-nine-year-old Starlette Vining went missing.
Her absence was not reported to authorities until 2006. On July 12, 2012, George
Jaime was charged with Vining’s murder. A jury found Jaime guilty, and he
appeals from the resulting judgment of conviction of intentional or knowing
murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A) (2014), entered by the trial court (R. Murray, J.).
[¶2] Jaime raises several arguments on appeal. We focus on his arguments
that the court erred in admitting prior consistent statements of Jaime’s son, Ted
Jaime, and that the court abused its discretion in preventing Jaime from presenting
evidence that would have provided additional support implicating his son as an
alternative suspect. Although we conclude that the court’s application of
*
Silver, J., sat at oral argument and participated in the initial conference but retired before this
opinion was adopted.
2
alternative suspect jurisprudence reflected a misapprehension of the concept, we
determine that the court’s error was harmless. We affirm the judgment.
I. BACKGROUND
[¶3] The prosecution in this case presented a “cold case” charge of a murder
committed fifteen years before the trial. “Viewing the evidence in the light most
favorable to the State, the jury could rationally have found the following facts
beyond a reasonable doubt.” State v. Haag, 2012 ME 94, ¶ 2, 48 A.3d 207.
[¶4] In 1998, George Jaime was a local businessman who owned a
commercial building in Presque Isle that housed a pawnshop, a wine shop, and
several apartments. Jaime was involved in a romantic relationship with Starlette
Vining. During the late summer or early autumn of 1998, Jaime and Vining lived
together in an apartment on the ground floor of the building.
[¶5] One night in October 1998, Jaime arrived distraught and intoxicated at
the house of his adult son Ted Jaime.1 Ted observed that Jaime “had scratches and
blood on him.” Jaime told Ted that “something bad had happened, he had done
something bad.” Ted told his then-fiancée, Parise Voisine, whom he lived with at
the time, that he was leaving, and he took Jaime back to Jaime’s apartment. When
Ted walked inside Jaime’s apartment, he saw Vining’s body on the floor. The
1
For clarity, we will refer to Ted Jaime as “Ted” throughout this opinion. We intend no disrespect by
the informality.
3
body looked lifeless and appeared to have multiple stab wounds. Ted covered the
body with a blanket, left Jaime’s apartment, and walked to the house of his
longtime friend James Campbell.
[¶6] When Ted arrived at Campbell’s house, he had blood on his shirt.
Campbell gave him a fresh shirt to change into. Thereafter, Ted disclosed to
Campbell what he had seen at Jaime’s apartment. Campbell agreed to go to
Jaime’s apartment the next day to help Ted “clean up the mess.” When Ted and
Campbell arrived at Jaime’s apartment the following day, they found that Jaime
had wrapped Vining’s body in a tarp and moved it into the basement of the
building, which housed several boilers. Ted and Campbell then began cleaning the
apartment. They cleaned blood off of the bathroom walls, removed the carpeting
where Vining’s body had first lain, removed some of the sub-flooring under the
carpet, replaced ceiling tiles, and washed everything down with bleach and water.
[¶7] Jaime did not speak about what had happened until one day
approximately a month later when he drove with Ted to a stream in Westfield,
bringing with him a large container full of ashes. Jaime poured the ashes into the
stream, telling Ted that they were Vining’s ashes and that when he died he wanted
to be cremated so that his remains could be scattered in the same spot. At some
point, Jaime told Campbell that, after he had killed Vining, he had cut up her body
and burned it.
4
[¶8] Over the following years, Jaime moved into a different apartment unit
and continued to run his business as usual. Jaime eventually told Ted that on the
night of the murder, Jaime and Vining had gotten into a fight because Vining had
told him that she was going to leave him. Jaime then stabbed Vining with a
Marine Corps Ka-bar knife and, when she started screaming, he hit her with the
butt of the knife to knock her out. Over the years, Ted told several people—
including his mother, Ethel Jaime; his two brothers and two sisters; Voisine; and
Campbell—what Jaime had done.
[¶9] It was not until 2006 that Vining was reported missing by her family
and the police initiated an investigation into her disappearance.2 The police could
not find any record of Vining after October 1998. Between 2006 and 2012, the
investigation was at an impasse.
[¶10] Sometime around March 2012, the police were contacted by someone
who told them that Parise Voisine, Ted’s former fiancée, may have information
about Vining. After interviewing Voisine, who was by then Ted’s ex-wife, the
police attempted to track down both Ted and Campbell. In June 2012, Campbell
disclosed what he knew about the circumstances surrounding Vining’s murder. It
took the police a longer time to track down Ted.
2
Vining’s mother died in 2006, and the State was unable to locate Vining as her next of kin.
5
[¶11] While the investigation was underway and the police were starting to
ask more questions in and around the Presque Isle area, Jaime called a family
meeting with his three sons, including Ted, and his ex-wife, Ethel. At the meeting,
Jaime told his children to “keep their mouths shut” and asked Ted to “disappear for
awhile.” Ted left for the Southern Maine/New Hampshire area but soon returned.
At some point during this time, Ted was charged with domestic violence assault in
Aroostook County, and he was released on bail with conditions that included no
contact with his girlfriend. In early July 2012, Ted was again charged with
domestic violence assault and with violating the conditions of his release, and the
police arrested him.
[¶12] On July 5, 2012, before placing Ted under arrest, the police
questioned Ted about Vining’s disappearance. He denied having any knowledge
about Vining. Ted again denied any knowledge about the circumstances of
Vining’s disappearance when he was questioned by law enforcement on July 9,
2012, while he was in the Aroostook County Jail. Ted’s attorney then advised him
that he would receive more favorable treatment from the prosecution if he
cooperated. On July 11, 2012, Ted disclosed what he knew about the murder.
6
[¶13] The police obtained and executed two search warrants—one for
Jaime’s current apartment and one for his old apartment.3 While executing the
second search warrant, the Evidence Response Team used Hema-stix and Luminol,
both chemical agents designed to test for the presence of latent bloodstains, to
search for evidence of Vining’s blood. Samples were collected from the places in
the apartment where preliminary testing suggested the possible presence of blood.
Further test results could neither confirm nor rule out the presence of human blood
on any of the samples.
[¶14] On July 12, 2012, Jaime was arrested and a criminal complaint was
filed. On September 6, 2012, the grand jury issued an indictment charging Jaime
with the intentional or knowing murder of Starlette Vining between October 1 and
October 20, 1998. See 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A). Jaime entered a not guilty plea
and proceeded to trial.
[¶15] At trial, Ted testified that he was at Jaime’s apartment on the night of
the murder, that he helped clean up evidence of the crime, and that he was present
when Jaime dumped Vining’s ashes in a stream. He also testified that he had used
drugs with Vining, but he denied having had a sexual relationship with her.
3
Jaime originally told the police that the apartment he was currently residing in was the same one that
he had lived in in 1998. During Ted’s July 11 interview, however, Ted disclosed to the police that
Jaime’s current apartment was not the apartment in which the murder had occurred. On this information,
the police obtained and executed the second search warrant.
7
[¶16] When cross-examining Ted, Jaime’s counsel asked questions that
suggested that Ted had implicated his father in the murder only after the State
promised leniency in relation to his involvement with the murder and his pending
criminal charges. To rebut this implied charge of recent fabrication or improper
motive, the State offered Ted’s prior consistent statements through the testimony
of Campbell, Voisine, Ethel, and one of Ted’s brothers. Those witnesses testified
that, long before Ted was arrested for domestic violence assault and violating the
conditions of his release, he had said that Jaime was to blame for killing Vining or
for her disappearance. Jaime repeatedly objected to the testimony. The court gave
a limiting instruction to the jury on these prior consistent statements, instructing
the jury to consider the statements only for the purpose of rebutting the implied
charge of recent falsification or improper motive to lie.
[¶17] While cross-examining Voisine at trial, Jaime’s attorney asked her
about Ted’s alleged sexual relationship with Vining. The State objected to the
proffered testimony as irrelevant hearsay. Jaime argued that it was relevant to
support an alternative suspect defense,4 even though he anticipated that Voisine
would say that she was unaware of any sexual relationship between Ted and
Vining. After arguments of counsel, the court, citing State v. Dechaine, 572 A.2d
4
Before trial, the State moved to exclude any evidence of an alternative suspect on the ground that
this evidence was merely speculative. The court deferred ruling on the motion until trial.
8
130 (Me. 1990), sustained the State’s objection, determining that the evidence of
blood on Ted’s shirt, Ted’s drug use with Vining, and the disputed testimony about
a sexual relationship with Vining did not meet the threshold for relevance
necessary to offer facts regarding Ted as an alternative suspect. The court
concluded that all of the facts taken together did not amount to “more than . . .
mere speculation.”
[¶18] Later, Jaime again offered evidence relating to an alternative suspect
defense by asking Jaime’s daughter (Ted’s sister) about Ted’s alleged sexual
relationship with Vining. After the State objected, the court sustained the
objection as it related to an alternative suspect defense but allowed the question to
be asked and answered for impeachment purposes. Thereafter, Jaime’s daughter
testified that Ted had told her that he had engaged in sexual relations with Vining.
[¶19] After deliberating, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, and the
Superior Court sentenced Jaime to forty years’ imprisonment. After the court
denied Jaime’s motion for a new trial, see M.R. Crim. P. 33, he timely appealed
pursuant to 15 M.R.S. § 2115 (2014) and M.R. App. P. 2(b)(2)(A).
II. DISCUSSION
[¶20] We are unpersuaded by Jaime’s arguments that the court abused its
discretion in admitting evidence of the Luminol test results, which suggested, but
standing alone did not prove, the presence of human blood, see State v. Gurney,
9
2012 ME 14, ¶ 41, 36 A.3d 893, and that the prosecutor committed prosecutorial
misconduct in his closing argument to the jury, see State v. Clark, 2008 ME 136,
¶¶ 12-14, 954 A.2d 1066. We do not discuss these arguments further.
[¶21] We focus on Jaime’s arguments that the court erred in admitting
Ted’s prior consistent statements and that the court abused its discretion in
preventing him from presenting additional evidence of Ted’s involvement with the
murder to support an alternative suspect defense. We address each argument in
turn.
A. Prior Consistent Statements
[¶22] Asserting that Ted’s prior consistent statements to family and friends
regarding details of the murder were inadmissible hearsay, Jaime argues that the
statements were not admissible to rebut an implied charge of fabrication or
improper motive because (1) the improper motive to lie existed back in 1998 and
(2) Ted’s prior statements were not consistent with his in-court testimony.5 We
review for clear error the admissibility of hearsay evidence that is dependent on a
factual determination, “such as whether the opposing party has . . . implicitly
5
Jaime also argues that the prior consistent statements “involved multi-level hearsay” because they
involved Ted repeating statements that Jaime had made to him. Because the first level of the “out of court
statement” involved statements Jaime made to Ted, that level is considered an admission by a
party-opponent and is not hearsay. See M.R. Evid. 801(d)(2). We also note that the Rules of Evidence
have been restyled effective January 1, 2015. We cite to the Rules of Evidence in effect at the time of
trial in this opinion.
10
charged recent fabrication or improper influence or motive . . . .” State v. Parsons,
2005 ME 69, ¶ 10, 874 A.2d 875. The determination of exactly when the motive
to fabricate arose is left to the sound discretion of the trial court. State v. Roberts,
2008 ME 112, ¶ 38, 951 A.2d 803.
[¶23] Maine Rule of Evidence 801(d)(1) excludes from the definition of
hearsay prior consistent statements by a declarant if the statements are offered “to
rebut an express or implied charge against the declarant of recent fabrication or
improper influence or motive.” “The existence of an implied charge of recent
fabrication or improper motive must be apparent from the evidence” or from
inferences that may fairly arise from the evidence, including cross-examination of
the declarant. State v. Zinck, 457 A.2d 422, 426 (Me. 1983). The party offering
the prior consistent statement “‘has the burden of establishing that the statement
was (1) consistent with the in-court statement of the witness, (2) offered to rebut an
express or implied charge of recent fabrication or improper influence, and (3) made
prior to the time the supposed motive to falsify arose.’” Roberts, 2008 ME 112,
¶ 38, 951 A.2d 803 (quoting State v. Weisbrode, 653 A.2d 411, 415 (Me. 1995)).
[¶24] Through counsel, Jaime repeatedly questioned Ted about the timing
of Ted’s July 2012 jailhouse disclosure about Vining’s death. Specifically, Jaime
asked why Ted had not mentioned anything about Vining’s murder when law
enforcement officers questioned him on July 5 and July 9. In so doing, Jaime
11
implied that Ted had fabricated the details about the murder on July 11 to secure a
deal that immunized him from any charges relating to his involvement with the
murder, reduced the severity of his pending assault charges, and enabled him to
post bail and be released from jail.
[¶25] To rebut Jaime’s implied charge of recent fabrication and improper
motive, the State elicited testimony from Ted on redirect that, well before July 11,
2012, Ted had told family and close friends what his father had done. After Ted’s
testimony, the State offered Ted’s prior consistent statements through the
testimony of several other witnesses. Through their testimony, the State
established that the prior consistent statements, many of which were made in 1998
and the following year, significantly predated the July 11, 2012, disclosure to law
enforcement. Moreover, each witness’s testimony was consistent with Ted’s
in-court testimony.
[¶26] Thus, the court did not err in finding that Jaime had implicitly charged
Ted with fabricating his version of events, nor did the court abuse its discretion in
determining that the alleged motive to fabricate was recent, arising on July 11,
2012, when Ted disclosed his knowledge of the murder to law enforcement in
exchange for leniency. The record further confirms that the court did not err in
finding that Ted’s statements, most of which were made years before the trial, were
consistent with his in-court testimony.
12
B. Alternative Suspect Evidence
[¶27] Jaime next asserts that the trial court abused its discretion in
preventing him from presenting certain evidence to implicate Ted as an alternative
suspect, thus precluding him from presenting a complete defense. We take this
opportunity to address apparent confusion regarding an “alternative suspect
defense.”
[¶28] When analyzing a defendant’s claim of a “defense,” it is important to
recognize the distinctions among several different types of defenses in criminal
matters. We begin our discussion by reviewing the “three broad categories of
criminal defenses”—affirmative defenses, justification defenses, and failures of the
State’s proof—“that differ primarily based on the allocation of the parties’
respective burdens.” State v. Ouellette, 2012 ME 11, ¶ 8, 37 A.3d 921.
[¶29] An “affirmative defense” is typically identified expressly by statute.
See, e.g., 15 M.R.S. § 1092(2) (2014) (affirmative defense to violation of condition
of release); 17 M.R.S. § 1033(3) (2014) (affirmative defense to the crime of animal
fighting); 17-A M.R.S. § 39(3) (2014) (affirmative defense of “[l]ack of criminal
responsibility by reason of insanity”); 17-A M.R.S. § 1105-C(1)(K), (L), (3)
(2014) (affirmative defenses to aggravated furnishing of scheduled drugs). By its
nature, an affirmative defense is presented where the elements of the crime are not
necessarily contested, but the defendant offers additional facts that may legally
13
absolve him of criminal liability. In contrast to the two other categories of
defenses, “[w]hen a defendant raises an affirmative defense, the defendant bears
the burden of proving the facts necessary to the affirmative defense by a
preponderance of the evidence.” State v. LaVallee-Davidson, 2011 ME 96, ¶ 14,
26 A.3d 828 (emphasis in original); 17-A M.R.S. §101(2) (2014).
[¶30] Justification defenses are also typically identified expressly by statute.
See, e.g., 17-A M.R.S. § 108 (2014) (self-defense justification); 17-A M.R.S.
§ 103-A (2014) (duress justification). A defendant asserting a justification defense
has the initial burden of production to generate the issue. See 17-A M.R.S.
§ 101(1) (2014). If the defendant introduces evidence “sufficient to make the
existence of all the facts constituting the [justification] defense a reasonable
hypothesis for the factfinder to entertain,” State v. Glidden, 487 A.2d 642, 644
(Me. 1985); see State v. Delano, 2015 ME 18, ¶ 25, --- A.3d ---, the State must
disprove the defense beyond a reasonable doubt. See 17-A M.R.S. § 101(1). As
with any criminal prosecution, the State must prove each element of the crime
charged beyond a reasonable doubt before the fact-finder would be called upon to
determine whether the State has met its burden of disproving a defendant’s
justification defense.
[¶31] An alternative suspect defense falls into the third and most commonly
presented type of defense. It is neither an affirmative defense nor a justification
14
defense. Simply put, an alternative suspect defense falls within that type of
defense through which the defendant “argues that there is a failure of proof by the
State, that is, that the State has failed to meet its burden to establish beyond a
reasonable doubt one or more of the elements of the crime charged.”
LaVallee-Davidson, 2011 ME 96, ¶12, 26 A.3d 828. An alternative suspect
defense, like others in its category, is not technically a “defense” at all; it is simply
an evidentiary method utilized by a defendant to demonstrate reasonable doubt as
to an element of the crime—here, reasonable doubt that it was the defendant who
committed the crime. Specifically, an alternative suspect defense is raised when a
defendant argues to the fact-finder that, because another person may have
committed the crime, there exists a reasonable doubt that this defendant committed
the crime.
[¶32] When a defendant generates an alternative suspect defense, the burden
does not shift to the State to prove that the alternative suspect did not commit the
crime. Similarly, the defendant does not have any burden to prove, by a
preponderance of the evidence or otherwise, that the alternative suspect did
commit the crime. As in all criminal cases, the State’s burden remains the same
throughout the trial—to prove beyond a reasonable doubt all elements of the crime
charged, including that the defendant committed the crime.
15
[¶33] Alternative suspect evidence offered by the defendant, as with any
evidence, must be sufficiently probative to be relevant and thus admissible. See
M.R. Evid. 401, 402. “For alternative [suspect] evidence to have sufficient
probative value to raise a reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s culpability, it must
be more than speculative and conjectural.” Dechaine, 572 A.2d at 134 (citation
omitted) (quotation marks omitted). Evidence that is speculative or conjectural is
not probative and is therefore not relevant. See id.; State v. Cruthirds, 2014 ME
86, ¶ 23, 96 A.3d 80; State v. Mitchell, 2010 ME 73, ¶ 28, 4 A.3d 478.
[¶34] Thus, evidence regarding an alternative suspect will be admitted at
trial if (1) the proffered evidence is otherwise admissible, and (2) “the admissible
evidence is of sufficient probative value to raise a reasonable doubt as to the
defendant’s culpability by establishing a reasonable connection between the
alternative suspect and the crime.” Cruthirds, 2014 ME 86, ¶ 22, 96 A.3d 80
(quotation marks omitted). Although a reasonable connection is required, “[a]
defendant may establish a reasonable connection between the alternative suspect
and the crime without clearly linking the alternative suspect to the crime.”
Mitchell, 2010 ME 73, ¶ 27, 4 A.3d 478 (emphasis in original). Because a trial
court must determine both the preliminary admissibility of the evidence and the
existence of a reasonable connection between the alternative suspect and the crime,
16
we review a trial court’s decision to admit or exclude evidence to support an
alternative suspect defense for an abuse of discretion. Id. ¶ 23.
[¶35] Here, extensive evidence regarding Ted’s connection to the crime was
offered, in great part by the State, throughout the trial. The court took no action to
exclude that evidence, nor did either party seek to have it excluded. Only when
Jaime twice sought to establish another connection between Ted and Vining—that
is, the potential sexual relationship between the two—did the State object. The
court determined that two pieces of evidence were too speculative to admit in
support of an alternative suspect defense: (1) the proffered testimony of Voisine
that she was unaware of any sexual relationship between Ted and Vining; and
(2) the testimony of Jaime’s daughter that Ted had disclosed to her that he had
engaged in sexual relations with Vining. Voisine’s testimony on this subject was
excluded in its entirety. The daughter’s testimony, however, although specifically
excluded to support an alternative suspect defense, was admitted for the limited
purpose of impeaching Ted, who had testified that he did not have a sexual
relationship with Vining.
[¶36] When making its determination on the admissibility of Voisine’s
testimony, the court, citing Dechaine, concluded that the evidence presented did
“not create the type of competent evidence or substantive facts that create[s] more
than a mere speculation at this juncture.” With due respect to the trial court’s
17
advantage in viewing all of the evidence in context, the evidence at trial created a
connection between Ted and the crime that went beyond mere speculation. Ted
admitted to being at the scene of the crime on the night of the murder; to
occasional drug use with Vining; to soliciting help from his longtime friend
Campbell to help clean up the evidence of Vining’s violent death; and to
accompanying Jaime when he scattered Vining’s remains in a stream. Campbell’s
testimony that Ted showed up at his house on the night of the murder with
fist-sized bloodstains on his shirt, seeking help to conceal a violent, bloody, fatal
assault, creates a similar reasonable connection to the crime.
[¶37] The proffered evidence from Voisine and from Jaime’s daughter
suggesting that Ted may have lied to his then-fiancée about a sexual relationship
with a woman whom his father was living with at the time would have augmented
the connection that the evidence had already shown. That proffered evidence
could have strengthened Jaime’s argument that Ted had both the motive and
opportunity to commit the murder. Based on the existing reasonable connection
between Ted and the murder, established by both the State and Jaime, these two
pieces of evidence were sufficiently probative to raise a reasonable doubt as to
Jaime’s culpability, and Jaime should have been allowed to offer the evidence to
the jury. Thus, the court abused its discretion in precluding Jaime from offering
18
evidence of Ted’s alleged sexual relationship with Vining to support an alternative
suspect defense.
[¶38] We must therefore determine whether the court’s error was harmless.
An error is harmless when it is highly probable that it did not affect the jury’s
verdict. See M.R. Crim. P. 52(a); State v. Dolloff, 2012 ME 130, ¶¶ 33-34, 58
A.3d 1032. In contrast, “[h]armful error is error that affects the criminal
defendant’s substantial rights, meaning that the error was sufficiently prejudicial to
have affected the outcome of the proceeding.” Id. ¶ 33 (citations omitted)
(quotation marks omitted).
[¶39] The court’s evidentiary rulings related to Ted’s possible sexual
relationship with Vining were very limited in the context of this lengthy trial.
Although the court ruled that Jaime could not solicit testimony from Voisine that
she was unaware of any sexual relationship between Ted and Vining, the court
admitted testimony from Jaime’s daughter about Ted’s relationship with Vining for
the purpose of impeachment. The jury therefore heard from Jamie’s daughter—in
contradiction to Ted’s testimony—that Ted and Vining had engaged in a sexual
relationship.
[¶40] Accordingly, although the court may have misunderstood the
evidentiary threshold for permitting a defendant to offer evidence in support of an
alternative suspect defense, the jury heard extensive evidence connecting Ted with
19
this crime—including conflicting evidence about a sexual relationship. It is
therefore highly probable that the court’s limited evidentiary errors did not affect
the jury’s verdict, see State v. Stanley, 2000 ME 22, ¶ 12, 745 A.2d 981, and any
error was therefore harmless.
[¶41] Jaime argues that the court’s error cannot be harmless because it
prevented him from presenting a complete defense. He argues that, because the
court rejected his attempts to offer evidence of Ted’s sexual relationship with
Vining, he was precluded from “vigorously arguing [that Ted] had the motive to
commit the murder and later blame his father.” We find no evidence of such a
limitation in the record.
[¶42] As the trial concluded, the jury had before it a record replete with
testimony regarding Ted’s connection to the murder. The record does not contain
any indication that the court prevented Jaime from arguing that Ted was an
alternative suspect based on the incriminating evidence that was admitted. There
were multiple instances during the trial when Jaime suggested to the jury that his
son may have been the perpetrator in this case without objection from the State or
constraint by the court. For example, Jaime repeatedly directed the jury’s attention
to the inconsistencies in Ted’s story, the toxic relationship that Ted had with both
Jaime and Vining, and the possible motives that Ted may have had to lie about
Jaime’s guilt. In Jaime’s closing argument, he pointed out that Ted has a known
20
history of violence against women, was seen wearing bloody clothing on the night
of the murder, and admitted to cleaning up the crime scene. Jaime even concluded
his closing argument by saying, “There is no verdict that says innocent. There is
no verdict that says, jeez, you should go after Ted.” We discern no court-imposed
limitation on Jaime’s ability to argue Ted’s culpability in connection with this
murder.
[¶43] Throughout the process, the burden remained on the State to prove
beyond a reasonable doubt that George Jaime killed Starlette Vining. The jury,
having heard all of the evidence regarding Ted’s involvement, determined that
Jaime was guilty of the crime. No injustice has been demonstrated on this record.
The entry is:
Judgment affirmed.
On the briefs:
Hunter J. Tzovarras, Esq., Bangor, for appellant George Jamie
Janet T. Mills, Attorney General, Lara M. Nomani, Asst. Atty. Gen., Office of
the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine
At oral argument:
Hunter J. Tzovarras, Esq., for appellant George Jamie
Lara M. Nomani, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee State of Maine
Aroostook County Superior Court (Caribou) docket number CR-2012-275
FOR CLERK REFERENCE ONLY