Case Title: State v. Percy

Citation: 

Docket Number: 91-131

State: vermont

Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Date: 1992-02-01T00:00:00Z

Document:
NOTICE:  This opinion is subject to motions for reargument under V.R.A.P.
 40 as well as formal revision before publication in the Vermont Reports.
 Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Vermont Supreme
 Court, 109 State Street, Montpelier, Vermont 05609-0801 of any errors in
 order that corrections may be made before this opinion goes to press.


                                 No. 91-131


 State of Vermont                             Supreme Court

                                              On Appeal from
      v.                                      District Court of Vermont,
                                              Unit No. 3, Lamoille Circuit

 Robert L. Percy                              February Term, 1992



 Dean B. Pineles, J.

 Jeffrey L. Amestoy, Attorney General, and David Tartter, Assistant Attorney
   General, Montpelier, for plaintiff-appellee

 E.M. Allen, Defender General, and William Nelson, Appellate Attorney,
   Montpelier, for defendant-appellant


 PRESENT:  Allen, C.J., Gibson, Dooley and Morse, JJ., and Bryan, Supr. J.,
           Specially Assigned



      MORSE, J.    Defendant appeals from jury convictions for sexual
 assault, kidnapping, carrying a dangerous weapon while committing a felony,
 and assault and robbery.  His defense was insanity, and he challenges the
 convictions on a multitude of grounds:  (1) admission in evidence of prior
 criminal behavior violated V.R.E. 403, (2) evidence of criminal acts
 committed in Connecticut was improperly admitted and relied on in
 sentencing, (3) the jury charge failed to state that kidnapping includes an
 element of felonious intent, (4) the instruction on reasonable doubt was
 incomplete, (5) he was denied a speedy trial, (6) imposition of a harsher
 sentence after appeal and retrial violated his due process rights, (7) too
 little credit for time served was applied to his sentence, and (8) the court
 improperly engaged in an ex parte telephone conversation about sentence
 computation with a corrections department employee.  We affirm.
      The events leading up to this case began late on the afternoon of
 Friday, January 16, 1981.  Defendant was working at a garage in Stowe while
 awaiting trial on a charge of sexual assault and kidnapping.  A week or two
 earlier, defendant had told another employee to give him any credit cards
 inadvertently left behind by customers, despite the garage owner's policy
 that employees were to place them in a box by the cash register.  In that
 conversation the other employee asked defendant how he thought the pending
 criminal case would come out.  He replied, "It doesn't matter.  Friday is
 going to be my last day."
      Between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m., a woman pulled up to the gas pumps at the
 station.  Defendant put gas in her car, and then told her that one of her
 tires needed air.  Although there was a well-lit air pump nearby, defendant
 told her to pull her car up to an air pump located in a dimly lit area of
 the station.  After she did so, defendant told her he  needed to get
 something inside the station.  While he was inside, a friend of the woman's
 drove into the station and parked his car so that the headlights illuminated
 her car.  Defendant came back out and told the woman that everything was all
 right, and she drove away.
      Then, the victim in this case pulled into the station, and defendant
 filled her car with gas.  After she paid, defendant told her that a tire was
 low and directed her to the air pump in the dimly lit area.  A few minutes
 later, defendant jumped into the front passenger seat.  When the victim
 asked if this was a joke and told him to get out, defendant ordered her to
 "shut up and drive."  She at first refused, but when defendant pulled a gun,
 she obeyed.  Following his directions, the victim drove along back roads to
 an isolated spot where defendant told her to park and then ordered her to
 take off her clothes.  When she refused, he choked her, tied her hands
 behind her back, covered her eyes and nose with a rag, and sexually
 assaulted her -- threatening to use the gun if she resisted.  After the
 assault, she pleaded with defendant to let her go.   He said that if he did,
 she would report the car missing.  He reached back, jiggled a baby seat, and
 told her to lock the door on the passenger side.  He then took the wheel and
 drove off.
      As they travelled, defendant asked the victim her name, where she
 lived, where she worked, and how old her baby was.  He pulled into a rest
 area off I-89 in Chittenden County, where he lit what appeared to the victim
 to be a marijuana cigarette and insisted that she smoke it.  He also
 ordered her to take all of the money out of her purse and put it on the
 dashboard; she complied, and defendant later took the cash, totaling $130.
      Defendant drove cautiously and at one point watched a state trooper's
 car in the side-view mirror.  At a closed service station, defendant bought
 a soda from a vending machine and then traced a route on a New York map
 that he had brought with him.  Before leaving, defendant again ordered the
 victim to lock her door, and he headed the car south.
      After entering Connecticut, defendant stopped and parked, pointed the
 gun at the victim and again sexually assaulted her.  Afterward, he told her
 to lock her door, but since it was already locked, she reached back and
 unlocked it.  Defendant turned on the dome light to check the door, but did
 not notice that it was unlocked.  As they proceeded south, defendant said
 they needed gas and drove into a busier area.  At about 2:00 a.m., the
 victim saw a police car near an intersection where defendant had stopped.
 She opened the door, jumped out, and ran to it.  Defendant drove away.
      Police set up a roadblock, but defendant succeeded in going around it.
 Defendant later abandoned the car, but police found him nearby.  During
 arrest processing, defendant gave his name as "Thomas R. Lindbloom."  He had
 in his wallet an identification card with that name on it as well as a card
 with his own name, two oil company credit cards issued to customers of the
 garage where he worked, and $855 in cash.
      The following day, defendant offered to help police find the gun, which
 he had thrown out the car window.  As he put it, he didn't want a child "to
 find it and get hurt."  Defendant went with the police and showed them his
 route after the victim jumped out of the car.  The gun was not recovered.
      At trial, the principal issue was defendant's sanity.  Defendant
 claimed to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a
 result of his experiences in the Vietnam war.  Defense experts testified
 that defendant, who claimed to have amnesia about the events, had expe-
 rienced an unconscious flashback at the time of the incident and could not
 control his behavior.  In their opinion, some event at the garage triggered
 the flashback, causing defendant to believe that he was in Vietnam and under
 imminent danger of sniper attack.  According to these experts, he believed
 that the victim was a Vietnamese woman who had betrayed his company and that
 he was driving her to a prisoner-of-war camp.  The State contended that
 defendant was simply fleeing from prosecution when he kidnapped and raped
 the victim, and his mental abnormality was "manifested only by repeated
 criminal or otherwise antisocial conduct," not as a result of a mental
 disease or defect.  13 V.S.A. { 4801(a)(2).
                                     I.
                               Prior Bad Acts
      The State introduced the testimony of a psychiatrist about two
 uncharged criminal offenses committed by defendant in 1972.  Defendant had
 told the psychiatrist that in one incident he had gone to a college campus
 to collect a drug debt from a student and then blacked out from drugs.
 Police records and other documents given to the expert to review showed,
 however, that defendant had never met the student before, had accosted her
 at gunpoint, and had sexually assaulted her.  Afterward he had taken her
 back to her dorm and engaged in casual conversation.  Defendant related
 another incident of kidnapping a woman to the expert, but no details were
 given other than a name and the year.
      The court admitted this testimony over defendant's objection that any
 relevance to sanity was "substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair
 prejudice."  V.R.E. 403. (FN1) The State's position was that the incidents were
 relevant as part of the basis for the opinion of its expert witness on the
 issue of sanity.
      A discretionary ruling admitting relevant evidence under Rule 403 is
 given considerable latitude on appeal because the rule requires that exclu-
 sion of the evidence is permitted only upon a showing that the risk of
 unfair prejudice to the defendant substantially outweighs the probative
 value of the evidence.  See State v. McElreavy, ___ Vt. ___, ___, 595 A.2d 1332, 1334-35 (1991) (burden to show abuse of discretion under Rule 403 is
 "heavy" and "often difficult to satisfy").
      The prejudice defendant complains about is the potential that the
 jurors would infer that he had a propensity to commit violent crimes as "a
 man of dangerous criminal character."  Yet, defendant conceded at trial that
 he had committed violent acts.  His point was that he acted violently
 because he was legally insane at the time.  The claimed unfair prejudice,
 therefore, was what made the evidence relevant.  Defendant either acted with
 criminal propensity, as claimed by the State, or acted as a result of
 insanity, as claimed by defendant.  The central issue for the jury was why
 defendant acted violently toward women.  The general rule, therefore, that
 character evidence is not admissible to prove that defendant "acted in
 conformity therewith on a particular occasion" did not apply in this case.
 The prosecution offered evidence to rebut "a pertinent trait of his
 character offered by an accused," and it was admissible for that reason.
 V.R.E. 404(a)(1).  Because defendant put his sanity in issue, his prior
 conduct relevant to sanity was admissible when offered by the State.
      The 1972 incidents were particularly relevant because they occurred
 closer in time to defendant's return from Vietnam.  They were relevant to
 defendant's sanity from either side's point of view.  Had no psychotic
 episodes occurred between 1970 and 1981, defendant's insanity defense would
 have been less credible.  Defendant claimed that he committed the 1972 acts
 in a psychotic state, and several of his expert witnesses agreed.
      Defendant contends the evidence about the 1972 incidents was
 inconclusive and their probative value therefore was "attenuated and
 uncertain."  The contention that the evidence was not as decisive as it
 could have been is difficult to understand; had the evidence more strongly
 suggested that defendant was not delusional during the 1972 incidents, the
 State's case would have  been stronger.      
      As is often the case when insanity is at issue, the acts charged are
 conceded and the history of behavior relevant to the central issue depicts
 defendant in a devastating way.  Jurors may react to such evidence in
 opposite ways -- favoring a conclusion that defendant was insane "because a
 sane person would not do such things" or disfavoring the defense because
 such a person is viewed as too dangerous to benefit from the defense.
 Regardless of the potential reactions, withholding information about
 defendant's behavioral history undercuts the integrity of the jury's
 factfinding function.  Raising the insanity defense is radical legal
 surgery.  The risks are great, but the evidence must not be so truncated
 that the verdict becomes uninformed.
                                     II.
            Admission of Connecticut Offense without Use Immunity
      In a pretrial conference, defendant sought use immunity for any
 testimony he might give regarding the Connecticut sexual assault.  He
 claimed his right to testify was chilled by his fear of self-incrimination
 in a potential later criminal prosecution in Connecticut.  The court
 encouraged the prosecution to seek immunity from Connecticut authorities,
 but it was not forthcoming.  At trial, the victim was allowed to testify
 about the Connecticut sexual assault.  Defendant did not take the stand.  He
 claims that, absent the showing of a good faith effort to secure immunity in
 Connecticut, the victim's testimony about criminal activity there should
 have been excluded.  Defendant, however, made no objection on this ground.
 Nevertheless, we find no error on this record.
      Defendant bases his challenge on the rule that a probationer at a
 revocation hearing must be offered use immunity so that he can testify with-
 out fear of self-incrimination in a subsequent criminal prosecution.  See
 State v. Begins, 147 Vt. 295, 299,