Case Title: State v. LeClaire

Citation: 175 Vt. 52, 2003 VT 4, 819 A.2d 719

Docket Number: 

State: vermont

Court: Vermont Supreme Court

Date: 2003-01-24T00:00:00Z

Document:
State v. LeClaire (2001-411); 175 Vt. 52; 819 A.2d 719

2003 VT 4

[Filed 24-Jan-2003]

       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.

       	
                                  2003 VT 4

                                No. 2001-411

  State of Vermont	                         Supreme Court

                                                 On Appeal from
       v.	                                 District Court of Vermont,
                                                 Unit No. 2, Chittenden Circuit

  Walter LeClaire	                         November Term, 2002

  Brian L. Burgess, J.

  Robert Simpson, Chittenden County State's Attorney, and Pamela Hall
    Johnson, Deputy State's Attorney, Burlington, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

  Allison N. Fulcher of Martin & Associates, Barre, for Defendant-Appellant.

  PRESENT:  Amestoy, C.J., Dooley, Morse, Johnson and Skoglund, JJ.

       ¶  1.  AMESTOY, C.J.   Defendant appeals his conviction after a jury
  found him guilty of murder in the second degree for causing mortal head
  trauma to a sixteen-month-old child left in his care.  Defendant argues
  that he is entitled to a new trial because the Chittenden District Court
  erred by:  (1) denying his motion to dismiss in which he claimed that the
  State failed to collect and preserve potentially exculpatory evidence; (2)
  prohibiting him from introducing certain evidence at trial in his defense;
  (3) admitting as evidence the statements he made to the police while on
  furlough; (4) denying his request for a presentence investigation report;
  and (5) failing to hold an evidentiary hearing on his motion for a new
  trial.  We affirm. 
   
       ¶  2.  On March 3, 1999, a call was made from defendant's home to
  911, reporting that a sixteen-month-old girl was not breathing.  Within one
  minute and a half, a rescue team arrived.  The rescue team found the child
  not breathing, with no heartbeat and no electrical activity.  A medical
  expert testified at trial that this condition indicates that at least ten
  minutes must have elapsed from the time the child was injured to the time
  the rescue team arrived and was unable to detect electrical activity.  A
  CAT scan performed at the hospital revealed that the child had endured
  significant trauma to her brain with enough force to cause bleeding in
  several areas, dramatic retinal hemorrhages, and retinal detachment.  One
  retinal specialist testified that he had examined thousands of eyes and had
  never witnessed a more dramatic example of an injury consistent with a baby
  who had been shaken.  When defendant was interviewed at the hospital that
  day, he told police that his dog knocked the child over and that she struck
  her head on a toolbox.
        
       ¶  3.  The medical testimony presented at trial directly contradicted
  defendant's claim that the dog pushed the child.  For instance, one medical
  expert, who treated the child at the hospital, testified, "[T]his dramatic
  presentation, that is bleeding within the brain serious enough to cause a
  cardiac arrest, was not consistent with the stated mechanism of injury." 
  The doctor went on to say that the child's injury instead "would be
  consistent with a head injury with forces seen in moderate to high speed
  motor vehicle accidents. . . . from children who have been ejected from
  cars and strike their head on the ground or trees . . . ."  The medical
  experts agreed: defendant's explanation that the child was knocked over by
  a dog onto the toolbox was inconsistent with the multiple injuries to the
  child's head and the extreme retinal bleeding found in the child's eyes. 

       ¶  4.  In its decision denying defendant's motion for acquittal, the
  trial court found,
   
    The evidence was essentially uncontroverted that the total fatal
    head trauma could not be accounted for, and was plainly
    inconsistent with, defendant's explanation for the death of the
    child.  The dog's push and the infant's less than two-foot fall
    onto the toolbox, as described and demonstrated by defendant, was
    not nearly equivalent to the high speed collision, long fall or
    severe shaking described by the physicians as necessary to cause
    the combined sub-dural, sub-arachnoid and retinal bleeding.  If
    the dog's push could have caused the torque required for the
    tissue-tearing hematoma, it did not appear to account for all
    three injuries, or for the necessary velocity and force to cause
    death.  If the impact from the dog's push could have caused
    retinal bleeding, the doctors agreed that it did not account for
    the extraordinary degree of hemorrhaging in this case.

  The court explained that most of the medical experts testified, and none
  disagreed, that the child's injuries were consistent only with 'shaken
  infant' or 'shaken impact' syndrome.

       ¶  5.  An autopsy was done on the child's body, in March 1999, at
  which a small blood sample was collected but not a hair sample.  Also in
  early March 1999, police collected physical evidence from defendant's home,
  including the toolbox.  One to two months after the autopsy and burial of
  the body, hairs were found on the toolbox collected from defendant's home.  

       ¶  6.  On May 17, 1999, defendant filed a motion with the district
  court to preserve, test, and/or provide duplicate material to the defense. 
  In his motion, defendant requested the State to "preserve and provide to
  the defendant for independent testing hair samples of the decedent" and
  also requested "an adequate comparison sample from [police] evidence . . .
  [which] contains hair."  The State filed a letter, on May 26, 1999, in
  which it responded that hair samples were not collected from the victim but
  that a mitochondrial DNA analysis could be performed to test the hair
  sample by using an available sample of the victim's blood instead of hair. 
  The judge ruled the motion as moot, stating that "there's nothing to
  preserve here" since the State did not have a hair sample from the victim. 
  The court also pointed out at the hearing that there was "another way . . .
  for you to get hair samples [from the victim] if that were required as a
  last resort," referring to exhumation.
   
       ¶  7.  In April 2000, defendant filed a motion to dismiss in which
  he again argued that the State had failed "to collect and preserve such
  evidence as may be exculpatory in nature" and "to produce such evidence
  after having been requested to do so."  The court held a hearing on the
  motion to dismiss several months later.  At the hearing, a medical expert,
  Dr. Buell, testified that a mitochondrial DNA test could be performed on
  the unidentified hair from the toolbox by using a blood sample, but that
  the mitochondrial DNA test of hair is statistically weaker than a nucleus
  genomic DNA test, especially because a mother and all of her children have
  the same mitochondrial DNA.  Additionally, Dr. Buell testified that a
  microscopic exam of the unidentified hair might show whether the hair "was
  crushed, pulled out or broken."  Following the expert's testimony, the
  judge observed, "I asked the last time whether there was anything in this
  hair to indicate that it was left there other than by pulling it out of the
  sky, and I still don't have an answer to that. . . . is there any evidence
  that the hair was there by virtue of anything other than gravity?" 
  Defendant did not offer anything in response at that time.  Subsequently,
  the State filed a motion in limine to exclude evidence relating to the
  unidentified hair on the toolbox.  The court granted the motion, declaring
  that the evidence proffered by defendant in this regard was irrelevant.  As
  noted, the jury returned a verdict of guilty after the trial, and this
  appeal followed.  

                                     I.
   
       ¶  8.  Citing Brady v. Maryland,