Opinion ID: 2394065
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: facts

Text: [¶ 2] Watts was indicted and tried for gross sexual assault (Class A), 17-A M.R.S. § 253(1)(A) (2005); unlawful sexual contact (Class D), 17-A M.R.S. § 255-A(1)(A) (2005); and unlawful sexual touching (Class D), 17-A M.R.S. § 260(1)(A) (2005). [¶ 3] During jury selection, jurors were required to complete a confidential questionnaire pertaining to their ability to remain objective and impartial in a case involving sexual abuse and sexual assault. Each juror had to answer five yes/no questions under oath. [1] Because there was a large jury pool, Watts and the State agreed that any yes answer would exclude a juror from the pool. A jury was empanelled, and the trial commenced. [¶ 4] The evidence presented at trial, viewed in a light most favorable to the State, see State v. Bouchard, 2005 ME 106, ¶ 10, 881 A.2d 1130, 1134, revealed the following facts. The victim, then seventeen years old, lived with her sister, brother-in-law, and their three children in Topsham. Watts was a friend of the victim's brother-in-law, and had known the victim for about one year. Watts attended a party one night at their apartment, where approximately a dozen people consumed a significant amount of alcohol and listened to loud music. The victim became intoxicated after consuming at least one coffee cup of straight vodka on an empty stomach. [¶ 5] While playing cards with other partygoers, the victim became sick. She stopped playing cards and went to the upstairs bathroom, where she vomited and fell asleep on the bathroom floor. Watts later found the victim and helped her to her room. She went to bed, Watts shut her bedroom door and left, and she fell asleep. [¶ 6] Later, someone knocked on the victim's bedroom door, came in, sat on her bed, and had a conversation with her. She was unaware at the time that it was Watts with whom she was speaking. Watts asked her if she was ready to come back downstairs to the party. Watts tried to help the victim go downstairs, but she was physically unable to do so. Watts then started kissing her on the neck. She told him no. He removed her pants, and she told him to stop. He then performed oral sex on her, and she did not tell him to stop. He then got on top of the victim and had vaginal intercourse with her. She again told him to stop, but he did not. She tried to push him off, but was unable to do so. She testified that, at one point, she blanked out. When Watts finished, he turned on the lights and left the room. At this point, the victim realized that Watts was the perpetrator. [¶ 7] The victim then dressed herself, and went downstairs where she told her brother-in-law and sister about the incident. The victim's sister confronted Watts, and he left the party. The victim's sister and neighbor accompanied her to the hospital for a sexual assault examination. While at the hospital, the victim reported the incident to the police. [¶ 8] Watts denied the allegations of the victim, and testified at trial that the sexual activity was consensual. [¶ 9] On numerous occasions during his closing argument, Watts invited the jurors to assess the facts of the case, and the conflicting versions of the events, from the perspective of their own past sexual experiences. The jury returned a verdict finding Watts guilty on all counts on April 26, 2005. [¶ 10] On May 3, Watts filed a motion for a new trial under seal, relying on an affidavit from one of the sitting jurors, Juror 19, alleging that one of his fellow jurors, Juror 26, committed misconduct during the voir dire by dishonestly or inaccurately answering the questionnaire. [2] Based on M.R. Evid. 606(b), the State objected to any hearing that would inquire into the deliberations of the jury. Over the State's objection, the court held a post-trial hearing to determine whether Juror 26 had inaccurately or dishonestly answered the questionnaire, and to determine whether Juror 26 should have been excluded from the jury because of bias. Juror 26 had answered no to all five questions on the questionnaire. [¶ 11] At the hearing on the motion for a new trial, the attorney for the State told the court that her office received a message from Juror 26 on April 27. The attorney for the State indicated that when she returned the call, they had a brief conversation. The attorney for the State said that Juror 26: talked about . . . some personal experiences that she had and didn't go into any more detail than that. . . . [S]he did indicate to me that she had told [her fellow jurors] something about a personal experience and did not reveal whether it was sexual . . . . When questioned by the court, the attorney for the State indicated that [Juror 26] did not go into any detail about what this experience was. [3] [¶ 12] After speaking with both attorneys, the court questioned Juror 26. Juror 26 indicated that when she was seventeen years old, [4] she was at a party drinking alcohol, and engaged in a consensual sexual experience with a teenage boy, who she thought was approximately eighteen years old. She accompanied the boy to a parked car, and they started kissing and touching each other. He eventually placed his hand down her pants, and this physical contact hurt her. This contact included digital vaginal penetration, which caused bleeding and required medical treatment afterward. When the touching hurt her, however, she told him to stop, and he did stop. She did not consider herself to be a victim of sexual abuse or sexual assault. She also testified that she did not consider her experience as a teenager to have affected her objectivity or impartiality in reaching a verdict in Watts's case. She told the court that she never even thought about this sexual experience until she was in the jury room. It was when the other jurors discussed similar life experiences involving drinking alcohol at parties when they were young that Juror 26 remembered this event, and then told the deliberating jurors about her experience. [¶ 13] When the court questioned Juror 19, he testified that the outcome of the 2004 Presidential Election had caused him to suffer from anxiety, insomnia, and depression, and he did not feel like his normal, feisty self during the deliberations. If he had not been suffering from these conditions during the deliberations, he stated that he probably would have said no and attempted to hang the jury. He also testified that Juror 26 revealed that what had happened to her as a teenager went further than she wanted it to, and that she had to stop it somehow. Although Juror 19's affidavit stated that Juror 26 told the story about her own victimization, or sexual abuse, Juror 19 admitted that Juror 26 never stated that she had been a victim, or that she had been sexually abused. Rather, that was Juror 19's own characterization of Juror 26's sexual experience. [¶ 14] Following the hearing, the court found that Juror 26 incorrectly and dishonestly answered questions 4 and 5, that Juror 26 was biased, and that she could not have forgotten her past sexual experience during voir dire because she felt strongly enough about the incident to bring it up during jury deliberations. The court found that Juror 26 should have revealed her prior sexual experience by answering yes, and that she had more than a passing interest in the outcome of this case, as evidenced by her telephone call to the attorney for the State to congratulate her on Watts's conviction. Based on these findings, the court granted Watts's motion for a new trial. The State sought and received approval from the Attorney General pursuant to 15 M.R.S. § 2115-A(2), (5) and M.R.App. P. 21(b) to file this appeal.