Opinion ID: 2059026
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admission of Deceased's Statements.

Text: Defendant Mahaney argues that the admission of statements of the deceased that he was afraid he was going to be killed and from which it could be inferred that he thought defendant Mahaney was going to kill him constituted harmful error. Although we agree that the admission of the statements was error, we find that error harmless. Donny Rideout testified that at 9:30 P.M. on December 14, he had had a conversation with Randy Blanchard about the burning of Gary Mahaney's trailer, in which, according to Rideout, both he and Blanchard had participated. Rideout testified that Blanchard said he thought someone was going to get shot right off, and he thought it was going to be him. Initially the court admitted the evidence over defense objections as proof of the corpus delicti and as evidence of the motive of the person who may ultimately have committed the crime. Later the State sought to introduce a statement through Randy Blanchard's mother that Blanchard had been carrying a gun because he was afraid. The court sustained an objection to that testimony. On cross examination, defense counsel asked Mrs. Blanchard if she had bailed her son out of jail after he had been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon on the morning of December 14, 1974; she replied affirmatively. The State again requested that it be allowed to inquire as to the reason for Blanchard's carrying the gun. The court agreed to admit the testimony under M.R. Evid. 803(3) as a state of mind exception to the hearsay rule. Mrs. Blanchard then stated that Randy said that he was afraid that someone was going to kill him, and that he wanted if anybody took a shot at him, he wanted to be sure to get a shot at them. The presiding justice admonished the jury to consider Mrs. Blanchard's and Rideout's statements only for the purpose of ascertaining the issue of what the decedent's state of mind was. In State v. Cugliata, Me., 372 A.2d 1019 (1977), we recognized that the state of mind hearsay exception was limited to evidence that is highly relevant and uttered in circumstances indicating its truthfulness above and beyond the reliability presumed of all statements of present mental state. Id. at 1027. Although the challenged statements might have been relevant in that they tended to negate an inference of suicide, they were essentially cumulative on that point, for other evidence showed that Blanchard's body was found with six bullets in it and with no gun in the area. Therefore, evidence of the victim's state of mind does not meet the highly relevant standard prescribed in Cugliata, supra, and its admission was error. We must disagree, however, with defendant's characterization of that admission as harmful error. Under M.R.Crim.P. 52(a) [a]ny error, defect, irregularity or variance which does not affect substantial rights shall be disregarded. The classic formulation of the test for harmless error is found in Kotteakos v. United States, 326 U.S. 750, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946): If one cannot say with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error, it is impossible to conclude that substantial rights were not affected. Id. at 764, 66 S.Ct. at 1248. In the instant case, the erroneously admitted testimony was sufficiently cumulative of other testimony that it is unlikely the judgment was swayed by it. The statements attributed to Blanchard did not identify the source of his anxiety. If the statements were viewed as referring to Mahaney, there was other evidence from which the jury could equally well have inferred that Blanchard was afraid of Mahaney. The defendant Mahaney confronted the victim at the victim's residence concerning his participation in the burning of the trailer. Blanchard's cousin testified that defendants accosted him, and Mahaney told him that if he procured a gun for Randy he should get enough for your whole family because I'm going after Randy because he burned my trailer. According to the testimony of Conrad Kinney, two weeks before Blanchard's death Mahaney and Bradbury had asked him to bring Blanchard out behind Mars Hill Mountain so they could talk to him about the burning of Mahaney's trailer. Kinney informed Blanchard of the request and told him also to pretend he was mad and take off because Kinney didn't want to see anyone get hurt. Although defendant Mahaney contends that the challenged testimony must have swayed the jury because without it there was little evidence to link him to the murder, this assertion is inaccurate on two levels. First, neither statement directly links Mahaney to the expected murder. Both are ambiguous as to the object of Blanchard's fears, and there was evidence showing that Blanchard was also afraid of Jeff Smith. Defendant's assertion is also inaccurate because there is substantial other evidence linking Mahaney to the murder, not the least of which are the admissions by both defendants that Mahaney had participated in the killing. Because the erroneously admitted statements were ambiguous, and if not ambiguous, cumulative, we find the error in their admission harmless.