Opinion ID: 2680031
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: facts

Text: [¶6] Woodard’s wife owned, and Woodard operated, Green Bee Redemption in Kittery, Maine. The primary questions for the jury to consider in determining whether a crime had been committed were (1) did Woodard and his wife (who was also tried and ultimately acquitted) redeem certain customers’ bulk container deliveries knowing that the containers were not originally sold in Maine as filled beverage containers and then seek handling fees and reimbursement for refunded deposits from distributors for these non-Maine containers, and (2) did the deposits and handling fees that they received from distributors for redeeming those containers reach felony theft levels. See 17-A M.R.S. § 354(1)(B)(1). [¶7] Viewing the evidence admitted at trial in the light most favorable to the State, the jury could rationally have found the following facts beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Haag, 2012 ME 94, ¶ 2, 48 A.3d 207. [¶8] The Department of Agriculture,2 which is responsible for enforcing the bottle bill, see 32 M.R.S. §§ 1862(6), 1871-B to 1871-D, was tipped off to a possible scheme to redeem non-Maine beverage containers at Green Bee. Resulting surveillance revealed that, on Thursday, March 18, 2010, at about 7:00 p.m., Dennis Reed, the owner of Sports Zone, a large sports complex in 2 At the relevant time, the Department was known as the Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources; it is now the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. See P.L. 2011, ch. 657, § W-5 (effective Aug. 30, 2012). 5 Derry, New Hampshire,3 drove a sport utility vehicle away from Sports Zone pulling a trailer filled with large bags full of empty beverage containers. Reed drove the trailer filled with containers to Maine and parked in a lot behind a building located at 230 U.S. Route One Bypass, also known as 230 State Road, in Kittery. The building was located approximately a mile away from Green Bee. Reed exited his vehicle and moved all of the bags of containers from the trailer into a white box truck that was parked at that location. Reed then drove away but was soon pulled over by an officer of the Kittery Police Department. The contents of the white box truck were seized by the Department of Agriculture and placed in a truck supplied for the Department’s use by National Distributors. [¶9] Based on a conversation with Reed, Randy Trahan, a consumer protection inspector from the Department of Agriculture’s Division of Quality Assurance and Regulations, called Woodard on the telephone to inquire about the containers. Woodard did not answer but later returned Trahan’s call, and the two men arranged to meet in person. At that meeting, Woodard admitted to Trahan that Reed would deliver containers to the white box truck and leave a receipt in the cab of the truck. Woodard referred to Reed as coming from New Hampshire. [¶10] Woodard admitted that Green Bee would pay Reed five cents per container by check for the bottles that he delivered. Although Woodard denied 3 New Hampshire does not have a bottle bill. 6 having spoken with Reed on the telephone on the day in question, telephone records that were subpoenaed showed calls between his mobile phone and Reed’s on several occasions, including on that day, both before and after the interception of the containers. [¶11] Between April 2008 and February 2010, Green Bee received at least $3,787.38 in handling fees for bottles redeemed by Reed and by an out-of-state Green Bee employee named Thomas Prybot. With the five-cent-per-bottle redemption amount calculated in, Maine distributors paid Green Bee a minimum of $10,099.68 for redeeming and handling those bottles.4 [¶12] Woodard was charged by indictment with theft by deception (Class B), 17-A M.R.S. § 354(1)(B)(1). He pleaded not guilty and proceeded to a jury trial. During the four-day trial, the State offered testimony from those who had assisted in investigating Woodard’s operations, including Trahan, the redemption recycling manager from Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Northern New England who conducted surveillance of Sports Zone in New Hampshire for Trahan, the Kittery Police Department officer who assisted in locating the trailer when it arrived in Kittery, and the driver supervisor for National Distributors who supplied the truck to pick up the intercepted containers. The State also offered the 4 From the voluminous evidence presented at trial, the jury found that Woodard had committed theft of more than $10,000. Even assuming that all of the bottles delivered by Reed and Prybot were subject to a commingling agreement and, therefore, generated only three cents per bottle in handling fees, the jury could have found that the total accepted from distributors or their agents for those bottles was $10,099.68. 7 testimony of a detective from the Attorney General’s office who assisted in the investigation by obtaining through subpoena (1) bank records from Green Bee that showed several payouts to Reed and Prybot and (2) telephone records that demonstrated contact between Reed and the Woodards several times between 2007 and 2010, including between March 17 and 19, 2010. [¶13] The State offered testimony from employees of the New Hampshire Sports Zone and Green Bee. An employee who began working at Sports Zone in February 2010 testified about container-sorting instructions at Sports Zone that called for setting apart those containers that, although likely purchased at Sports Zone or elsewhere in New Hampshire, had the proper markings for redemption in Maine. Apparently, the containers from beverages sold at this New Hampshire facility were sorted in an effort to exclude containers that could not have been sold to consumers in Maine. The Sports Zone employee also testified that he saw a trailer leave Sports Zone on one Thursday night each month with bags of bottles and then return empty. Thomas Prybot, an employee of Green Bee, testified that he lived in Massachusetts but had received hundreds of dollars for redeemed bottles from Green Bee without having been questioned about where the beverages had been purchased. Other Green Bee employees testified that that they rarely saw Woodard’s wife at the redemption center and identified Woodard as the boss. 8 [¶14] The State also offered evidence from professionals working in the bottle-redemption industry. The chief financial officer of National Distributors testified that National Distributors had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Green Bee between 2008 and 2010 to reimburse Green Bee for deposits and to pay Green Bee a handling fee of three cents to three and one-half cents per container. A Pepsi Bottling Company employee who supervised redemption pick-up testified that Pepsi had picked up hundreds of thousands of containers and paid tens of thousands of dollars to Green Bee between April 2008 and February 2010. An employee of Returnable Services, a container collection agency for about 300 distributors, testified that Returnable Services had paid Green Bee $134,000 between April 2008 and February 2010. That employee also testified that several factors should be considered by redemption centers to determine if containers were not purchased in Maine: (1) the presence of out-of-state license plates on the delivering vehicle, (2) the customer’s presorting of the bottles, (3) repeated business, (4) delivery outside normal business hours, and (5) delivery of a high volume of unusual beverage containers. [¶15] During the trial, the court admitted several documentary and photographic exhibits offered by the State, including a series of photographs of the containers that were seized. Certain bottles were identified as bottles that were not sold anywhere in Maine at that time. The court also admitted, over Woodard’s 9 objection, photographs of the barn at Prybot’s residence in Massachusetts where bottles were sorted. Woodard did not offer any testimonial or documentary evidence. [¶16] After the close of evidence, the prosecutor made a closing argument that concluded with remarks that Woodard contends constitute prosecutorial misconduct: This is a theft one nickel and three to 3-1/2 cents at a time. We need to send a message to those who would fraudulently redeem bottles in large quantities from away, we need to send a message that you can’t be ripping off Maine beverage distributors who will pass those costs along to Maine consumers. We ask you to find Tom Woodard guilty of theft by deception in the fraudulent redemption of bottles to Maine distributors. (Emphasis added.) Woodard did not object to this closing argument at trial. [¶17] Before the court charged the jury, Woodard requested a jury instruction that “if the actor in fact believes in the accuracy of the impression created or reinforced he is not guilty of deception even though his belief was stupid or unreasonable.” The court declined to offer this instruction but did provide the following instructions regarding state of mind for this particular crime: Deception occurs when a person intentionally, that is has the conscious purpose or object to do so, intentionally creates or reinforces an impression which is false and which that person does not believe to be true or fails to correct an impression which is false and which a person does not believe to be true and which that person previously created or reinforced. . . . 10 .... Now, on the necessary state of mind in which the State must prove that the actions of each Defendant were intentional, on the subject of intent, intent often cannot be proven directly because there is not always direct evidence of a person’s state of mind, but you may infer a person’s state of mind from surrounding circumstances. In determining whether the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that a Defendant acted with intent to deprive of property, you may consider any statement made or any act done or omitted by a Defendant and all other facts in evidence which may indicate a state of mind. The court also instructed, “[S]tatements or arguments of counsel are not evidence.” [¶18] The jury found Woodard guilty of theft by deception of property worth more than $10,000. See 17-A M.R.S. § 354(1)(B)(1). The court sentenced Woodard to twenty-one months in prison, all but twenty-one days suspended, with two years of probation, and ordered him to pay $10,000 in restitution and $25 to the Victims’ Compensation Fund, see 5 M.R.S. § 3360-I (2011).5 Woodard timely appealed pursuant to 15 M.R.S. § 2115 (2012) and M.R. App. P. 2.