Court Opinion

ID: 9698448
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 19:50:53.686035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:41.065056
License: Public Domain

WATHEN, Justice,
with whom Glassman and Clifford, JJ., join dissenting
I respectfully dissent from the Court’s opinion. I conclude that defendant was prejudiced by the improper admission of evidence of his reaction to a request that he take a lie detector test. In order to affirm the conviction, the Court finds that there is no reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted evidence might have been a contributing factor productive of the guilty verdict. It is obvious to me, that the credibility of a homicide defendant is seriously affected by the revelation that he faltered when he was asked to take a lie detector test.
The Court reaches its conclusion by focusing on factors that are irrelevant to an analysis of prejudice. After describing our past precedent in general and concluding that the evidence was improperly admitted, the Court finds no abuse of discretion in *11the denial of a mistrial because: (1) the testimony at trial was a surprise to everyone; (2) there was no reference to test results or any unwillingness on the part of defendant to take a test and (3) only one reference was made to the lie detector test. First, I fail to understand why it is important that the testimony was not explicitly called for by the prosecutor’s question and was therefore a surprise. We are not considering the culpability of the prosecutor, but rather the fairness of defendant’s trial. The impact of unfair and prejudicial testimony, is not diminished in any way by the fact that it comes as a surprise to the presiding justice and the attorneys. Similarly, it seems equally beside the point that there was no reference to test results. Our past opinions deal with evidence of a defendant’s unwillingness to take a test, and we have declared that both “the results of a polygraph test and a party’s willingness or unwillingness to take such a test are inadmissible.” State v. Trafton, 425 A.2d 1320, 1322 (Me.1981) (emphasis added). Certainly, the objectionable evidence in this case permits the jury to infer that defendant was unwilling to take the test. The State argues that because the witness testified only that defendant was “upset”, no evidence of defendant’s unwillingness to submit to a lie detector test was put before the jury. The Court accepts the State’s argument and defines the “gist” of the testimony in a stilted manner. I decline to draw such hypertechnical semantic distinctions in considering the inferences that could reasonably be drawn from the improperly admitted evidence. However the witness may have described the defendant’s reaction, whether upset, distressed or nervous, I am confident that the jury concluded that defendant was reluctant to have his veracity tested.
Despite the rationale offered by the Court, this case implicates our prior holdings that a jury is unable to assess such evidence “without assuming a non-existent value for lie detector tests in general.” Heselton v. Wilder, 496 A.2d 1063 (Me.1985) (quoting State v. Mottram, 158 Me. 325, 330, 184 A.2d 225, 228 (1962). Because the improperly admitted evidence is crucial to a determination of defendant’s credibility and because his credibility is the vital issue in this case, I am forced to conclude that his trial was unfairly compromised by the reception of that evidence. Even though defendant’s reaction to the request to take a lie detector test was mentioned only once, there is more than a reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted evidence might have contributed to the guilty verdict. I would vacate the conviction and remand for a new trial.