Court Opinion

ID: 9701641
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:28:59.924462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:26.643916
License: Public Domain

LEVY, J„ with whom SAUFLEY, C.J.,
joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
[¶ 26] I respectfully dissent from that portion of the Court’s opinion regarding the sufficiency of the evidence to establish that Barnard’s drug trafficking occurred within 1000 feet of the real property of a school.
[¶ 27] It is axiomatic that jurors have the “right to draw reasonable inferences from facts proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” M.R. Evid. 308(c). The Court’s opinion demonstrates, however, that to conclude that Barnard’s trafficking took place within 1000 feet of the Calais Middle School, one must engage in several suppositions that may, in their own right, be reasonable, but which are not drawn from facts proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
[¶ 28] The sole physical evidence introduced by the State regarding the apartment building was State’s Exhibit B, the photograph taken from the school some 757 feet, 4 inches away. The corner of the school property and an adjacent, broad swath of North Street compose the foreground of this perspective shot, then North Street narrows, disappearing into the horizon. One cannot actually see Main Street, though one can surmise its general location from the traffic lights that, because of a downward slope in the terrain, appear to almost touch the pavement of North Street.
[¶ 29] As indicated by Agent Rolfe’s answers to the following questions, it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify Barnard’s apartment building in the photograph:
Q: Agent Rolfe, there’s a couple of letters written on that photograph. What are those letters labeling, or what’s the significance? .
A: It just signifies the location of the properties. The letter C signifies the location of the middle school property, and the letter B is the location of, general location, of Mr. Barnard’s apartment.
Q: And there’s a letter B with an army pointing, down?
A: Yes, that’s correct.
Q: Can you actually see, in the photograph, can you see the building that Mr. Barnard was living in when you went to his residence?
A: Very little of it.
Q: What color is the building that he lives in?
A: I’m not sure of the color. There’s a red brick building between them, and he lives in the one closest to North Street — excuse me — Main Street. The actual color — there are several colors, and I’m not exactly sure which one ....
Because the apartment building and Main Street are not discernible in this photograph, the photograph does not depict whether the Main Street wall of Barnard’s *225apartment building is parallel to the school property.
[¶ 30] The only other visual depictions of the apartment building were two 3" X 3" Polaroid photographs introduced by Barnard. One shows the front of the apartment building, the building immediately adjacent to it, and a portion of a third building. It establishes that the apartment building has three floors and is located on the corner of North and Main Streets.
[¶ 31] The second photograph shows the rear of a building adjacent to or near Barnard’s apartment building and a small portion of the rear of the apartment building. The foliage of a large tree blocks most of the back of the building from view, including the entire section that runs along Main Street. This hidden portion is the part of the building critical to an inference that every point within’ the building is closer to the school property than the far corner where North and Main intersect. The photographs do not depict or suggest the overall length of the apartment building from front to rear, the number of apartments inside the building, or the location of Barnard’s apartment relative to the front and rear of the building. At the risk of belaboring the point, none of the photographs entered in evidence depict the Main Street side of Barnard’s apartment building.
[IT 32] In concluding that the State established that Barnard’s trafficking of scheduled drugs occurred within 1000 feet of the Calais Middle School, the Court engages in four inferences, none of which are supported by independent facts established beyond a reasonable doubt. First, the Court characterizes the apartment building as “relatively small.” Ante ¶ 24. There was, however, no evidence regarding the overall dimensions of the building, and none of the photographs of the building introduced by the State and Barnard provide visual information from which one can infer the overall length of the apartment building or the total number of apartments inside the building. The evidence did not establish facts beyond a reasonable doubt from which one can conclude that the apartment building is relatively small, medium, or large in dimension.
[¶ 33] Second, the Court supposes that every point within the apartment building is necessarily closer to the school property than the far corner where Agent Rolfe completed his measurement. This supposition can only be made if one knows the overall dimensions of the apartment building, the dimensions of the school property, and the spatial relationship of the two. All we know from the record is that the distance from the patch of grass at the school property to the far corner of the Main Street side of the apartment building is 757 feet, 4 inches. No other facts regarding the dimensions of the school property and the apartment building, and the spatial relationship of the two properties, were established beyond a reasonable doubt.
[¶ 34] Third, the Court assumes “the evidence would permit a jury to reasonably conclude that the wall of Barnard’s apartment building furthest from the school yard was parallel with, and 757 feet, 4 inches distant from, the school property. Accordingly, any location within the building was, necessarily, even closer to the school property.” Ante ¶ 24. No testimony or exhibits in the record, however, establish that the Main Street wall of Barnard’s apartment building and the school property are or are not on parallel planes. The Court suggests in a footnote that the record is deficient in this regard because there is no reproduction of the chalkboard diagram prepared by Agent Rolfe “to de*226scribe the spatial relationship of the critical properties and streets and ... referenced by Agent Rolfe as he described his distance measurements.” Ante ¶ 24 n. 5. In response to questions by the State, Agent Rolfe described everything depicted in the chalkboard diagram and testified that the diagram generally coincided with the photograph introduced as State’s Exhibit B.9
[¶ 35] Fourth, the Court postulates that Barnard’s apartment was in the front, three-floor section of the apartment building. Nowhere in the record is there any indication that Barnard’s apartment was near or faced the North Street side of the building. The confidential informant entered the building from its rear entrance and ascended a single flight of stairs ,to reach Barnard’s apartment in a matter of seconds, suggesting that the apartment was closer to the rear of the apartment building. Facts from which one can determine the location of Barnard’s apartment within the building were not established beyond a reasonable doubt.
[¶ 36] The Court’s reliance on United States v. Soler, 275 F.3d 146 (1st Cir.2002), is misplaced. Using a measuring wheel, the police in Soler measured 963 feet from the rear entrance of the apartment building in which the trafficking occurred to the corner of the school building. 275 F.3d at 154. They failed, however, to determine the distance between the base of the apartment building and the third-floor landing, the precise location of the drug sale. Id. The government also provided a videotape of the interior of the building, which the court described as “tangential evidence of the unmeasured distance.” Id. at 155. Noting that “[distances are notoriously difficult to gauge in still photographs” and in videotapes, the court attached little probative value to the videotape. Id. “The spatial leeway is too small and the risk of error too great,” held the court, “to establish [the 1000 foot] measurement beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. The court, consequently, vacated the defendant’s conviction. Id.
[¶ 37] The 242-foot, 8-inch, spatial leeway in the present case is far greater than the 37-foot undetermined distance in Sol-er. The degree of precision required for the measurement may therefore be less exacting. Nonetheless, as recognized in Soler, , even when there is . a substantial spatial leeway, the State must still offer evidence from which the jury can make a determination of distance based upon “common sense, common knowledge, and rough indices of distance.” Id. at 154. Unlike the prosecution in Soler, here the State did not attempt to establish the interior distance inside the building by way of any evidence, visual or otherwise.
[¶ 38] In Goodson v. United States, 760 A.2d 551 (D.C.2000), the government measured 591 feet from a school to the front *227door of a budding where, in an eighth-floor apartment, drugs were seized. Id. at 553. Additionally, a government agent’s testimony, as well as a photograph of the interior of the apartment, established that the drugs were found within fifteen feet of the apartment’s front door. Id. There was, however, “[n]o evidence, other than that [Goodson] resided on the eighth floor, ... presented describing or depicting the size of the apartment building or where [Good-son’s] apartment was within it.” Id. With nearly 400 feet of spatial leeway with which to place the drugs within the sentence enhancement zone, the government argued plausibly “that the jury could reasonably discount the possibility that the front-door-of-building to front-door-of-apartment distance was that great.” Id. at 554. Nevertheless, the court vacated that portion of Goodson’s conviction resting upon the sentence enhancement statute on the ground of insufficient evidence. Id. at 556. Explained the court,
The jury was not told the front-foot or front-to-rear dimensions of the building, or the number of units on each floor; it was given no diagrams or photographs enabling it to say whether the building was modest in size (despite its apparent height) or the kind of high-rise structure up to block-length in size not uncommon in the District of Columbia. A point-to-point distance of 400 feet within such a building is not so out of the question — at least the government does not tell us why it is — as to substitute for the absence of proof of actual distance between the entrance and [Goodson’s] apartment.
Id. at 554.
[¶ 39] Here, as in Goodson, the evidence revealed nothing about where the apartment was horizontally or diagonally in relation to the far corner of the apartment building. Id. at 554 & n. 5. Nor does the Court conclude that a point-to-point distance of 242 feet, 8 inches, is so out of the question as to substitute for the absence of proof of actual distances within Barnard’s apartment building. When viewed “in the light most favorable to the State to determine whether the trier of fact rationally could have found beyond a reasonable doubt every element of the offense charged,” State v. Turner, 2001 ME 44, ¶ 6, 766 A.2d 1025, 1027 (quoting State v. Black, 2000 ME 211, ¶ 14, 763 A.2d 109, 113), the evidence failed to establish the facts necessary to conclude the actual distance of the trafficking from the Calais Middle School.
[¶ 40] The concept of “spatial leeway” does not excuse the State from having to prove an actual distance when that distance is an element of the offense charged. This would have been, by all appearances, a relatively simple task requiring no more than a few minutes effort and the use of a measuring tape or other appropriate measuring instrument. We should not permit mere supposition to substitute for reasonable inferences informed by the application of “common sense, common knowledge, and rough indices of distance” to actual evidence. Because a reasonable inference of the total distance from the Calais Middle School to the location at which Barnard trafficked drugs was not possible from the facts established beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence was not legally sufficient to support the jury’s determination that the criminal transaction occurred within 1000 feet of the school. Accordingly, I would vacate the conviction as it pertains to the aggravating element which increased the crime’s classification from Class B trafficking in scheduled drugs, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 1103(2)(A) (Supp.2002) (current version at 17-A M.R.S.A. § 1103(1-A)(A) (Supp.2002)), to Class A aggravated trafficking in scheduled drugs, 17-A M.R.S.A. § 1105(1)(E) (Supp.2002) (current version at 17-A M.R.S.A. § 1105-*228A(1)(E)(1) (Supp.2002)), and remand to the Superior Court for resentencing.

. Agent Rolfe's testimony reflects that the chalkboard diagram, which was not drawn to scale, and Exhibit B, which is distorted by the angle of the shot, were used to depict the 757-foot, 4-inch, measurement he made from the school to the apartment building, and not to prove the spatial relationship of the school and apartment building properties and, in particular, whether they share parallel planes. Moreover, the decisions cited by the Court in this regard are hardly comparable to the situation in this case. In State v. Chesnel, 1999 ME 120, ¶ 27, 734 A.2d 1131, 1140, the appel-Iant failed to agree to a hearing proposed by the State to obtain the testimony of a juror who, the appellant claimed, had engaged in misconduct. Because the forgone testimony would have been the only way to determine whether misconduct had occurred, the appellant failed to assure that the record was sufficient for appellate review. Id. ¶ 28, 734 A.2d at 1140. In State v. Dill, 2001 ME 150, ¶ 10 n. 5, 783 A.2d 646, 650 n. 5, the appellant failed to submit required materials as part of the appendix, including the written jury instructions that were the subject of the appeal.