State v. Bethea

221 A.3d 563

STATE of Maine

v.Antoinne BETHEA

Docket: Pen-18-401

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: November 5, 2019

Decided: December 19, 2019

Jeremy Pratt, Esq. (orally), and Ellen Simmons, Esq., Camden, for appellant Antoinne Bethea

Aaron M. Frey, Attorney General, and Donald W. Macomber, Asst. Atty. Gen. (orally), Office of the Attorney General, Augusta, for appellee State of Maine

Panel: SAUFLEY, C.J., and ALEXANDER, MEAD, GORMAN, JABAR, HJELM, and HUMPHREY, JJ.

ALEXANDER, J.

[¶1] Antoinne Bethea appeals from a judgment of conviction of manslaughter (Class A), 17-A M.R.S. § 203(1)(A) (2018), entered by the trial court (Penobscot County, A. Murray, J. ) following a jury trial on an indictment for murder, 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A) (2018). Bethea asserts that the trial court (1) erred in its conduct of voir dire by crafting race-related questions for potential jurors but not using questions proposed by Bethea; (2) abused its discretion by admitting a photograph of the victim with his son; and (3) abused its discretion by only giving a curative instruction after the prosecutor misstated the evidence during closing arguments. We affirm the judgment.

I. CASE HISTORY

A. Facts

[¶2] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the jury could have found the following facts beyond a reasonable doubt. See State v. Nobles , 2018 ME 26, ¶ 2, 179 A.3d 910.

[¶3] On Easter weekend 2017, the victim and a friend traveled to Bangor. The victim's eight-year-old son lived in Bangor with his mother—the victim's ex-wife—and Bethea. While they were together that weekend, the son told his father that Bethea had been cooking "white stuff" in the apartment and that the white stuff gave him a headache. The victim's friend understood the "white stuff" to be crack cocaine.

[¶4] After hearing this story from his son, the victim sent several text messages to his ex-wife. Bethea interpreted those text messages as threatening. Bethea and the victim's ex-wife drove to her father's home, where Bethea retrieved a handgun he had kept hidden there. When Bethea and the victim's ex-wife returned to their apartment, they saw the victim and his friend standing in the driveway. The victim and his friend were waiting for the victim's son to change his clothes inside. Bethea and the victim spoke briefly before Bethea entered the apartment. Bethea testified that he showed his handgun to the victim's friend as he walked up the stairs to his apartment.

[¶5] Shortly after Bethea returned outside, he started a fight with the victim. During the fight, the victim's friend saw Bethea reach for his handgun. The friend then jumped on Bethea, and the three fell to the ground. While they were on the ground, Bethea discharged his firearm twice. The shots struck the victim, causing his death.

[¶6] Bethea quickly left the scene and cut off his dreadlocks. Bethea also gave an acquaintance an object wrapped in a sock, which the acquaintance buried in the woods. The object inside the sock was the handgun used in the shooting, which law enforcement eventually recovered.

B. Procedural History

[¶7] On April 18, 2017, Bethea was charged by criminal complaint with murder. See 17-A M.R.S. § 201(1)(A). He was arrested in Ohio on May 21, 2017. Following his arrest, Bethea was indicted and, on arraignment, pleaded not guilty. A jury trial was held in August 2018.

[¶8] The court used a written questionnaire as part of its voir dire of potential jurors. Following best practice, see State v. Roby , 2017 ME 207, ¶ 3 n.2, 171 A.3d 1157, the court and counsel initially met more than a week prior to the start of jury selection for an extensive discussion of proposals for the written questionnaire. The day before the start of jury selection, the court and the parties met again to finalize the questionnaire. At these conferences, Bethea proposed that the court include in the written questionnaire certain questions designed to identify possible racial biases held by potential jurors. Bethea also proposed that each question have answer choices of "YES," "NO," or "NOT SURE." The questions proposed by Bethea included the following:

18. Do you believe or feel African-American men are more likely to commit crimes when they come to Maine than people of other races visiting Maine?

21. Have you ever experienced or witness[ed] anyone being treated badly because of his or her race?

22. Have you ever had any positive or negative interactions with a person of another race?

23. Do you have any negative views of people of the African-American race?

24. Have you, or any of your family members or close friends[,] ever used derogatory words to describe a person of another race, such as [the N-word] in referring to African-Americans?

[¶9] In response to Bethea's request, the court amended its questionnaire to include two additional questions. With the amendments, the questionnaire used by the court, with answer choices of only "YES" or "NO," asked the following questions about race:

22. Would the fact that Mr. Bethea is an African-American/black male from New Haven, Connecticut have any effect on your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?

23. Would the fact that the deceased ... was an African-American/black male from New Orleans, Louisiana have any effect on your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?

24. There may be additional evidence that other people involved in this case are African American/black and/or from out of state. Would any of these facts have any effect on your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?

25. Do you have any negative views or have you had any negative experiences with people who are African-American/black?

26. If you answered "yes" to question 25 above, would that affect your ability to be fair and impartial if you are selected as a juror in this case?

[¶10] Prior to individual voir dire, the court excluded any potential juror whose answers to these questions indicated that he or she might not be impartial on race-related issues. During individual voir dire, the court asked each potential juror to explain in more detail his or her affirmative responses to other questions on the questionnaire. The court permitted the attorneys for the State and for Bethea to ask follow-up questions to the potential jurors. During oral argument on this appeal, Bethea's counsel indicated that the court did not restrict the scope of the follow-up questions that could be asked or prohibit the attorneys from asking any particular question.

C. Issues Arising at Trial

[¶11] Before trial, the State informed the court of its intent to offer three photographs depicting the victim and the victim's son. Bethea objected on relevancy and Rule 403 grounds, and the court ruled that the State could select one photograph to admit.¹ When the victim's son testified, the State moved to admit en masse the State's Exhibits 1 through 55, one of which was the photograph at issue. The court asked Bethea if he objected to any of the offered exhibits. Bethea responded that he had no objection. The State showed the photograph to the victim's son, who identified himself and his father as the two individuals shown. Following this use of the photograph, it was not displayed or referenced again during the trial. On appeal, Bethea contends that the photograph was irrelevant to any issue at trial and, alternatively, that the court abused its discretion in admitting the photograph over his Rule 403 objection.

[¶12] During the State's rebuttal in closing argument, the prosecutor said: "[The victim's friend] testified last week that the defendant went up the stairs, and when he went up the stairs, he showed the gun." In fact, it was Bethea himself, not the friend, who testified that Bethea showed the friend a gun.² In making the statement at issue, the prosecutor appeared to be drawing parallels between the friend's and Bethea's testimony in an effort to convince the jury that, even if it believed Bethea's testimony, it should also believe the testimony of the friend. Bethea objected, pointing out the prosecutor's misstatement. Bethea argues that the prosecutor impermissibly enhanced the credibility of the victim's friend by downplaying an apparent inconsistency in the friend's testimony.

[¶13] Following Bethea's objection, as part of its overall instructions, the court instructed the jury as follows:

[T]he opening statements and the closing arguments of the attorneys are not evidence. In their arguments, they have suggested to you particular ways that you might want to analyze the evidence, and they have argued various conclusions and inferences that you might want to draw from the evidence. But the opening statements and the closing statements themselves are not evidence.

If, once you begin your deliberations, your memory of the evidence is different from their memory, it is your memory that controls. And I understand that counsel in this case may disagree about what the other one may have said to you in closing arguments. So, again, I want to emphasize for you that it is your memory that controls—your memory of the evidence that controls your decision in this case.

[¶14] By its verdict at the end of the seven-day trial, the jury acquitted Bethea of murder but found him guilty of the lesser-included offense of manslaughter. The court sentenced Bethea to twenty-six years' imprisonment with all but eighteen years suspended, followed by four years of probation. Bethea timely appealed the resulting judgment. See M.R. App. P. 2B(b)(1).

II. LEGAL ANALYSIS

A. Voir Dire

[¶15] Bethea asserts that the trial court's conduct of voir dire was not sufficient to identify racial bias among potential jurors and that he was therefore denied his constitutional right to a fair trial.³ Specifically, Bethea contends that the court abused its discretion in declining to include on the juror questionnaire the five questions he requested because (1) the State presented evidence related to his dreadlocks and (2) Bethea testified that he attempted to elude...