State v. Coleman

315 A.3d 698

2024 ME 35

STATE of Maine

v.Jaquille J. COLEMAN

Docket: And-23-149

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued: February 7, 2024

Decided: May 14, 2024

Rory A. McNamara, Esq. (orally), Drake Law LLC, York, for appellant Jaquille Coleman 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: MEAD, HORTON, CONNORS, LAWRENCE, and DOUGLAS, JJ.

CONNORS, J.

[¶1] Jaquille J. Coleman appeals from his conviction for murder, see 17-A M.R.S. § 201 (2024), entered by the trial court (Androscoggin, McKeon, J.) after a jury trial, and his sentence of forty-seven years. As to his conviction, he argues that the court abused its discretion by admitting evidence of the victim’s state of mind; that the court erred by denying his motion for a mistrial based on a prosecutorial comment that he contends impermissibly shifted the burden of proof; and that even if neither of those two alleged errors alone constitutes prejudicial error, their cumulative effect warrants a new trial. As to his sentence, he argues that the court erred by considering Coleman’s failure to express remorse in his allocution as an aggravating factor.

[¶2] We reject his arguments and affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

A. The Crime and the Trial

[¶3] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State, the jury rationally could have found the following. See State v. Fay, 2015 ME 160, ¶ 2, 130 A.3d 364.

[¶4] In the fall of 2018, Natasha Morgan became pregnant with Coleman’s child, and they were living together by the fall of 2019. By August 2020, Natasha had moved out of the apartment with their daughter; in mid-August, she ended the relationship with Coleman, but he did not want to let her go. He begged Natasha not to leave him and promised to change.

[¶5] On August 20, 2020, Coleman went twice to her mother’s house looking for her. He also went to Natasha’s grandmother’s house, where Natasha was staying. Natasha shook as Coleman knocked on the door, and her grandmother did not let him in.

[¶6] Later the same evening, Natasha told Coleman in a text message that he could pick up their daughter at daycare the next day and bring her to Natasha’s mother’s house in Lewiston in the afternoon. The following day, August 21, 2020, Natasha and her mother worked together, and after work they drove to Natasha’s mother’s house. Coleman was already there in a silver Chevy Cruze that Natasha’s parents had bought for him and Natasha.

[¶7] Natasha took two car seats from the Chevy Cruze and put them in her mother’s car. She then picked up the baby and gave her to her mother. While Natasha’s mother focused on the baby inside her car, Natasha and Coleman spoke together while Coleman was seated in his car and Natasha was standing between the two cars, Natasha’s mother then heard a "bunch of pops" and turned to look at Coleman and Natasha after the first shot. She saw Coleman firing a gun at Natasha. Natasha’s mother got out of the car and saw Natasha lying on the ground. Natasha's mother headed toward Coleman but stopped when Coleman pointed the gun at her. Coleman drove away in the Chevy Cruze as Natasha’s mother screamed to Natasha's stepfather as he came out of the house, "Tim, he shot her, Tim, he shot her," Natasha’s stepfather also saw Coleman driving away.

[¶8] The State police collected three bullets and two shell casings at the scene. The police also found the Chevy Cruze that Coleman had been driving parked on another street in Lewiston. The police found two more shell casings in the car. Ballistics testing later confirmed that all the bullets and casings collected at the scene and in the Chevy Cruze were fired from the same .45 caliber gun (although the gun was never found). Natasha was pronounced dead at the hospital from the gunshot wounds. Five days later, local police found Coleman in Mississippi in a rental car, and he was extradited to Maine.

[¶9] Coleman was indicted for murder, in October 2020, followed by a three-day jury trial held in November 2022. In closing arguments, Coleman’s counsel suggested that the crime had been perpetrated by a woman named Emily Staples, who had been found with Coleman in Georgia when he was arrested.¹ In making this argument, Coleman’s counsel challenged the testimony of Natasha’s mother, noting, inter alia, that she had not initially seen the shooting but first heard pops. Coleman’s counsel also suggested that Staples had been in the Chevy Cruze with Coleman. In rebuttal, the State responded by noting that Natasha’s mother had repeatedly shouted "he shot her," after which the prosecutor stated, "I will say again your decision must be based on the evidence. Where is there any evidence that anyone besides the defendant shot Natasha?"

[¶10] Coleman then moved for a mistrial, arguing that the prosecutor’s query impermissibly shifted the burden of proof to him. The court denied the motion, concluding that the prosecutor’s query had been a fair comment on the evidence. The court also immediately thereafter instructed the jury that it was the State’s burden to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant had no obligation to offer evidence, and that the opening and closing arguments were not evidence.

B. Sentencing

[¶11] The court held a sentencing hearing in April 2023. Coleman chose to allocute during that hearing. In his allocution, he did not acknowledge that he had committed the crime. Instead, he apologized for "fail[ing] to protect" Natasha. He went on at some length, noting that Natasha "did not deserve to die," that her death was "unexpected," that "[s]ometimes in life things happen. We may not want them to but they do, and we just have to do our best to move on," and that he was "disturb[ed]" by this event. The thrust of his remarks was to distance himself from Natasha’s murder and even to portray it as a loss that he had suffered. (E.g., "I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out how to pick up the threads of an old life, but how do you go on …?")

[¶12] The court set the basic sentence at forty years based on the presence of the child, evidence of premeditation, and the fact that the crime was committed with a firearm. See 17-A M.R.S. § 1602(2) (2024). The court considered the following to be aggravating factors: the impact of Natasha’s death on her family, Coleman’s criminal history, Coleman’s jealousy as the motivation for the murder, and Coleman’s lack of remorse. The court considered Coleman’s history of employment and difficult childhood to be mitigating factors. Finding that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors, the court finalized Coleman’s sentence at 47 years.

[¶13] Coleman timely appealed the conviction and sentence, M.R. App. P. 2B(b)(1); 15 M.R.S. § 2115 (2024), and the Sentence Review Panel granted Coleman leave to appeal the sentence.

II. DISCUSSION

A. The challenged evidence was admissible because it was relevant to show Coleman’s motive.

[¶14] During trial, the court admitted over objection evidence that Natasha had told a friend that she was afraid of Coleman and that the friend and Natasha had developed a "safe word" to signal to the friend to call the police. Relying on our decision in State v. Penley, 2023 ME 7, 288 A.3d 1183, issued after the trial in this case, Coleman argues that the court erred in admitting this evidence of Natasha’s state of mind. On appeal, also citing Penley, the State does not defend the admission of the evidence but argues that it was harmless.

[1] [¶15] As a threshold matter, both parties appear to read too much into our decision in Penley. There, we noted that statements from a murder victim that the victim was afraid of the defendant are generally not admissible despite M.R. Evid. 803(3)² because such statements are typically not probative of the defendant’s state of mind and the danger of unfair prejudice resulting from the admission of such statements is high. Penley, 2023 ME 7, ¶¶ 4, 18, 288 A.3d 1183. If such "state of mind" statements are excluded, however, it is on grounds of limited relevance or substantial prejudice, or both, under M.R. Evid. 401-403, not because they are outside the ambit of Rule 803(3).³ See Capano v. State, 781 A.2d 556, 612-13 (Del. 2001) ("[T]he statement ‘I fear Defendant’ falls within the proper scope of Rule 803(3)…. The concern is that a victim’s statement that ‘I fear Defendant’ leads to an inference that the defendant deserves to be feared. Courts are wary of allowing jurors to draw this inference because it may be based on subjective impressions but have great impact." (footnotes omitted)).

[2–4] [¶16] While in Penley we noted, and we re-affirm here, that such "I fear" statements should generally be excluded under Rule 403, see Penley, 2023 ME 7, ¶ 18, 288 A.3d 1183, there can be exceptions, such as when the evidence is relevant to show motive. See United States v. Tokars, 95 F.3d 1520, 1535 (11th Cir. 1996) ("[A]t least when relevant to the motive to kill, evidence of the victim’s state of mind is admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 803(3).")⁴

[5] [¶17] Here, the challenged statements were made contemporaneously with Natasha’s termination of her relationship with Coleman, while Coleman begged her to stay and took actions to pursue her.

Natasha’s statements and arrangement with her friend regarding a safe word can be understood as reflecting the breakdown of Coleman and Natasha’s relationship as well as Coleman’s reaction to it: Natasha was fleeing the relationship that Coleman wanted to continue, thus supporting the State’s theory of Coleman’s motive for the murder, which Coleman disputed at trial.⁵

[6, 7] [¶18] In this context, given the broad deference afforded the court in making admissibility determinations under Rule 403, see State v. Tanguay, 574 A.2d 1359, 1362 (Me. 1990), we cannot conclude that the court abused its discretion in admitting the statements.⁶ See United...