Justia Maine Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

The defendant was convicted of two counts of unlawful sexual contact and one count of unlawful sexual touching involving his niece by marriage, who was a minor at the time. The incidents occurred in 2020 at the defendant’s home in West Gardiner, Maine, when the victim was left alone with him during family gatherings. The victim later disclosed the abuse in a forensic interview at a Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC), which was video recorded. The State charged the defendant in March 2022, and after a grand jury indictment, the case proceeded to trial. The defendant was subject to bail conditions restricting contact with minors.Prior to trial in the Kennebec County Unified Criminal Docket, the defendant moved for a bill of particulars and later asserted his right to a speedy trial, which he temporarily waived to obtain out-of-state records. He renewed his speedy trial demand, but delays occurred due to both his requests for specific trial dates and court scheduling constraints. The trial court denied his motion to dismiss for a speedy trial violation, finding that the delays were attributable to both parties and that the prejudice suffered was insufficient to warrant dismissal. The court also admitted the CAC video under 16 M.R.S. § 358, over the defendant’s objections based on confrontation and due process rights, and after editing out most references to uncharged conduct. The jury found the defendant guilty of the counts related to West Gardiner and not guilty of those related to Augusta.On appeal, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviewed the denial of the speedy trial motion, the admission of the CAC video, and the applicability of section 358. The Court held that there was no violation of the defendant’s speedy trial rights under either the Maine or United States Constitutions, that the admission of the CAC video did not violate the Maine Confrontation Clause or Due Process Clause, and that the amended version of section 358 applied to the case. The judgment of conviction was affirmed. View "State of Maine v. Engroff" on Justia Law

In 2023, the Maine Legislature enacted the Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) program, requiring employers to remit quarterly premiums into a state fund beginning January 1, 2025. The program allows covered individuals to take up to twelve weeks of leave for qualifying reasons, with benefits paid from the fund. Employers may apply to substitute an approved private plan that provides substantially equivalent benefits, which exempts them from further premium payments. The Maine Department of Labor adopted rules implementing the PFML program, including a provision that all employers must pay nonrefundable premiums for the first quarter of 2025, even if they later obtain approval for a private plan. Employers could begin applying for private plan approval after April 1, 2025, due to the time needed for insurers to develop compliant policies.The Maine State Chamber of Commerce and Bath Iron Works challenged the Department’s rule requiring nonrefundable premiums, arguing it conflicted with the PFML Act and constituted an unconstitutional taking under both the Maine and U.S. Constitutions. The Kennebec County Superior Court accepted a consented-to motion to report three legal questions to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court: whether the rule conflicted with the Act or was arbitrary and capricious, and whether it constituted a taking under state or federal law.The Maine Supreme Judicial Court accepted the report and held that the Department’s rules do not conflict with the PFML Act and are not arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise unlawful. The Court found that the statute unambiguously requires employers to remit premiums until a private plan is approved, and the rules reasonably implement the legislative intent. Additionally, the Court determined that the obligation to pay premiums does not constitute a cognizable taking of private property under either the Maine or U.S. Constitution. The Court answered all three reported questions in the negative and remanded the case for further proceedings. View "Maine State Chamber of Commerce v. Department of Labor" on Justia Law

A man was involved in an incident at a fast-food restaurant where, after displaying what appeared to be an assault rifle and making a threatening remark to a cashier, he was reported to the police. Officers located him in his car in a nearby parking lot. Believing he was armed and dangerous, police initiated a high-risk stop, ordering him to exit his vehicle. He refused repeated commands to leave the car, instead yelling at officers and behaving aggressively. Over the course of more than two hours, law enforcement—including a negotiator and SWAT team—attempted to persuade him to exit. Ultimately, officers used chemical agents and a flash device to remove him from the vehicle, where they found the rifle described by the cashier.The man was charged with several offenses, including creating a police standoff under Maine law. At trial in the Cumberland County Unified Criminal Docket, the jury heard testimony from witnesses and law enforcement. After the State rested, the defendant moved for acquittal, arguing insufficient evidence for the police standoff and criminal threatening charges. The court denied the motion. The jury found him guilty of creating a police standoff but not guilty of the other charges. He was sentenced to time already served. The defendant then filed a renewed motion for acquittal, again challenging the sufficiency of the evidence and the interpretation of the term “barricaded” in the relevant statute. The trial court denied this motion as well.On appeal, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviewed the statutory interpretation of “barricaded” and the sufficiency of the evidence. The Court held that the trial court correctly applied the plain meaning of “barricaded” and that sufficient evidence supported the jury’s findings on all elements of the offense. The judgment of conviction was affirmed. View "McKusick v. State of Maine" on Justia Law

The case concerns a defendant who, after consuming a large quantity of alcohol over several hours at a restaurant, drove his vehicle and struck an elderly pedestrian, causing serious injuries. The defendant left the scene after briefly stopping. The incident was reported to police, and evidence, including GPS data and crash reconstruction, indicated the defendant was speeding, crossed into the opposite lane, and that his alcohol consumption contributed to the crash. Due to a delay in identifying the defendant, no chemical test of his blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) was performed at the time of the accident.The State initially charged the defendant with aggravated assault and leaving the scene of an accident involving serious bodily injury or death. A grand jury later indicted him on additional charges, including aggravated operating under the influence (OUI). The State notified the defendant that it would use expert testimony based on the Widmark formula to estimate his BAC at the time of the crash, given the absence of a chemical test. The defendant moved to exclude this testimony, but the trial court allowed the State’s chemist to testify that the defendant’s BAC exceeded .08, while prohibiting the chemist from giving an exact number or invoking statutory presumptions of intoxication. The jury found the defendant guilty on all counts, and the trial court denied his motion for acquittal.The Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviewed the case. It held that Maine’s OUI statutes do not require a chemical test as the exclusive means of proving BAC and permit the use of reliable expert opinion testimony, such as that based on the Widmark formula. The Court also found that the expert’s testimony was sufficiently tailored to the facts and thus admissible. Additionally, the Court concluded that the evidence was sufficient to support the aggravated assault conviction. The judgment was affirmed, with a remand to correct the sentencing record to reflect concurrent sentences. View "State of Maine v. MacKenzie" on Justia Law

Two individuals, referred to as Child A and Child B, alleged that Ernest Fyans sexually assaulted them in Fort Kent, Maine, between 1990 and 1992, when they were children and Fyans was an adult member of their religious congregation. Child A testified that Fyans assaulted her when she was four years old, while Child B described sexual contact beginning when she was about ten and continuing until she was thirteen. Both victims delayed reporting the abuse for many years, citing threats made by Fyans. Fyans moved out of Maine in 1992, living in Connecticut and later Massachusetts.The Aroostook County Unified Criminal Docket indicted Fyans in 2021 on one count of gross sexual assault and one count of unlawful sexual contact. At trial, both victims testified, and the State presented circumstantial evidence regarding the victims’ ages, marital status, and Fyans’s age. Fyans moved for acquittal, arguing insufficient evidence on several elements, including the statute of limitations for the unlawful sexual contact charge. The trial court denied these motions, and the jury convicted Fyans on both counts. He was sentenced to twenty years for gross sexual assault and five years, to run concurrently, for unlawful sexual contact. Fyans appealed his convictions.The Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviewed the sufficiency of the evidence and the statute of limitations issue. The Court held that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find Fyans guilty of gross sexual assault, including the required age and marital status elements. However, the Court found insufficient evidence to support that the prosecution for unlawful sexual contact was timely, as the State failed to prove Fyans’s absence from Maine long enough to toll the statute of limitations. The Court affirmed the conviction for gross sexual assault, vacated the conviction for unlawful sexual contact, and remanded for resentencing on the remaining count. View "State of Maine v. Fyans" on Justia Law

A family living in Hope, Maine, who operated a medicinal marijuana cultivation business, was the victim of a violent home invasion in October 2020. Four masked intruders, some armed with a gun and a taser, broke into the home during the night, assaulted and restrained the father, threatened the family, and demanded money. The intruders also tased the family dog. During the incident, a cellphone was left behind by one of the intruders and later found by the victims. Law enforcement secured the phone, obtained its number using the emergency call function, and subsequently acquired search warrants to examine its contents and related records. DNA evidence from a mask found at the scene matched the defendant, who was later arrested and indicted on multiple charges, including robbery, assault, kidnapping, and related offenses.The Knox County Unified Criminal Docket denied the defendant’s motion to subpoena business records from the victims and his motion to suppress evidence obtained from the cellphone. The suppression court found that the defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his phone number, and the trial court denied the subpoena request, finding it insufficient under the applicable rule. After a four-day jury trial, the defendant was convicted on all remaining counts, and sentenced to concurrent prison terms, with a portion suspended and probation imposed.The Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviewed the case. It held that, even assuming the detective’s use of the emergency call function on the cellphone was a search under the Fourth Amendment, the evidence was admissible under the independent source doctrine because the information was later obtained through a valid search warrant untainted by the initial action. The Court also held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the defendant’s motion to subpoena records, as the request failed to meet the required threshold for relevancy, admissibility, and specificity. The judgment was affirmed. View "State of Maine v. Carter" on Justia Law

A man was observed by a police officer in an area behind several businesses that was marked with no-trespassing signs and known for illicit drug activity. When the officer approached, the man acted suspiciously, attempted to walk away, and appeared to conceal something in his pocket. The officer, who recognized the man from previous encounters near drug houses, learned that the man was subject to bail conditions permitting searches based on articulable suspicion of drug use or possession. Upon searching him, the officer found fentanyl and cocaine, as well as drug paraphernalia and cash.The Superior Court (Penobscot County) denied the defendant’s motion to suppress the evidence, finding that the officer had reasonable suspicion to stop and search him. At trial, the court allowed expert testimony from a Maine Drug Enforcement Agency commander regarding drug prices, after offering the defense a continuance to address late disclosure, which the defense declined. The jury convicted the defendant of aggravated trafficking in fentanyl and unlawful trafficking in cocaine. The court declined to instruct the jury on unlawful possession as a lesser included offense for the fentanyl charge but did so for the cocaine charge. The defendant was sentenced to seven years (with four suspended) for aggravated trafficking, four years concurrent for cocaine trafficking, and thirty days for violating a condition of release, with forfeiture ordered.On appeal, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the judgment. The Court held that the officer had reasonable suspicion for both the stop and the search, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the expert testimony or in its handling of the discovery issue, and any error in failing to instruct on a lesser included offense for the fentanyl charge was harmless. The Court also found no error in the sentencing analysis. View "State of Maine v. Schlosser" on Justia Law

Law enforcement stopped a vehicle driven by the defendant on December 1, 2021, and discovered drug paraphernalia, cash, and various illegal drugs in the car and on her person. The defendant admitted ownership of the drugs. On January 20, 2022, after she used a counterfeit bill to post bail for another individual, police searched her vehicle again and found large quantities of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine, as well as drug packaging materials and a firearm. The following day, a search of her home uncovered more drugs, cash, firearms, and evidence of drug sales. In total, authorities seized significant amounts of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine. The defendant was indicted on three counts of aggravated trafficking of scheduled drugs and one count of unlawful possession, with the State aggregating the drug quantities across the incidents as part of a continuing scheme.The case was tried before a jury in the Penobscot County Unified Criminal Docket. During closing arguments, defense counsel suggested that some of the drugs belonged to a passenger, referencing evidence that the passenger brought a Walmart bag containing drugs into the car. The State objected, claiming this was not in evidence, and the trial court sustained the objection. The jury found the defendant guilty on all counts, and the court entered judgment and ordered forfeiture of property. The defendant appealed, arguing that the court’s ruling during closing argument improperly commented on the evidence and infringed on her rights.The Maine Supreme Judicial Court held that the trial court erred in sustaining the State’s objection, as there was evidence supporting the defense’s argument. However, the Court concluded that the error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, given the overwhelming evidence of guilt, the opportunity for the defense to present its theory, and the court’s instructions to the jury. The judgment of conviction was affirmed. View "State of Maine v. Quirion" on Justia Law

Lorri Bosse, a truck driver with a long work history, was employed by Sargent Corporation, where she typically worked fifty to seventy hours per week but was laid off each winter due to company policy, not by her own choice. Bosse would have preferred to work year-round, and some other drivers at Sargent did so. In 2015, she suffered a gradual work injury and filed for workers’ compensation benefits, having worked thirty out of the fifty-two weeks preceding her injury. Her annual earnings at Sargent were consistently lower than the annualized amount that would result from the statutory calculation method used by the administrative law judge (ALJ).After an evidentiary hearing, the ALJ awarded Bosse benefits and calculated her average weekly wage (AWW) using the method in 39-A M.R.S. § 102(4)(B), which applies when an employee has worked fewer than 200 full working days in the year before injury. Sargent Corporation argued that this method produced an inflated AWW compared to Bosse’s actual earnings and that the fallback method in paragraph D should be used instead. The Workers’ Compensation Board Appellate Division remanded for further factual findings but ultimately affirmed the ALJ’s use of paragraph B, finding it fair and reasonable under the circumstances.The Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviewed the case and affirmed the Appellate Division’s judgment. The Court held that, for employees who work more than 26 weeks but fewer than 200 days in the year before injury, paragraph B is generally the appropriate method for calculating AWW. The fallback method in paragraph D should only be used in exceptional circumstances where applying paragraph B would be unreasonable or unfair, such as when the employee’s part-time work was voluntary or the calculated AWW is grossly inflated for reasons not tied to future earning capacity. The Court found no error in the Board’s application of paragraph B in Bosse’s case. View "Bosse v. Sargent Corporation" on Justia Law

A married couple with three minor children separated after more than a decade together, with the wife returning to Maine with the children and the husband remaining in the marital home in Atlanta. The wife, who had been the primary homemaker, filed for divorce, seeking division of property, spousal support, child support, and attorney fees. The husband, who had a significantly higher income, continued to pay the mortgage on the marital home, which had substantial equity.The Maine District Court in Calais held a contested hearing and entered a divorce judgment. The court awarded shared parental rights, primary physical residence of the children to the wife, and divided the marital property by awarding the home to the husband but granting the wife half the equity. The husband was ordered to pay spousal and child support, as well as the wife’s attorney fees. The husband filed post-judgment motions seeking clarification and amendment, particularly regarding the calculation of spousal support and attorney fees. The court reaffirmed its findings, including imputing minimum-wage income to the wife and finding the attorney fee award reasonable. The husband then appealed.The Maine Supreme Judicial Court reviewed the case and found a clerical error in the District Court’s property distribution table, which double-counted the equity in the marital home. This error potentially affected the determinations of spousal support and attorney fees. The Supreme Judicial Court vacated the judgment as to the property distribution calculations and remanded for correction and reconsideration of spousal support and attorney fees in light of the corrected figures. The judgment was affirmed in all other respects. The Court denied the wife’s request for appellate attorney fees as sanctions but allowed her to seek such fees in the trial court. View "Newman v. Riser" on Justia Law