Summary
The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed Christopher Messier’s convictions for reckless endangerment and disorderly conduct. The court held that Vermont’s reckless-endangerment statute still requires the State to prove that a firearm was operable, but concluded that the evidence was sufficient. The court also held that prompt curative instructions adequately addressed a witness’s undisclosed testimony about an admission and an inadvertent reference to a plea agreement.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether 13 V.S.A. § 1025 requires the State to prove that a firearm was operable.
- Whether the State's failure to disclose before trial a witness's testimony concerning defendant's alleged apology substantially prejudiced defendant and required a mistrial or new trial.
- Whether an unsolicited reference to a prior plea agreement was so prejudicial as to require a mistrial under a per se rule or, instead, was subject to abuse-of-discretion review.
Holdings
- Although the 2000 amendment to 13 V.S.A. § 1025 eliminated the requirement that the State prove the firearm was loaded, the State must still prove that the firearm was operable.
- The State presented sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find that the shotgun was operable, and the trial court properly denied defendant's motion for acquittal.
- The witness's undisclosed testimony about defendant's apology did not substantially prejudice defendant because the trial court promptly instructed the jury to disregard it and excised it from the record.
- A passing, vague reference to a plea agreement does not automatically require a mistrial; the trial court's response is reviewed for abuse of discretion, and the prompt curative instruction here adequately cured any prejudice.
Key quotations
“Putting this “rule of reenacted provisions” together with the presumption that the Legislature was aware of McLaren when it amended the statute leads us to one conclusion: the amendment did not do away with McLaren’s requirement that the State demonstrate that a gun involved in a § 1025 violation was operable.” (417)
“While evidence of a guilty plea is inadmissible under Vermont Rule of Evidence 410, a per se rule requiring a mistrial at the very mention of the words would be unreasonable.” (419)
Factual background
During the early morning hours of October 6, 2002, witnesses heard defendant yelling that he wanted to kill a bar owner and saw defendant holding and pointing a shotgun. The witnesses disarmed defendant, and police later found him hiding under a trailer and recovered the shotgun, which other witnesses identified as the firearm defendant possessed. At trial, a witness unexpectedly testified that defendant had apologized and said the gun was not loaded, and later made an unsolicited reference to a supposed plea agreement.
Procedural history
After a two-day jury trial in the Windsor Circuit Court, defendant was convicted of disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment and acquitted of driving under the influence. The trial court denied defendant's motion for acquittal based on insufficient evidence of firearm operability and denied mistrial and new-trial motions based on undisclosed testimony concerning an apology and an alleged plea agreement. The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed.