The state’s highest court has denied a new trial to a Lewiston man convicted of stabbing his former girlfriend nearly two dozen times.
In May, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in Portland in the case of Cleveland Cruthirds, 27, who was found guilty last year of elevated aggravated assault, burglary and violation of conditions of release.
He attacked Naomi Swift at her apartment at 174 Blake St. in Lewiston on Dec. 10, 2011. She was stabbed 21 times in the head, neck, face and right arm. She called 911 during the attack and named Cruthirds several times to a dispatcher, even spelling out his name.
Cruthirds was sentenced to 28 years in prison on the assault charge, with six years suspended. The other two sentences, five years and six months respectively, are being served at the same time as the assault charge.
Cruthirds claimed the trial judge in his case made more than five errors, including:
* admitting into evidence a witness’ videotaped interview with police as a recorded recollection;
* excluding evidence of an alternative suspect;
* imposing an insufficient sanction on the state for a discovery violation;
* declining to instruct the jury that it could infer that evidence destroyed by the state was favorable to Cruthirds; and
* declining to allow Cruthirds to play a 911 tape during his initial cross-examination of a police detective.
He also claimed his constitutional due-process rights were violated.
The state’s top court disagreed and affirmed the judgment of the trial court.
The six-member court decided that Active-Retired Justice Robert Clifford, who presided over Cruthirds’ trial, hadn’t abused his discretion in allowing a witness’ videotaped interview with police to be admitted into evidence at trial.
Cruthirds sought to have the father of the Swift’s child be considered an alternative suspect during cross-examination of the Swift at trial. But the high court disagreed, writing that “nothing beyond Cruthirds’ speculation suggests that” the father of Swift’s “had any involvement in the crime.”
The court decided that Cruthirds failed to establish that the clothing destroyed by Lewiston police had “then-apparent exculpatory value” that would help to cast doubt on Cruthirds’ guilt and that the state acted in bad faith when it destroyed the clothing. The court agreed with Clifford that the decision by police to destroy the clothing was “ill advised.”
Written statements from bouncers at a nightclub where Cruthirds arrived shortly after the assault had been lost by police and not provided to Cruthirds at discovery before his trial. Clifford denied Cruthirds’ motion to dismiss the case for that reason, but allowed his attorneys to refer to that discovery failure during cross-examination. Two of those bouncers testified at trial and Clifford advised the jury of the failure of police to provide the written statements to prosecutors and defense attorneys.
“Given this record (of what the bouncers said during their testimony), the state’s failure to produce the bouncers’ written statements in discovery — which we do not minimize — was not so serious as to deprive Cruthirds of a fair trial, and the court’s significant sanction for the state’s discovery violation, which was to give the jury a court-sanctioned reason to question the validity of the police investigation if it so chooses, was not an abuse of its discretion.”
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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