Background
Jesse Pelletier was convicted after a jury-waived trial in Hancock County of gross sexual assault (Class C) and unlawful sexual contact (Class C) under 17-A M.R.S. §§ 253(2)(M) and 255-A(1)(B) — the versions of those statutes in effect at the time of the offense in March 2022, before the Legislature replaced “acquiesced” with “consented.” The trial court found that the victim, who was lying on a couch at a mutual friend’s home after a party, repeatedly told Pelletier to stop and communicated that she did not want to engage in sexual conduct with him. Pelletier did not dispute that the sexual acts occurred; he testified they were consensual and that the victim never objected.
The central evidentiary dispute arose from the testimony of the mutual friend who was in an adjacent bedroom during the assault. She testified that she heard the victim say to Pelletier, three times: “I have a boyfriend, no, nothing’s happening.” Pelletier objected on hearsay grounds. The trial court overruled the objection under the present sense impression exception, M.R. Evid. 803(1), and the friend’s testimony corroborated the victim’s account while directly contradicting Pelletier’s claim of consent. The court convicted Pelletier and sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment, all but nine months and one day suspended, plus two years of probation. Pelletier appealed, arguing that admitting the friend’s testimony was reversible hearsay error.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed, though on different grounds than the trial court. The court did not reach the present sense impression exception because the victim’s statements were not hearsay in the first place. Under M.R. Evid. 801(c), hearsay is an out-of-court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted in the statement. The dispositive question is the purpose for which the statement is offered: “The purpose for which the out-of-court statement is offered is, therefore, critical in determining its admissibility.” State v. Liberty, 478 A.2d 1112, 1116 (Me. 1984). The court may affirm an evidentiary ruling for a reason different than the one given by the trial court. State v. Gorman, 2004 ME 90, ¶ 41, 854 A.2d 1164.
The State did not offer the victim’s statements to establish their literal truth. “No” and “nothing’s happening” are directives or commands, not assertions capable of being true or false. “I have a boyfriend” is technically an assertion, but the State did not offer it to prove that the victim had a boyfriend — it offered all three statements as evidence that the victim conveyed her non-acquiescence to Pelletier. At the time of the offense, the statutes required the State to prove both that the victim had not expressly or impliedly acquiesced and that Pelletier was criminally negligent as to whether she had. Because Pelletier testified the victim never objected, the friend’s corroborating testimony went directly to the contested element and to Pelletier’s mens rea. Offered for those purposes, the statements fell outside the hearsay definition entirely.
The court also rejected Pelletier’s unpreserved arguments under obvious error review. The friend testified that she heard the victim from her adjacent bedroom, satisfying M.R. Evid. 602’s personal knowledge requirement; a witness need not observe the underlying conduct to have personal knowledge of what she heard. As for M.R. Evid. 403, the friend’s testimony was damaging but not unfairly prejudicial — there was nothing about it that would move the tribunal to decide on an improper basis. State v. Pendleton, 2025 ME 40, ¶ 34, 334 A.3d 752.
Key Takeaways
- A victim’s verbal objections during a sexual assault — commands such as “no” and contextual statements such as “I have a boyfriend” — are not hearsay under M.R. Evid. 801(c) when offered to prove the defendant’s awareness of non-acquiescence, because they are not offered for the truth of the matter asserted; the purpose of the offer controls the hearsay analysis.
- A witness who personally hears a statement from an adjacent room satisfies the personal knowledge requirement of M.R. Evid. 602; direct observation of the underlying events is not required.
- The Law Court may affirm a hearsay ruling on any ground supported by the record; here it bypassed the present sense impression exception (M.R. Evid. 803(1)) and held the statements were not hearsay at all, mooting any exception analysis.
Why It Matters
For Maine prosecutors and defense counsel in sexual assault cases, Pelletier provides a clean doctrinal path for admitting a victim’s contemporaneous objection statements through a bystander witness. Rather than relying on an exception under M.R. Evid. 803, the State should frame the offer explicitly as evidence of the communication itself — what the defendant heard — rather than the truth of any fact embedded in the words. That framing removes the hearsay question entirely and avoids the foundational requirements of individual exceptions.
The decision also flags a statutory transition point that will matter for pending cases: the statutes criminalizing gross sexual assault and unlawful sexual contact were amended in 2023 to replace “expressly or impliedly acquiesced” with “consented,” and to expressly codify a criminal negligence mens rea standard for the defendant’s awareness. Counsel handling cases where the alleged offense occurred before those effective dates should verify which statutory language applies, as the court here relied on the pre-amendment versions throughout its analysis.