Background
Duane D. Hanson was prosecuted for a series of assaults against his romantic partner during the summer and fall of 2023. The victim testified that Hanson repeatedly punched, strangled, threatened, cut, and restrained her. After the final series of attacks, she was hospitalized for about three weeks with extensive injuries, including shattered facial bones, damaged eye sockets, broken ribs, a lacerated spleen, and a collapsed lung.
Following an eight-day trial, a jury returned thirteen guilty verdicts, including a verdict for criminal restraint as a lesser-included offense of kidnapping. Three additional convictions resulted from Hanson’s no-contest pleas to charges of violating conditions of release, producing sixteen judgments of conviction in total. The trial court imposed concurrent sentences, anchored by a twenty-eight-year unsuspended prison term for Class A domestic violence aggravated assault.
The Court’s Holding
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court held that the trial court abused its discretion by excluding testimony from Hanson’s grandmother, father, and brother that the victim had attributed her injuries to two women and a man named “Casper.” Although Hanson waived any argument that the statements were substantively admissible as proof of alternative suspects, the testimony should have been admitted for the limited purpose of impeaching the victim with prior inconsistent statements. Whether the victim had previously blamed others went directly to her credibility and was not collateral.
The error was harmless because the proposed testimony was vague, the jury already heard substantial evidence that the victim had given inconsistent explanations for her injuries, and extensive testimony, medical evidence, police footage, and phone-location data corroborated her account. The court also found no reversible error in admitting evidence of Hanson’s earlier June 2023 assaults or in the sentencing analysis. It therefore affirmed all sixteen judgments and the twenty-eight-year sentence.
Key Takeaways
- Extrinsic evidence of a victim’s prior inconsistent account may be admissible for impeachment even when it is not admissible for its truth as alternative-suspect evidence.
- Hanson waived the substantive alternative-suspect theory by repeatedly telling the trial court that he offered the statements only for impeachment and attempting to change theories only after the close of evidence.
- The exclusion was harmless because the jury already knew of several inconsistent accounts and the State presented substantial corroborating evidence.
- The sentencing court could consider the primary aggravated-assault conviction as part of a broader series of violent acts and acted within its discretion in imposing an unsuspended twenty-eight-year term.
Why It Matters
The decision distinguishes two uses of evidence suggesting that another person committed a crime. Evidence may fail the requirements for substantive alternative-suspect proof yet remain admissible to show that a witness previously gave an inconsistent account. Trial courts should evaluate the impeachment purpose independently and, when necessary, use a limiting instruction to prevent substantive misuse.
The opinion also illustrates that erroneous exclusion of central impeachment evidence will not require a new trial when the excluded testimony would add little to impeachment already before the jury and substantial independent evidence corroborates the verdicts.