State of Maine v. Cray

STATE OF MAINE UNIFIED CRIMINAL COURT
KENNEBEC, ss. LOCATION: AUGUSTA
DOCKET NO.: CR-2022-010

STATE OF MAINE

V. ORDER ON DEFENDANT'S MOTION
FOR DISCOVERY SANCTIONS
AMANDA CRAY
AUGUSTil COUI
Defendant DEC 14 '22 PM~

This matter came before the court on December 1, 2022, for hearing on
defendant's motion for discovery sanctions. Defendant was present and
represented by Attorney Scott Hess, Esq. The State was represented by
Assistant District Attorney Tyler LeClair, Esq. Defendant seeks discovery
sanctions for the State's failure to preserve and/ or produce a video of the
interaction with Defendant in the booking room following her arrest for OUI.
In this testimonial hearing, the court heard from the Augusta Police
Department court officer and evidence technician, Christopher Hutchings as
well as the City of Augusta IT employee, Corey Beaulieu. After the evidence
closed the court took the matter under advisement. Having now considered the
evidence and the oral arguments of counsel at hearing, the court makes the
following findings of fact and conclusions of law:
The Augusta Police Department's video recording system is part of a
larger data collection system which services the entire city. Videos created at
the Augusta PD, are maintained, and stored, on a large server which also
contains video data from other city entities such as the school department and
public works. This system is maintained by the City of Augusta IT Department
at City Center, and the server is hundreds of terabits in size. Stored videos are
preserved on the server until the memory is full; which is typically after 30
days on the server. As storage reaches capacity, the system is set to
automatically purge data according to the date created, from the oldest
recordings to the newest. This process happens automatically and only those
IT employees with administrative credentials can access these controls. No one
at the Augusta Police Department has such credentials.
In early October 2021, some secondary software stopped working.
Rather than overwriting the storage with newer data, this software failure
caused the overwriting function to stop whereupon new videos could not be
written. On Friday October 1, 2021, the server displayed an alert, at
approximately 5: 18 pm, after the close of business. This alert stated that the
server was at or nearing capacity. Rather than allowing the system to write to
the hard drive, from this point on, no additional recordings were created or
retained as the system was at capacity.
On October 2, 2021, Defendant, Amanda Cray, was arrested on
suspicion of OUI. She was taken to the Augusta Police Department where she
was administered a breathalyzer test in the department's "intoxilyzer room."
This room is equipped with a video recording system. Following Defendant's
arrest on October 2, 2021 (which was a Saturday), and the report writing and
approval process, Augusta Court Officer Hutchings was requested to collect
and preserve the video of Defendant in the intoxilyzer room. He attempted to
do this on October 7, 2021, however Hutchings was unable to locate the video
on the server. Hutchings contacted the City of Augusta IT employee, Corey
Beaulieu for assistance. As a result of Hutchings inquiry, Beaulieu learned of
the alert on the server and the subsequent failure of the system to collect any
recordings. Beaulieu determined that the video did not exist after finding that
the hard drive's secondary software, which was supposed to be purging the
videos to create new space, failed. Instead of purging and overwriting, the
system just stopped recording.
The Maine Rules of Unified Criminal Procedure provide that the State
shall provide as automatic discovery "any written or recorded statements and
the substance of any oral statements made by the defendant." (M.R.U. Crim. P.
16(a)(2)(C). This obligation of the State extends to materials that are within the
possession or control of any member of law enforcement or its agency. The
State has a duty to make a 'diligent inquiry' of its police agencies and
investigators to determine if automatically discoverable information exists in
their files. See State v Hassan, 2018 ME 22, 119, 179 A.3d 898. "The State's
duty, however, extends only to matters that are within its 'possession or
control."' Id.
The court finds that no recording of Defendant in the intoxilyzer room
was created due to a software malfunction. Although the cameras appeared to
be on and recording, the data was not written to the server. The officer made a
diligent effort to locate the recording within a reasonable period of time after
the stop (5 days). Recorded material of the stop and Defendant's actions at the
time of the stop and during the field sobriety tests were properly preserved and
provided in automatic discovery as required. The court finds no discovery
violation.
For the first time in her oral argument, Defendant also raised an issue
with the validity of the intoxilyzer result. This issue is preserved and should be
the subject of a motion in limine prior to trial.

The entry is:

The Motion for Discovery Sanctio

Dated: December 9, 2022 .. - ... ­
Deborah P. Cashman
Justice, Maine Superior Court

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