HOULTON — A Houlton man convicted in March of the shooting death of another man while the two were at a party is seeking a new trial or acquittal.
A jury of seven men and five women found Donald Boyce, 39, guilty of depraved indifference murder for the shooting of Shawn Bither, 30, on June 13, 1996. Bither, also of Houlton, was shot in the head with a .22-caliber revolver.
Boyce, who has yet to be sentenced, faces a prison term of 25 years to life.
Through his attorney, Eugene McLaughlin of Presque Isle, Boyce has filed a motion for a new trial alleging jury misconduct and an error in the instructions given to the jury concerning reckless conduct with a firearm.
In his motion for acquittal, Boyce claims that since the jury found him not guilty of knowing and intentional murder, it would be difficult to say that he was guilty of depraved indifference murder since Boyce was so drunk at the time that the shooting could not have been his conscious choice.
Boyce and Bither, along with several other people, were at a party at a house on Military Street in Houlton when Bither was shot in the head at point-blank range at 1:47 a.m. Most of the people there were highly intoxicated. Witnesses said Boyce was playing a game of Russian roulette with Bither.
In seeking a new trial, McLaughlin has noted in his motion that two of the jurors had known of Boyce previously, but failed to disclose that information during jury selection.
McLaughlin has said that jury foreman Carl Watson of Smyrna was the brother of two men with whom Boyce had gotten into a barroom brawl over a bet on a pool game.
Juror Tricia A. Foster of Monticello was a neighbor of Boyce’s when he was growing up.
McLaughlin has claimed that both Watson and Foster deliberately withheld that they knew Boyce and that both jurors “were clearly biased towards the defendant and used their bias to ensure that the defendant would be convicted of murder.”
Boyce had the option of replacing Foster on the jury, but because he did not remember her, he believed she did not remember him, and therefore declined to do so.
Furthermore, McLaughlin said, when there was confusion on the jury concerning interpretations of the law regarding depraved indifference murder, Watson “ignored the other jurors and no clarification was sought from the court.”
“There is a high likelihood that the verdict was reached not on the law as given by the court, but on a compromise settlement reached because of time constraints,” wrote McLaughlin.
Regarding the motion for acquittal, McLaughlin has noted that if his client was too intoxicated to be found guilty of knowing and intentional murder, “he was too intoxicated to make a conscious choice.”
“Depraved indifference murder requires a finding that the defendant’s conduct be his conscious choice,” wrote McLaughlin. “It is impossible for a person to be found not to know what he was doing and still be conscious of what he was doing.”
The court has not issued rulings on the motions.
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