PORTLAND – A defendant may be found guilty of vehicular manslaughter even if he was not behind the wheel at the time of the fatal crash, Maine’s highest court said Wednesday.

In upholding the conviction of a Biddeford man, the Supreme Judicial Court said the essential elements of manslaughter – causing death by recklessness or criminal negligence – can be met even if someone else was the vehicle’s operator.

The justices unanimously denied the appeal of Joe-Pete Saucier, 24, who was sentenced last year to 20 years, with six years suspended, for causing the death of Brandi Butterfield, a woman he met on Dec. 12, 1999, the night of the fatal crash.

Butterfield, 21, of Old Orchard Beach, drowned underneath the bed of Saucier’s pickup truck when it crashed into the Nonesuch River in Scarborough after a police chase that began in Old Orchard Beach.

Saucier met Butterfield at a restaurant and she accompanied him later that night in his pickup. At his trial, Saucier testified that when police lost sight of the truck at one point during the chase, Butterfield agreed to his request that they trade places because he was driving with a suspended license.

The prosecution scoffed at that scenario, saying there was not enough time for such a switch to take place.

In his appeal, Saucier took issue with the trial judge’s re-instruction to jurors, which indicated that they could return a guilty verdict regardless of whether he was operating the vehicle when it crashed.

But the supreme court agreed that it was not essential in a manslaughter case involving a motor vehicle death for the state to prove that Saucier was the driver.

“If the jury concluded that Butterfield was driving the truck at the time it went into the river, it could nonetheless have found that Saucier was guilty of manslaughter as long as it concluded that he caused her death by acting recklessly or with criminal negligence,” the opinion stated.

In rejecting Saucier’s claims of insufficient evidence, the court said jurors could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Saucier was driving at the time of the crash.

But even if they had traded places, there was sufficient evidence that Saucier spurred Butterfield to elude police by driving at high speed at night on a rough dirt road and telling her to crash through a gate, the court said.

Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson, who prosecuted Saucier, said she believes the ruling is the first in which the court explicitly states that a manslaughter defendant need not be behind the wheel.

“It’s a very unusual case,” she said. “To say, ‘I was driving and then we switched drivers’ – that could only happen under very unique circumstances.”

The justices also rejected Saucier’s bid to have his conviction overturned because his motion for a change of venue had been denied.

Saucier had argued that the trial should have been moved outside Cumberland County because pre-trial publicity surrounding the case – including accounts of a failed plea agreement – would make it impossible to ensure an impartial jury.

The law court found that the media coverage did not rise to the “level of saturation or invidiousness” that calls for a presumption of prejudice.

Defense counsel Clifford Strike said he was disappointed and surprised at the court’s decision, particularly in regard to its refusal to grant a change of venue. He said he might take that issue to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We’re supposed to have a presumption of innocence, and all over the news media we have extensive coverage about this man’s willingness to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence that incorporated seven years in the pokey,” Strike said. “I’ve got a real problem with that.”

Saucier, whose license had been suspended seven times since 1994, did not appeal his convictions for being a habitual offender and for eluding an officer, each of which resulted in a five-year concurrent sentence.

An earlier appeal of Saucier’s sentence was denied.