Supreme Court ruling could help Gorman case in St. Laurent slaying

PORTLAND – A U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a taped interview by a suspect’s wife could not be used at his trial could help Jeffery “Russ” Gorman, who is appealing his conviction for the killing of Amy St. Laurent.

The nation’s highest court threw out a man’s murder conviction in Washington state because it relied on a tape-recorded statement made by his wife, who refused to testify at trial.

In Maine, Gorman’s conviction was obtained by prosecutors who played a tape of his mother saying he confessed to the crime. At trial, she testified she could not remember having said that.

Maine Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber informed the state supreme court of the development Monday afternoon. He said the justices could review the case on their own, or ask the lawyers to produce new appeal briefs or oral arguments. There is no timetable for a response.

“They have to follow what the U.S. Supreme Court says,” Macomber said. “The one thing they cannot do is ignore the decision.”

The ruling could have a major impact on the Gorman case, said Christopher MacLean, the Camden lawyer handling his appeal.

“This is a huge, groundbreaking decision,” MacLean said. “It means that the case that the state based its argument on is no longer the law of the land.”

Both the Washington case and the Gorman case involved rules on when hearsay – evidence that cannot be tested through hostile questioning – is allowed.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that some hearsay can be allowed if a judge finds it contains “adequate indicia of reliability.”

On Monday, the court overturned that decision, saying it gave judges too much control. It ruled in Washington state that playing the tape without giving the defendant the opportunity to cross-examine the witness violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront the evidence against him.

If the Maine Supreme Judicial Court decides that Gorman’s rights were violated in the same way, the new ruling could force the state to give him a new trial – this time without his mother’s damaging testimony.

Gorman is serving a 60-year sentence for killing St. Laurent, a South Berwick woman who disappeared from the Old Port after a night of dancing on Oct. 21, 2001. Her body was found buried near Gorman’s mother’s house on Dec. 8, 2001.

Investigators had plenty of circumstantial evidence against Gorman, but the big break in the case came when a Florida woman told investigators that Gorman’s mother, Tammy Westbrook, told her that Gorman confessed to the killing.

In February 2002, Westbrook told a grand jury that her son told her he shot St. Laurent in the head, a fact investigators had kept from the public.

During his trial, Westbrook testified that she couldn’t remember the conversation or the grand jury proceeding. Justice Nancy Mills allowed her to be called as a witness anyway, and let the jury hear a tape of her grand jury testimony.