No
No. 97-671
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF MONTANA
1998 MT 322
STATE OF MONTANA,
Plaintiff and Respondent,
v.
DONNA JUNE ENRIGHT,
Defendant and Appellant.
APPEAL FROM: District Court of the Tenth Judicial District,
In and for the County of Judith Basin,
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The Honorable David Cybulski, Judge presiding.
COUNSEL OF RECORD:
For Appellant:
Jon A. Oldenburg, Attorney at Law; Lewistown, Montana
For Respondent:
Hon. Joseph P. Mazurek, Attorney General; Joseph E. Thaggard and
Elizabeth Horsman, Assistant Attorneys General; Helena, Montana
Submitted on Briefs: December 3, 1998
Decided: December 23, 1998
Filed:
__________________________________________
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Clerk
Justice Terry N. Trieweiler delivered the opinion of the Court.
¶1. The defendant, Donna June Enright, was charged by information in the District
Court for the Tenth Judicial District in Judith Basin County with felony arson and
deliberate homicide. The State filed a notice of intent to introduce evidence of other
crimes, wrongs, or acts, and Enright filed a motion in limine to exclude the evidence
of other crimes, wrongs, or acts. The District Court granted in part and denied in
part the motion in limine. After a five-day jury trial, Enright was convicted of felony
arson and deliberate homicide. Enright appeals from her conviction. We vacate the
judgment of the District Court and remand this case to the District Court for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
¶2. Enright presents two issues on appeal:
¶3. 1. Did the District Court abuse its discretion when it denied in part Enright's
motion in limine and admitted evidence of the 1995 fire during her trial?
¶4. 2. Was there sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict?
FACTUAL BACKGROUND
¶5. Faye Theis and Leonard Theis were married in 1961. The couple had no children
together, but Faye had children from a previous marriage, including Margaret
Distad, Donna June Enright, and Roy Link.
¶6. In 1988, Faye and Leonard purchased and moved into a trailer in Great Falls.
Faye and Leonard eventually began to suffer from the effects of dementia and
Alzheimer's disease and, in approximately November 1993, Distad and Link
acquired a power of attorney on Faye's behalf, as did Enright and Link on Leonard's
behalf. Faye and Leonard entered a Great Falls nursing home in November 1993.
Shortly thereafter, however, Leonard left the nursing home and returned to the
trailer. Enright then became his guardian. Faye remained in the nursing home.
¶7. In February 1995, Link exercised his power of attorney to transfer Faye's interest
in the trailer to John Kozlowitz. Enright also transferred Leonard's interest to
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Kozlowitz. A week after Kozlowitz became the owner of the trailer, the home burned
and he was paid the insurance proceeds. The Great Falls Fire Department conducted
an investigation of the fire, but did not determine the cause of the fire and found no
evidence of foul play. The adjuster for the insurer of the trailer saw nothing unusual
about the circumstances of the fire and, after interviewing the fire department's
investigator, saw no need to conduct an independent investigation of the cause.
¶8. A few months later, Enright, Kozlowitz, Leonard, and Tom Martin, Enright's
son, formed the Sundown Inn, Inc. corporation for the purpose of purchasing and
operating a bar and restaurant in Stanford. Enright, Leonard, and Kozlowitz all
then moved from Great Falls to Stanford, where they purchased three trailer lots.
Kozlowitz owned the two trailers that they kept on the lots, and he lived in one, while
Enright and Leonard lived in the other trailer. Financial difficulties eventually led
the group to abandon their operation of the Sundown Inn in April 1996. It appears
that Enright and Leonard continued to live in Stanford, although they spent
considerable time at Enright's home in Great Falls.
¶9. In July 1996, Enright applied for and eventually received on behalf of Leonard a
lump sum distribution of Leonard's remaining pension benefits worth approximately
$38,000. Between July and October, six different insurance policies were purchased
to insure Leonard's life; Enright and Kozlowitz paid some of the premiums.
Testimony at trial suggested that Enright had actually prepared the applications and
forged Leonard's signature. The policies named Martin, Enright, and Link as
beneficiaries. In September 1996, Enright and Leonard moved back to Great Falls,
after which Enright and Link made frequent trips to Stanford where they removed
furniture from the Stanford trailer and transferred it to their residence in Great
Falls.
¶10. On October 16, 1996, Enright and Leonard drove to Stanford from Great Falls
in order to do their laundry at the Stanford trailer; they had no laundry facilities in
Great Falls. After they had lunch at a cafe and went to a bar, Enright and Leonard
were met by Link and his wife, who had come to Stanford to pick up one of
Leonard's chairs from the trailer. Link and his wife were at the bar only a short
while before they went to get the chair, but Enright and Leonard remained at the bar
until approximately 8:30 p.m. Over the course of the evening, Enright accrued
approximately $1200 in gambling losses.
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¶11. Enright and Leonard returned to the trailer. Enright did the laundry and
Leonard watched television. Leonard was developing a cold, so in addition to turning
up the furnace in the trailer and covering a number of the vents to channel the heat
toward Leonard's part of the trailer, Enright gave Leonard some cold medicine.
Earlier in the day, Link had also allegedly given Leonard Tylenol with codeine.
According to Enright, Leonard went to bed in his room of the trailer at
approximately 11:30 p.m. and she did not fall asleep until approximately 2:30 a.m.
¶12. Enright contends that she awoke shortly after she fell asleep to the sound of a
smoke alarm. She opened her bedroom door, but was confronted with smoke from
the hallway and shut the door. She then jumped out of her bedroom window to
escape the trailer. Enright tried to enter the trailer through its back door, but was
unable to do so when confronted by flames. She ran next door to Kozlowitz's trailer
and called 911 at 3:40 a.m. She and Kozlowitz then tried to enter the burning trailer
through the front door, but retreated because it was too dark.
¶13. When officials arrived to fight the fire, Enright told them that Leonard was still
inside the trailer in his bedroom; however, fire officials eventually found Leonard's
body partially covered by a blanket on the living room couch, where he had
apparently been asleep. An autopsy revealed that Leonard died of carbon monoxide
poisoning from smoke inhalation. It further revealed the presence of therapeutic
doses of potentially sedative drugs, such as Benadryl and codeine.
¶14. A few days later, agent Joe Uribe from the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the
Montana Department of Justice was contacted by the Judith Basin County Sheriff to
investigate Leonard's death. During a search of the trailer, Uribe and other officers
seized an empty bottle of sedative drugs, and a battery-operated smoke alarm that
they found in the hallway; they could not, however, find a battery for the alarm.
Uribe interviewed Enright on November 6, 1996. He testified that she told him,
among other things, that she was unaware of any life insurance policies for Leonard.
Uribe also testified that during the interview Enright made a number of other
statements that appeared inconsistent with her earlier statements regarding the fire.
The next day he searched her home in Great Falls, where he found the six life
insurance policies, a number of bills issued to Enright, Kozlowitz, Link, Martin, and
Leonard, and several items of property which Enright had told her insurer had been
destroyed in the fire.
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¶15. Six experts investigated the fire and testified at trial. They consistently testified
that the fire started in a third bedroom that served as a storage room. Several
witnesses testified that the cause of the fire was a collection of newspapers that was
stored in a corner of the room. They all agreed that no accelerants were used to start
the fire, and that there was no evidence of any deliberate act to start the fire. Based
largely on their inability to attribute the fire to any accidental cause, several experts
opined that the cause of the fire was incendiary, as opposed to natural or
undetermined.
¶16. On November 13, 1996, Enright was charged by information in the District
Court for the Tenth Judicial District in Judith Basin County with felony arson and
deliberate homicide; the information was later amended to include an alternate
charge of deliberate homicide pursuant to the felony murder rule at § 45-5-102(1)(b),
MCA. Link and Kozlowitz were also charged a few months later based on their
alleged roles in the fire and Leonard's death.
¶17. On April 14, 1997, the State filed its notice of intent to introduce evidence of
other crimes, wrongs, or acts by Enright. In order to prove motive, common scheme,
and a nonaccidental cause of this fire, the State sought to introduce evidence that on
seven previous occasions Enright had been involved in home or automobile fires for
the purpose of making fraudulent insurance claims. Enright filed a motion in limine
to exclude, among other things, all evidence of previous fires and insurance claims.
After a hearing, the District Court granted in part and denied in part Enright's
motion. It held that all of the previous fires and the respective insurance claims were
too remote in time and/or too dissimilar factually to be admitted, with the exception
of the 1995 Great Falls trailer fire. The court held that evidence of the 1995 fire could
be admitted.
¶18. A five-day jury trial was conducted from June 16-20, 1997. During the trial, the
District Court permitted the State's witnesses to testify regarding the 1995 fire and
the insurance claims made as a result of it. The jury convicted Enright of arson and
deliberate homicide, and she was ordered by the District Court to serve a seventy-
five-year sentence.
ISSUE 1
¶19. Did the District Court abuse its discretion when it denied in part Enright's
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motion in limine and admitted evidence of the 1995 fire during her trial?
¶20. We review a district court's evidentiary rulings to determine whether the
district court abused its discretion. See State v. Gollehon (1993), 262 Mont. 293, 301,
864 P.2d 1257, 1263.
¶21. The State has alleged at trial and on appeal that due to gambling and business
losses, Enright was in need of money, and that in order to obtain funds, she
fraudulently insured Leonard's life, sedated him, and then intentionally burned the
trailer with him in it to collect life insurance proceeds from his death. In an effort to
prove that the trailer fire was intentionally started and that Enright's actions in that
regard were part of a common scheme, the State sought to introduce evidence of
previous fires and of the insurance proceeds that were paid to Enright or other
individuals close to her after those fires. Throughout its attempts to introduce
evidence surrounding the previous fires, the State referred to the fires as other
crimes, wrongs, or acts evidence, and asserted that the evidence was admissible
pursuant to the modified Just rule. See generally State v. Matt (1991), 249 Mont. 136,
814 P.2d 52.
¶22. Enright contends that because there was no evidence which connected her to the
1995 fire, it should have been excluded pursuant to our decisions in State v. Johnson
(1991), 250 Mont. 496, 821 P.2d 1039, and Britton v. Farmers Insurance Group (1986),
221 Mont. 67, 721 P.2d 303.
¶23. The State contends that pursuant to our decision in State v. Paulson (1991), 250
Mont. 32, 817 P.2d 1137, there is no threshold requirement regarding the quantum of
proof necessary before evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is admissible, and
that the only appropriate analysis is pursuant to Rule 404(b), M.R.Evid., and Matt,
249 Mont. 136, 814 P.2d 52.
¶24. We conclude, however, that the four-part analysis for the admissibility of other
crimes, wrongs, or acts assumes that there is evidence of a prior crime, wrong, or act,
and without such evidence, there is nothing to analyze. Paulson is not on point
because in that case, other drug dealers testified to the defendant's importation and
distribution of drugs prior to the distribution for which he was being tried. The
question in Paulson was not whether there was evidence of a prior criminal act by
the defendant, but what quantum of proof would be required before that evidence
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could be admitted.
¶25. The facts in Johnson and Britton are more analogous to the facts in this case. In
Britton, Bill Britton filed a claim with his insurer, Farmers Insurance Group, after
fire damaged one of the buildings on his property. Farmers denied coverage, and in
response to Britton's claim for bad faith, alleged that he had intentionally caused the
fire. From a verdict in Britton's favor, Farmers appealed and alleged that the district
court erred when it refused evidence that Britton had recovered insurance proceeds
from three previous fires which occurred on his property. The evidence was offered
by Farmers to demonstrate a common scheme or motive. Without the need for any
"other acts" analysis, we affirmed the district court's exclusion of the prior fires with
the following explanation:
In like manner, we find no error in the denial by the District Court of evidence or
testimony relating to prior fires on which Britton may have received insurance
proceeds. . . . The proffered evidence did not meet the test of relevancy, in that it did not
make probable that Britton had committed arson either from the viewpoint of motive,
intent or deed itself. Rhodes v. Weigand (1965), 145 Mont. 542, 402 P.2d 588. Unless
evidence naturally and logically tends to establish a fact in issue, it is not admissible.
Brion v. Brown (1959), 135 Mont. 356, 340 P.2d 539. See McConnell-Cherewick v.
Cherewick (1983), 205 Mont. 75, 666 P.2d 742.
Britton, 221 Mont. at 86, 721 P.2d at 315.
¶26. Although not discussed in our rationale for excluding the prior fires, it is
apparent from our discussion of those fires that they were properly excluded because
of a failure to offer any evidence that they were caused by Britton's wrongdoing.
¶27. Johnson, decided subsequent to Paulson, involved facts much more similar to
those in this case, and found no need to apply the four-part analysis from Matt to
nearly identical circumstances. In Johnson, the defendants were charged with arson
and, in the alternative, criminal mischief based on a fire that destroyed a mobile
home. Pursuant to notice of an intent to rely on other crimes evidence, the State was
allowed to offer evidence of six prior fires which had occurred on premises owned or
occupied by one or both of the defendants. Following a three-day jury trial, the
district court directed a verdict in favor of the defendants, dismissing the arson
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charges, but they were convicted by the jury of criminal mischief. Based on the
district court's admission of the prior fires, however, this Court reversed those
convictions on appeal for the following reasons relevant to the issue in this case:
We hold that the admittance of these prior fires unfairly prejudiced the Defendants, as no
evidence exists that links Defendants with intentionally causing these prior fires.
Therefore, these prior fires cannot be considered other crimes, wrongs or acts under
Montana Rules of Evidence 403 and 404(b). We reverse and remand this case; in the event
of a new trial, the District Court is to omit these prior fires as other crimes, wrongs or acts
evidence.
Johnson, 250 Mont. at 499, 821 P.2d at 1041.
¶28. Likewise, in this case, we conclude that an analysis pursuant to Rule 404(b), M.
R.Evid., of "other crimes, wrongs, or acts" evidence assumes that there is evidence of
a prior wrongful act. In this case, there was none. Scott Enloe, the claims adjuster for
the insurer of the trailer at the time of the 1995 fire, discussed the fire with the
investigator for the Great Falls Fire Department. He learned from that investigator
that there was no evidence of foul play, and from his investigation found nothing
unusual about the fire. No additional evidence was offered at this trial to suggest that
Enright was connected to the cause of the 1995 fire. Therefore, there was insufficient
foundation to offer evidence of the prior fire as a prior crime, wrongful act, or act of
Enright, and there is no basis for analyzing the simple occurrence of a prior fire
pursuant to the rule related to evidence of prior acts.
¶29. The State contends on appeal that Johnson and Britton do not control, since it
contends that in neither of those cases was there evidence that the parties
intentionally caused the previous fires. Implicit in its argument is that such evidence
exists in this case. However, it is uncontroverted that the local authorities and the
insurer made no allegations that the previous fire was intentionally caused, and no
new evidence to that effect was offered.
¶30. The State would have the jury infer that something criminal was done in 1995
based on the facts in this case, and then use that inference to bootstrap guilt of the
crimes charged. Such circular reasoning has little probative value and creates a high
risk that a jury would convict based on unsupported assumptions.
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¶31. In other words, there is no evidence of an admissible common scheme. Evidence
of the 1995 fire was, therefore, not relevant to the issue of whether Enright
committed the acts with which she was charged, and it should have been excluded. As
the District Court stated in its order regarding evidence which it did exclude prior to
trial, "[t]he State's burden is to prove the specific crimes charged herein with proper
evidence related to this incident." (Emphasis added.) Accordingly, we hold that the
District Court abused its discretion when it allowed evidence of the 1995 fire.
ISSUE 2
¶32. Was there sufficient evidence to support the jury's verdict?
¶33. We review the sufficiency of the evidence to support a jury verdict to determine
whether, after viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution,
any rational trier of fact could have found the essential elements of the crime beyond
a reasonable doubt. See State v. Licht (1994), 266 Mont. 123, 131, 879 P.2d 670, 675;
see also State v. Mergenthaler (1994), 263 Mont. 198, 203, 868 P.2d 560, 562.
¶34. The State's information charged Enright with arson pursuant to § 45-6-103(1),
MCA, and with deliberate homicide pursuant to § 45-5-102(1)(a), MCA. The statutes
require the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Enright purposely or
knowingly committed the respective acts of destroying the trailer by fire and causing
Leonard's death. Enright contends that the State failed to prove that she acted
purposely or knowingly, and that the expert testimony failed to establish an
intentional cause of the fire.
¶35. However, circumstantial evidence can be sufficient to prove criminal intent, as
well as to sustain a conviction. See State v. Bromgard (1993), 261 Mont. 291, 295, 862
P.2d 1140, 1142; State v. Brogan (1993), 261 Mont. 79, 89, 862 P.2d 19, 25-26; State v.
Buckingham (1989), 240 Mont. 252, 260, 783 P.2d 1331, 1337; see also § 45-2-103(3),
MCA ("The existence of a mental state may be inferred from the acts of the accused
and the facts and circumstances connected with the offense."). We conclude that in
this case, after excluding evidence of the 1995 fire, there was still sufficient evidence
to support submission of the State's charges to the jury. Enright purchased six
insurance policies which insured Leonard's life during the three months prior to his
death, and then denied their existence; Enright and her family and friends moved
furniture out of the trailer prior to the fire and then claimed its loss to the insurance
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company; Leonard's body revealed the presence of multiple sedative drugs; a battery
could not be found for the smoke alarm located nearest Enright's bedroom, and the
only other smoke alarm in the trailer was located inside a closed kitchen cabinet at
the completely opposite end of the trailer; there were no signs of the clean laundry
which Enright claimed to have left in the living room; and the fire officials testified
that despite Enright's supposedly multiple encounters with and in the burning
trailer, they did not smell smoke on her. Finally, there was expert opinion evidence
that the fire was intentionally started.
¶36. While we recognize that Enright's version of the events suggests, at least in part,
a benign explanation for this evidence, the role of fact-finding belongs to the jury.
"When circumstantial evidence is susceptible of two interpretations, one supporting
guilt and the other supporting innocence, the trier of fact determines which is most
reasonable." Bromgard, 261 Mont. at 295, 862 P.2d at 1142. Accordingly, we
conclude that the evidence in this case was sufficient to establish the essential
elements of the alleged crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.
¶37. Therefore, Enright is not entitled to have the charges against her dismissed.
However, based on our conclusion that evidence of the 1995 fire was erroneously
admitted, and further conclusion that that evidence was prejudicial to the defendant,
we vacate the judgment of the District Court and remand to the District Court for a
new trial.
/S/ TERRY N. TRIEWEILER
We Concur:
/S/ JAMES C. NELSON
/S/ WILLIAM E. HUNT, SR.
/S/ JIM REGNIER
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/S/ W. WILLIAM LEAPHART
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