State v. Durepo: Toward a Principled Maine Version of the Impeachment Exception to the Exclusionary Rule

As one might have anticipated, the broad substantive mandates of the major Warren Court exclusionary rule decisions have not been left completely intact by later Supreme Court decisions. Instead, the scope of the evidentiary exclusionary doctrine established by the Warren Court has been significantly narrowed by later Supreme Court decisions that have created numerous exceptions to the general command of the exclusionary rule that evidence obtained through unconstitutional means is inadmissible in a criminal trial. Although some members of the present Court argue that the exceptions to the exclusionary rule are consistent with the purposes of the rule, and therefore legitimate, other Justices argue that some of the exceptions to the exclusionary rule erode the constitutional rights of criminal defendants. Two cases which characterize the movement toward more restrictive application of the exclusionary rule are Harris v. New York and United States v. Havens. These cases generated an exception to the exclusionary rule by allowing the introduction of unconstitutionally obtained evidence at trial for the purpose of impeaching a criminal defendant's credibility, notwithstanding the inadmissibility of the evidence in the prosecution's case in chief. In State v. Durepo, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, applied the settled federal law of Harris and Havens and affirmed the attempted murder and aggravated assault convictions of Thomas Durepo, whose suppressed pre-trial statements were used to impeach his credibility at trial. Justice Wathen, writing for the majority, concluded that the Law Court was bound by Harris and Havens because Durepo did not raise any state constitutional issues on appeal. Furthermore, in dicta the majority opinion explicitly endorsed the underlying rationale of the Harris-Havens rule. Dissenting in part, Justice Glassman argued that as a matter of state constitutional law statements suppressed under Miranda should not be admissible in Maine courts for any purpose. In a concurring opinion joined by Justice Nichols, Justice Roberts agreed with the majority that absent a violation of the Maine Constitution, the Law Court could not reject Harris-Havens on state constitutional grounds. However, the concurring justices were unwilling to join the majority's endorsement of the Harris-Havens rationale.