On May 4, 2022, Damion Butterfield sat across from two Portland detectives at a small, round table in the York County Jail, legs fidgeting, dressed in orange.

The detectives addressed him casually. They wore plain clothes, they swore with him. One detective read Butterfield his Miranda rights and joked about it being a legal chore. All the detectives wanted, they told Butterfield, was a conversation.

Butterfield, now 24, watched a video of this conversation Tuesday, sitting with his attorneys at the Cumberland County courthouse as 15 jurors read along with a transcript. It was the fourth day of testimony in what is scheduled to be a two-week trial.

He has pleaded not guilty to charges of knowing or intentional murder, attempted murder and robbery in what prosecutors allege was a robbery gone wrong. Investigators say he shot Derald “Darry” Coffin and Annabelle Hartnett on Woodford Street in Portland early in the morning of April 26, 2022. Prosecutors say Butterfield and three other men attacked Coffin in a scheme to rob him.

When Butterfield first spoke to the detectives that May, he was in jail for an unrelated probation violation. Prosecutors say he turned himself in on the day of the shooting in an effort to look less guilty.

Police weren’t immediately able to identify the gunman. Hartnett, the first witness to testify in Butterfield’s trial, described the shooting in detail but said it was too dark to see the gunman’s face.

But when Thomas MacDonald approached police days after the shooting, he confessed to them that he was there and described the shooter as a tall young man with face tattoos who was on probation.

Prosecutors dropped a felony murder charge against MacDonald, 45, in April after he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for his testimony at Butterfield’s trial. He told the jury last week that he was never involved in planning a robbery and didn’t know Butterfield – who he says pulled the trigger – before the shooting.

Police quickly narrowed in on Butterfield, who met the description and had just turn himself in to police in Saco. 

As Melissa Higgins, a York County corrections officer, escorted Butterfield to that meeting with police last May, she said he knew what was coming.

“He stated he already knew what this was about,” Higgins said during her testimony on Tuesday. “And I said to him, ‘You do?’ He said, ‘Yeah. It’s about that guy I shot.’ ”

Higgins told Butterfield to stop talking, she said, and later reported the conversation to another officer.

After the meeting, Butterfield was showing other inmates copies of photos detectives gave him, Higgins said.

“He was fine with it. Laughing. Showing the other inmates,” she said, slightly shaking her head.

But when he was in the room with detectives, Butterfield denied any involvement.

Detectives had shown Butterfield stills taken from surveillance video that they said shows him going to MacDonald’s apartment after the shooting.

They showed a picture of the .22 caliber gun that they said Butterfield used to shoot Coffin and Hartnett and they asked him how he knew Anthony Osborne, who police said set up the robbery. Butterfield told them he was his best friend’s dad.

“We don’t think you’re the guy, the mastermind,” Townsend said at one point in the interview. “You got roped into this. We’ve talked to other people. … We don’t think you’re the guy who set this thing up.”

“I’ve been going through situations my whole life,” Butterfield said. “I’m a grown man. Nobody can rope me into anything, nobody made me do anything. … I’m just never going to say anything.”

But Butterfield’s defense attorney said Townsend led Butterfield to believe they had evidence that they didn’t actually have.

A forensic analyst from the Maine State Crime Lab testified Tuesday morning that they didn’t find any conclusive evidence of Butterfield’s DNA on the handgun. The lab found several DNA donors, meaning many people likely handled the weapon, but there weren’t any samples strong enough to include or exclude Butterfield as a potential source.

At least twice in the interview, Townsend asked Butterfield about his DNA.

“Is there any reason why your DNA is on the gun?” Townsend asked in May 2022.

“In this interview, you told him that his DNA was on the gun?” Butterfield’s defense attorney, James Howaniec, asked Townsend on Tuesday.

“No. I didn’t,” Townsend testified.

“What did you say?”

“I asked a question about DNA,” Townsend said.

Butterfield was charged in connection to the shooting about four weeks later.

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