A 12-member jury reached a decision Tuesday in a Portland murder case. But the public will never know the verdict.

That’s because Damion Butterfield, 24, pleaded guilty at the last minute to one count of murder, aggravated attempted murder, robbery and possessing a firearm as a prohibited person.

Butterfield opted not to hear the verdict in a tense one-hour hearing with Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy. The jury sat 20 feet away in another room, unaware that their last two weeks were all for naught.

In taking the deal, Butterfield waived his right to appeal the verdict and agreed to serve 35 years in prison. He faced 25 years to life for the murder charge.

“Are you pleading today because you are guilty?” Kennedy asked.

“Yes,” Butterfield said.

Jurors spent the last three days debating whether prosecutors shared enough evidence to prove Butterfield was responsible for killing Derald “Darry” Coffin and shooting Annabelle Hartnett on April 26, 2022. Butterfield was one of four men charged in connection with Coffin’s death, but prosecutors argued he was the one who pulled the trigger in the robbery that turned deadly. He was the first to go to trial.

Prosecutors argued throughout the trial that Butterfield shocked his three former co-defendants when he pulled out a gun during the robbery and shot Coffin for “street cred.” A corrections officer and one of the former co-defendants testified that they heard Butterfield brag about the shooting afterward.

The prosecution presented a week’s worth of testimony, from police detectives, crime scene technicians, DNA analysts and two eyewitnesses: Hartnett, who testified that she couldn’t see the shooter’s face but described him as a tall man, wearing a black and sweatshirt; and Thomas MacDonald, 45, a former co-defendant who took a plea deal and agreed to testify that Butterfield was the shooter.

Butterfield’s lawyers said Tuesday evening that they were “disturbed by the thinness of the evidence.”

The state’s win comes days after Kennedy ruled in Butterfield’s favor, barring prosecutors from playing several recorded calls in which they argued Butterfield appears to brag about Coffin’s killing. The order forced the state to close its case earlier than expected.

“This was one of the least proven cases I have seen, let alone for a murder charge,” said Daniel Dubé, one of Butterfield’s lawyers.

Coffin’s family sat in the courtroom throughout the hearing Tuesday, as they have for most of the trial. They declined afterward to speak with a reporter until all of the cases are resolved.

Anthony Osborne, 46, who has been accused of orchestrating the attack that killed Coffin, is scheduled for trial Jan. 8. Jonathan Geisinger, 46, who was charged with felony murder and robbery, doesn’t have a trial date scheduled yet. Butterfield’s attorneys have alleged he was the gunman. MacDonald has yet to be sentenced.

ACCOMPLICE LIABILITY 

As jurors deliberated, they emerged a few times Monday and Tuesday to review evidence. On Monday, they asked to rewatch body camera footage from one of the first officers on the crime scene. On Tuesday, they watched a roughly 20-minute interview Butterfield did with Portland detectives nearly a week after the shooting.

But jurors had the most questions about Kennedy’s instructions on the murder charge and an accomplice liability theory, which only came up during jury instructions.

Kennedy told the jury that they must unanimously decide whether Butterfield is guilty of each of the three charges. But to find him guilty of murder, the highest charge, not everyone had to agree that Butterfield pulled the trigger – he could have been convicted if some jurors believed that he only helped someone else as an accomplice.

Before the judge accepted Butterfield’s plea on Tuesday, she allowed his defense attorney to make an unusual argument about how the jury should never have been allowed to consider the accomplice theory.

James Howaniec, who voiced his opposition to the plea deal Tuesday even though his client accepted it, said the jury instructions showed the state was changing its argument at the last minute.

He said prosecutors had only argued that Butterfield was the shooter, and nothing less.

“And that’s the theory that the defense wrapped its arms around,” Howaniec said Tuesday. “We believe that we challenged that theory vigorously and that we raised reasonable doubt on that issue.”

He paused only once in the 10-minute speech, when his outburst-prone client interrupted him to shout a vulgar insult at a photographer.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Bogue said that Howaniec was mischaracterizing the state’s case and questioned whether any of Howaniec’s objections were relevant to Butterfield’s decision to plead.

Howaniec told Kennedy that his client only decided to take the state’s offer after the jury sent Kennedy a note asking about the accomplice theory.

“As the court knows, as counsel knows, notes can often times be extremely unreliable,” Howaniec said. “The jury has filled out a hard copy of a verdict form that is in existence, and we don’t know what it is. And we’re entering into a plea … with a jury sitting there, 20 feet away, that has made a decision that could possible be a not guilty verdict.”

Kennedy asked Butterfield several times if he was sure that he wanted to plead guilty after two weeks in court and a verdict had been reached. She reminded him that he cannot appeal his plea to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

“I’m absolutely positive,” Butterfield said.

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