Maine Supreme Court hears appeal of conviction in pawn shop slaying

  HOULTON, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Nov. 5, heard an appeal in the case of a Presque Isle man convicted last year of intentional and knowing murder in the case of a woman who had been missing for 15 years.
George Jaime Sr., 77, was convicted after a four-day trial in Aroostook County Superior Court in Houlton in November 2013 for killing Starlette Vining in 1998. She was last seen alive in October of that year when she was Jaime’s live-in girlfriend.
The body of Vining has never been found. Jaime was arrested in July 2012.
Jaime’s son, Ted Jaime, and his friend James Campbell both testified during the trial that George Jaime told them he stabbed Vining to death, dismembered her body and incinerated it in a commercial furnace in the basement of the pawn shop and apartment complex he owned on Main Street in Presque Isle. Ted Jaime testified he saw Vining’s corpse in his father’s apartment, and both he and Campbell testified that they helped clean up the murder scene in October 1998.
George Jaime was sentenced last December and is serving 40 years in prison.
He was represented by Attorney Jeffrey Silverstein at trial, but Hunter Tzovarras, also a Bangor attorney, represented him on appeal of his conviction. Tzovarras told the Law Court Nov. 5 that Jaime was denied a fair trial because the trial court admitted Luminol test results suggesting there was a large amount of blood in the old apartment where Jaime stabbed Vining, when the attorney argued there was no evidence of any blood. He also said the court allowed numerous prior statements made by Ted Jaime to other family members and friends claiming George Jaime was responsible for the murder into the trial. Tzovarras also said the defense was precluded from presenting Ted Jaime as an alternative suspect, despite him admitting to being at the crime scene, helping cover it up, and knowing the victim. He also said that Assistant Attorney General Andrew Benson’s closing argument improperly vouched for the credibility of the case and disparaged defense counsel.
Tzovarras told the Law Court that testimony during the trial, from evidence response lab technicians, a forensic DNA analyst and a senior lab scientist from the Maine State Police Crime Lab about “red-brown” stains taken from the basement of the building and from places in his 1998 apartment “confused the jury” and was “misleading.”
The lab was unsuccessful in getting human blood or DNA from any of the collected samples.
“The tests don’t prove anything as far as blood,” argued the attorney. “And they misled the jury into thinking there was a bloody crime scene.”
After another justice asked a similar question on a related matter, Chief Justice Leigh Saufley spoke up. “But I agree with my other chief justice, isn’t that why we have a jury system?” she asked. “To consider these things, to give these matters weight?”
At the time, state police analysts and scientists both said that the samples were small in size and could have been affected by time and cleaning products. Campbell and Ted Jaime testified that bleach and other cleaning products were used to clean the bloody walls and floors, and 15 years had passed since the murder.
Tzovarras also argued that the trial court should have precluded family and friends from testifying about what Ted Jaime testified his father told him about the murder. Several of George Jaime’s children testified during the trial, as did their mother, Jaime’s ex-wife, Ethel Jaime. At one point, Ethel Jaime testified that Ted Jaime had told her several times about George Jaime murdering a woman and about Ted Jaime’s participation in cleaning up the crime scene, although he never mentioned Vining’s name. She said that the details in her son’s story always “remained consistent.”
Tzovarras also believes the court erred in excluding Ted Jaime as an alternative suspect at trial. The attorney said that Ted Jaime’s own testimony places him at the crime scene, he admits to asking James Campbell to help him clean it up, and that he showed up at Campbell’s house in the middle of the night in bloody clothing. He also had a motive, according to Tzovarras, being that he knew Vining and admitted to having a sexual relationship with her.
He also said that Benson committed an “obvious error” by using sarcasm to suggest that he is never wrong when he prosecutes a murder case and accusing Silverstein of intentionally misrepresenting the evidence related to material collected by the crime lab to the jury in the defense closing.
Assistant Attorney General Lara M. Nomani chose to counter only the argument regarding improper conduct by Benson before the Law Court Nov. 5, and her presentation lasted less than two minutes. She stated that the prosecutor used his closing argument to focus the jury on the evidence and to counter and correct misinformation made by the defense counsel in the case about the crime lab and the testimony of James Campbell.
Upon questioning from the Law Court about the alternative suspect theory, however, Nomani said that at trial, the defense focused on pointing out that the state had not proven that Vining was in fact dead.
The Law Court decision will take several months.