Background
Thomas W. Cost was charged in November 2023 with domestic violence assault and domestic violence criminal threatening (both Class D) arising from an altercation with his domestic partner on October 20, 2023, in their Lincoln County home. The incident escalated from an argument to physical contact during the late evening hours.
At trial, the parties offered sharply conflicting accounts. Cost testified that he restrained the victim by her arms, escorted her to the bedroom, sat her on the bed, and said, “stop attacking me, stop attacking me, are you done, are you done.” The victim testified that Cost pinned her to the bed, restrained one arm, drove his elbow into the side of her face, and twice told her, “I will kill you” while she feared for her life. The State grounded the criminal-threatening charge solely on the alleged “I will kill you” statements.
The trial court, without being asked, gave a self-defense instruction on the assault charge, but not on the criminal-threatening charge. Neither party objected or requested additional instructions. The jury acquitted Cost of assault but convicted him of domestic violence criminal threatening. The trial court denied his motion for a new trial, and Cost timely appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court, applying obvious-error review because Cost never objected to or requested any jury instruction at trial, affirmed the conviction. The court held that the trial court committed no error—let alone obvious error—by omitting a self-defense instruction on the criminal-threatening charge because the evidence did not generate that defense.
Under Maine’s self-defense justification statute, 17-A M.R.S. § 108(1), a defendant is entitled to the instruction only when the evidence could rationally support a finding that he used reasonable nondeadly force to defend against an imminent threat of unlawful nondeadly force. Cost’s own testimony was fatal to the claim: he denied ever making the “I will kill you” statements that formed the basis of the charge, and his account placed the victim in a restrained position with no evidence she was about to use force against him. Because his version of events did not acknowledge the threatening words, there was no evidentiary basis on which a self-defense theory could attach to those statements.
The court expressly left open a question noted in a footnote: whether a verbal death threat, standing alone, could qualify as “nondeadly force” capable of being justified as self-defense under § 108, and thus could ever generate a self-defense instruction in a criminal-threatening trial. The court declined to reach that issue because it was not raised by the evidence in this case.
Key Takeaways
- A self-defense jury instruction is warranted only when the evidence actually generates the defense; a defendant’s own denial that he made the threatening statements precludes the instruction on a criminal-threatening charge premised on those very statements.
- Because Cost failed to object or request the instruction at trial despite multiple opportunities, the court applied the demanding obvious-error standard, requiring a showing of highly prejudicial error tending to produce manifest injustice — a bar Cost could not clear.
- The court reserved the novel question of whether a verbal threat to kill can constitute “nondeadly force” under 17-A M.R.S. § 108 that might be justified in self-defense, leaving that issue for a future case where the facts actually raise it.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the foundational rule that justification defenses must be grounded in the trial record — a defendant cannot simultaneously deny making a statement and claim that the statement was legally justified. Defense counsel cannot rely on a court’s sua sponte willingness to give favorable instructions, as the trial court’s voluntary self-defense charge on the assault count created no obligation to extend the instruction to the related threatening charge without an evidentiary basis.
The court’s reserved footnote on whether a death threat can constitute nondeadly force capable of self-defense justification signals an unresolved area of Maine criminal law that may invite future litigation in domestic-violence and criminal-threatening prosecutions.