PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the murder conviction of Merrill Kimball, who is serving a 25-year sentence for a shooting at a North Yarmouth bee farm in October 2013.
Kimball, 73, of North Yarmouth was found guilty by a Cumberland County jury in April 2015 in the death of Leon Kelley, 63, of Georgetown.
Justices heard oral arguments in Kimball’s appeal, in which he sought a new trial, on April 7 at the Cumberland County Courthouse.
Kimball’s attorney, Daniel Lilley of Portland, argued that Superior Court Justice Roland Cole, who presided at the murder trial, should have instructed the jury on the affirmative defense that Kimball acted out of extreme anger and had adequate provocation for his actions; excluded evidence that Kimball had been drinking the day he killed Kelley because there was no evidence Kimball was impaired; and admitted evidence there was a dispute over the will of Stan Brown, Kelley’s father-in-law, who owned the bee farm.
Lilley told justices in April that the defense team made a mistake by not asking for an adequate provocation instruction, which he claims was the judge’s most damaging error, until the day after Cole had given instructions and the jury had begun deliberating. The Portland attorney also said the jury should have found Kimball not guilty because the defense proved he acted in self-defense.
Justice Andrew Mead rejected those arguments in the 12-page opinion he wrote for the court.
“We conclude that Kelley, who was unarmed, did not act in a way that was objectively sufficient, as a matter of law, to provoke extreme anger or fear in shooting Kelley multiple times,” he said. “Similarly, neither the threat of economic harm to Kimball’s wife posed by the potential loss of the honey that she had stored at the farm, nor any perceived threat resulting from the Brown family’s hostility to her inclusion in Stan Brown’s will, could constitute adequate provocation justifying Kimball’s shooting Leon Kelley.”
Mead concluded that neither of Lilley’s other arguments were persuasive.
Kimball is incarcerated at the Maine State Prison in Warren, according to the Maine Department of Corrections’ inmate locator. His earliest possible release date is October 2036.
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