AUGUSTA Maine — Members of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court expressed concern Tuesday that granting a man’s request to be released from a state psychiatric hospital would reverse a 1970 jury verdict that found him not guilty of murder by reason of insanity.
Justices heard oral arguments at the Capital Judicial Center in Donald Beauchene’s bid to get out of Riverview Psychiatric Center, where he has lived for most of the past 47 years.
Beauchene, now 73, is appealing a Superior Court judge’s denial last year of his petition to be released to live with his sister in Florida or to have his conditions of confinement modified so he could live outside the hospital in Maine. Since 1970, judges have rejected Beauchene’s efforts to be released at least five times, according to briefs filed in the case.
But Chief Justice Leigh Saufley said to grant that request would essentially reverse the ruling.
“If you are correct, the jury was wrong,” Chief Justice Leigh Saufley said. “We cannot accept that.”
A jury found Beauchene not guilty by reason of disease or mental defect in the 1969 slaying of Bernadine Israelson in Portland, the briefs said. She died of multiple “slash” wounds. He was confined in 1970 to what was then the Augusta State Hospital.
His attorney, Rory McNamara of Berwick, told justices that Beauchene now suffers from different symptoms. He was diagnosed at the time with an explosive personality but now suffers from an antisocial personality disorder, he said.
“He has changed,” McNamara said Tuesday. “He has different symptoms than he had then.”
He also argued that the jury believed testimony that Beauchene had an explosive personality but said that diagnosis was not included in the conditions covered by the insanity law in 1970.
McNamara said that nearly 40 years later, the justices could overturn the verdict if the jury misapplied the law.
Beauchene still poses a danger to the community and that the only thing that has changed is what the psychiatric community calls his condition, Assistant Attorney General Laura Yustak told the justices.
Beauchene escaped in April 1973, Yustak said in her brief. He was arrested in New York for allegedly slashing a woman’s throat but was not prosecuted due to insufficient evidence.
Five years later, he escaped again to New York, assumed an alias and got a job, the brief said. Before returning to Maine, Beauchene was incarcerated in New York for assaulting and raping a woman who lived in the building where he was working.
The briefs do not say how long he was imprisoned there. He also allegedly assaulted a female patient at Riverview in the mid-2000s, according to a footnote in Yustak’s brief.
“Every time he’s had the opportunity to be engaged in the community, he’s engaged in violent behavior,” Saufley said Tuesday.
McNamara pointed out that Beauchene has not been convicted of a crime in 29 years.
“This verdict has stood since 1970,” Justice Ellen Gorman said. “Is there any way that Mr. Beauchene can ever be released?”
“That is up to Mr. Beauchene,” Yustak replied. “He has a way of refusing treatment. He has repeatedly fired his therapists. Dr. [Ann] LeBlanc [director of the state forensic service] said that he’s adept at looking like he’s changed. He is largely the master at his own fate.”
There is no timetable under which the court must issue a decision.