Concord
James Robarge appealed his second-degree murder conviction to the New Hampshire Supreme Court in October, and the state responded to his appeal on Thursday afternoon.
Robarge claimed a Sullivan County Superior Court judge erred when he allowed prosecutors to present three pieces of evidence at trial, including cellphone location records that put him in close proximity to Kelly Robarge on June 27, 2013, the morning she disappeared.
A jury in February 2015 convicted Robarge of reckless second-degree murder and a judge in April sentenced him to 30 years to life in prison.
Prosecutors alleged Robarge beat his wife to death at their Charlestown home, put her body in the trunk of his car and dumped her off a trail in Unity. Her remains were discovered more than a week later.
Robarge, throughout a 19-day trial, maintained his innocence.
Robarge in his appeal contended the cellphone location records were unreliable and that the investigator who compiled and analyzed the data was not qualified to do so.
In its response, the Attorney General’s Office said the judge exercised proper discretion when it permitted Maine State Police Detective Leonard Bolton to testify.
“This evidence was based on reliable methodology that Bolton learned through extensive training with the FBI and private entities,” Assistant Attorney General Sean Locke wrote. “It has been widely accepted in courts across the country.”
Robarge also contended that the court erred when it allowed prosecutors to admit evidence of his tattoo that reads “love kills slowly,” and allowed a witness to testify to an instance when Robarge threatened to kill his wife over a haircut. Admitting such was “unfairly prejudicial” and an “improper” character inference, according to Robarge’s appeal, filed in October by Stephanie Hausman, deputy chief appellate defender.
The Attorney General’s Office said that isn’t the case. There were several other pieces of “emotionally charged” testimony and evidence introduced at trial, so the risk of unfair prejudice from the tattoo was trivial, Locke wrote, noting that a limiting instruction also was provided to the jury.
Similarly, there was other evidence of threats Robarge made at trial, so the risk that the specific threat over the haircut unfairly prejudiced him wasn’t “particularly high,” Locke wrote.
Even if the court erred by admitting those three pieces of evidence at trial, the Attorney General’s Office said the evidence would have been “harmless” given the weight of all of the other evidence that linked Robarge to his wife’s death.
“To the extent that the trial court erred with respect to any of the claims, those errors were harmless because the alternative evidence of guilt was overwhelming,” Locke wrote.
The Attorney General’s Office referenced several of those pieces of evidence in its brief, including the metal fragment found on the trail leading to Kelly Robarge’s body that matched the oil pan on James Robarge’s car, which broke down within miles of the trail on the day his wife disappeared.
The Attorney General’s Office and Robarge both requested a 15-minute oral argument on the matters.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.