Charlestown
James Robarge claims a Sullivan County Superior Court judge erred when he allowed prosecutors to present three pieces of evidence at trial last year, including cellphone location records that placed him in close proximity to Kelly Robarge on June 27, 2013, the morning she disappeared.
Through his public defender, Robarge contends the phone location records are “unreliable” and the police investigator tasked with compiling and analyzing the data was “not an engineer” nor “a computer programmer,” and was therefore unqualified, according to an appeal filed by Deputy Chief Appellate Defender Stephanie Hausman in mid-July.
“The error prejudiced Robarge’s case,” Hausman wrote.
A jury in February 2015 convicted Robarge of reckless second-degree murder. Prosecutors alleged Robarge beat his wife to death at their Charlestown home, put her body in the trunk of his car and left her remains off a rugged trail in Unity. Her body was discovered more than a week later. Robarge, who testified during the 19-day trial in Sullivan Conty Superior Court in Newport, has maintained his innocence.
Judge Brian Tucker in April 2015 sentenced Robarge to a minimum of 30 years in New Hampshire State Prison. His earliest possible release date is in 2043.
The case was largely based on circumstantial evidence, as authorities could not say definitively how, when or where Kelly Robarge died. There were no known witnesses other than the Robarges’ grandson, who was 18 months old at the time.
During the trial, prosecution witness Leonard Bolton, a Maine State Police detective, provided testimony on the cellphone records and testified the Robarges’ approximate whereabouts on the day in question could be determined by where their cellphones pinged on a map. Though there is some margin of error, he testified, the maps showed “high probability areas” for where the Robarges were throughout the day on June 27, 2013.
At the trial, those areas — shaped like pie slices — were color-coded to show which specific side of a nearby cell tower the Robarges’ phones were using at a given time.
Bolton testified he received his technical training from the FBI. Robarge’s attorney contends the methodology Bolton used to arrive at his conclusions could have been faulty and that Bolton didn’t test the cellphone carrier’s equipment on which he relied for his data and analysis.
Robarge’s appeal also asserts that proof of the accuracy of the information provided by Bolton wasn’t presented at trial, and that courts in the past have expressed concern about using location evidence because a jury “may overestimate the quality of the information provided.”
The cellphone location evidence placed Robarge near the couple’s home around 11 a.m., the same time the last outgoing call was made from Kelly Robarge’s phone. That contradicted Robarge’s testimony that he wasn’t in Charlestown until later that day.
In addition to the cellphone records, Robarge’s appeal states the court erred when it allowed prosecutors to admit evidence that Robarge has a tattoo that reads “love kills slowly,” and that he previously threatened to kill his wife over a haircut. Allowing the jury access to that information was “unfairly prejudicial,” according to his appeal.
Robarge contends the reason the state wanted to admit the tattoo evidence was because of a fresh scratch through it. The words on the tattoo could have been obscured without impacting site of the injury, the appeal states, adding that admission of the tattoo created a “grave risk of misuse” by the jury.
Admitting evidence that Robarge threatened to kill his wife over a haircut, which a friend of Kelly Robarge’s said happened years prior to her murder, was “minimally probative of his intent” and was an improper character inference, according to the appeal.
The state hasn’t yet responded to Robarge’s appeal. It has until Nov. 28, according to a judicial branch spokeswoman. Robarge seeks a 15-minute oral argument in Supreme Court.
Prior to the start of his trial, Robarge filed motions (and in one case an objection) in Sullivan County Superior Court to exclude the three pieces of evidence being appealed. The judge, however, sided with the state.
Following the verdict, one juror told the Valley News a metal fragment found on the trail leading to the victim’s body was a critical piece of physical evidence leading to Robarge’s conviction.
An expert testified that the fragment matched the oil pan on Robarge’s car, which broke down within miles of the trail on the day his wife disappeared.
During deliberations, jurors asked for a topographical map showing the location of cellphone towers in the region, but the court couldn’t provide it because no such map was presented in the case. Still, the juror said, jurors felt “very confident” in the cellphone data that placed Robarge in the Charlestown home on the morning his wife disappeared.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com.