State of Maine v. Hasahn Carter

2025 ME 77
CourtSupreme Judicial Court of Maine
DecidedAugust 19, 2025
DocketKno-24-164
StatusPublished

This text of 2025 ME 77 (State of Maine v. Hasahn Carter) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Judicial Court of Maine primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of Maine v. Hasahn Carter, 2025 ME 77 (Me. 2025).

Opinion

MAINE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT Reporter of Decisions Decision: 2025 ME 77 Docket: Kno-24-164 Argued: May 8, 2025 Decided: August 19, 2025

Panel: STANFILL, C.J., and MEAD, HORTON, CONNORS, LAWRENCE, DOUGLAS, and LIPEZ, JJ.

STATE OF MAINE

v.

HASAHN A. CARTER

CONNORS, J.

[¶1] Hasahn A. Carter appeals from a judgment of conviction, entered by

the trial court (Knox County, Hjelm, A.R.J.) following a four-day jury trial, for

robbery, elevated aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, theft by

unauthorized taking, criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon,

aggravated criminal trespass, cruelty to animals, and criminal mischief. Carter

contends that the suppression court (Billings, J.) erred in denying his motion to

suppress evidence gathered from his cellphone. Carter further argues that the

trial court (Hjelm, A.R.J.) abused its discretion by denying his motion under

Maine Rule of Unified Criminal Procedure 17A(f) to subpoena privileged or

documentary evidence from a nonparty. We disagree and affirm the judgment. 2

I. BACKGROUND

[¶2] Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the court’s order

on the motion to suppress, see State v. Bailey, 2010 ME 15, ¶ 3, 989 A.2d 716,

and to the jury’s verdict, see State v. Rancourt, 435 A.2d 1095, 1097 (Me. 1981),

the record supports the following facts.

[¶3] The victims (husband, wife, son, and family dog) lived in Hope,

Maine, where the husband and wife owned and operated a medicinal marijuana

cultivation business on their property.1 On October 12, 2020, the victims were

at home watching television together in the parents’ second-floor bedroom,

where they eventually fell asleep. Struggling to sleep with everyone in the same

room, the father eventually moved to another bedroom in the home.

[¶4] Around 2:00 a.m., the mother awoke to a crashing sound. She

looked down the stairs to the first floor, where she saw a man with a mask

pointing a gun at her, saying, “We are the cops, you are drug dealers.” She

turned into her room, closed the door behind her, and told the intruder to leave

her house. The man ran up the stairs and kicked in her door. More men

followed up the stairs, but they went down the hallway out of the mother’s

1 We use the term “victim” to describe each family member who was present at the time of the

home invasion but note that the term may also include another immediate family member when—as is the case here—the underlying crime causes serious physical trauma or serious financial loss. See 17-A M.R.S. § 2101(2)(B)(1) (2025). 3

sight. She saw a total of four intruders during the home invasion; one of them

had a gun, and another carried a taser.

[¶5] The father awoke to his wife screaming and went to the door of the

bedroom where he was sleeping. When he opened the door, two masked men

were standing there. One of them was holding a gun in the father’s face. The

man with the gun pistol-whipped the father in the head. The men stripped the

father of what clothing he had on and zip-tied his hands and feet. They

proceeded to beat the father, breaking his orbital bone and sinuses.

[¶6] The masked man guarding the wife and son eventually brought

them into the room where the intruders were holding the father—who was

zip-tied and bleeding from the head. The intruders demanded eighty thousand

dollars before continuing to beat the father and electrocute him with the taser.

[¶7] Eventually, the intruders moved the victims to another room and

set a timer on one of their phones, telling the family that bad things would

happen if they did not have the money when the timer went off.

[¶8] Three of the intruders left to go to the shop where the parents ran

their marijuana cultivation business. After the three left, the man who stayed

guarding the family told the son to get the sheet off the bed to cover his father.

The father had a lot of blood on his hands from his head injury and was able to 4

slide his hands out of the zip ties but was unable to free his legs. The man led

the family to the parents’ bedroom, and in the process, the son retrieved

scissors from his mother’s office and gave them to his father. The father then

cut the zip ties that were binding his feet.

[¶9] Once the father was free from his restraints, he grabbed the man

holding them at gunpoint and pushed him down the stairs. As the man fell, he

grabbed the son, and they both fell to the landing below. The father jumped

down the flight of stairs and broke his foot when he landed. He then tackled the

man who had grabbed onto the son, and the two struggled on the landing before

the intruder ran away. The father yelled to his wife to call 9-1-1 and grab his

gun.

[¶10] The family then moved to a stairwell where they could lock the

doors while they were on the phone with the 9-1-1 dispatcher and waited for

law enforcement to arrive. At some point, the family heard a recurring alarm

from a phone that they located in the stairway where the father had struggled

with one of the intruders.2

2Although it is not clear when, at some point during the invasion, the intruders tased the family dog. The father removed a taser dart from the dog and gave it to the first responding officer. 5

[¶11] After law enforcement arrived and secured the area, the family

spoke with the responding officer and handed over the phone they found, which

the officer then locked in his police cruiser.

[¶12] The officer then canvased the area around the home and

discovered a black surgical mask. He did not touch the mask at that time

because a canine was coming to track and needed an article from which to get

a scent.

[¶13] The Knox County Sheriff’s Department on-call detective also

responded to the scene. The detective took possession of the cellphone found

in the stairway and eventually collected the black surgical mask that the officer

discovered near the house. The detective saw that the phone was low on

battery, so he plugged it into the power source in his cruiser and locked the

vehicle before eventually turning it over to a second detective the day after the

home invasion.

[¶14] Shortly after receiving the phone, the second detective activated

the emergency call button on the home screen without accessing the phone

through its passcode. He then called 9-1-1 and spoke to the dispatcher, who

gave him the associated phone number. The detective entered the number into

an online search and determined that it was associated with Verizon. He then 6

sent a preservation letter to Verizon and applied for a search warrant to search

the contents of the phone, which was granted. The search warrant and its

supporting affidavit did not include any information gathered through the

emergency call function.

[¶15] The detective received help searching the phone from an analyst

at the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office. The analyst utilized software called

GrayKey to bypass the phone’s passcode and extract data from the device. He

then focused his examination on data generated around the time of the offenses

and discovered that a “police scanner” app and a “police light” app were

downloaded the day before the home invasion. Further examination of the

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2025 ME 77, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-of-maine-v-hasahn-carter-me-2025.