## Facts

- Peter Kotsimpulos, a federal meat inspector assigned to a South Portland meat plant, was suspected after unexplained losses of meat at the facility.
- Police conducted surveillance at the plant due to repeated disappearances of meat.
- On August 10, 1978, officers observed Kotsimpulos enter the plant, return to his car, reenter the plant, and later return to his car again.
- A spot check inside the plant revealed five pork tenderloins missing.
- Upon arrest, officers found five pork tenderloins in Kotsimpulos’s coat pocket.
- Kotsimpulos testified he did not steal the tenderloins and claimed he picked them up from the floor of his car, mistakenly thinking they were meat he had purchased elsewhere.
- The defense sought to introduce testimony that a supervisor (Carver) had warned Kotsimpulos that he would see Kotsimpulos lose his job, offered to suggest the tenderloins were planted and to support reasonable doubt.
- The trial court excluded the threat evidence as irrelevant (Rule 402) and, alternatively, as substantially more confusing than probative (Rule 403).

## Issues

1. Whether the trial court abused its discretion by excluding testimony that a supervisor threatened to see the defendant lose his job, offered to support an inference that evidence was planted and to create reasonable doubt.

## Decision

- The Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the conviction.
- The court held the exclusion of the threat evidence was within the trial judge’s discretion under Rules 401–403.
- The court agreed the proffer had, at most, very slight probative value and posed a substantial risk of confusing or diverting the jury into collateral disputes.

## Legal Principles

- Relevant evidence is evidence with any tendency to make a consequential fact more or less probable; relevance is assessed using logic and common sense and may be so remote that probative value is effectively zero.  
- Irrelevant evidence is inadmissible.  
- Even relevant evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by risks such as confusion of issues or misleading the jury.  
- Appellate review of Rules 401–403 admissibility determinations is for abuse of discretion, with substantial deference to the trial court.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the theft conviction because the proposed testimony about a supervisor’s threat was too speculative to meaningfully support a “planted evidence” theory and, in any event, could properly be excluded as likely to confuse the jury; the trial judge did not abuse discretion under the Maine Rules of Evidence.


State v. Kotsimpulos, 411 A.2d 79 (Me. 1980)