Prying open the objective facts of the death of Angela Palmer is difficult even for the seasoned criminal law lawyer. No Stephen King novel ever told of true facts so horrific.
Angela Palmer was four years old, inside the second-floor apartment of a maize-colored apartment building at 317 Main Street, Auburn, Maine (near Lewiston). John Lane, 37, was dating her mother, Cynthia Palmer, 30, and they had started a common law relationship. This new apartment was to be their new beginning.
On the night of October 27, 1984, one of Cynthia's several stories, as she later advanced one after the other, was that she was stoned on an overdose of prescription drugs, that she was oblivious of the assault upon her daughter in the kitchen. She blurted out to the police that later arrived on the scene:
"I didn't do it. He did."
When her and John were led down the stairs to police vans, the two reached for each other and hugged.
In a letter she later wrote her mother from prison, Cynthia alleged that she was aware of the beating and when she tried to intervene, John beat her unconscious.
Certainly, Angela’s sister, 5-year-old daughter Sarah, heard it all from the adjacent room.
After punching her, John Lane forced the little girl into the oven in the kitchen, wedged a chair against the door so it could not be pushed open from the inside, and turned the heat on as high as it would go. Apparently, at 12:30 PM, neighbors heard:
"Let me out, Daddy, let me out!"
This, together with what sounded like banging and bumping, but they did not call the police. According to evidence later presented in court, the child had suffered a "severe scalp laceration" before being placed in the oven.
The little girl screamed in pain until she finally went silent, as her body burned, eventually smoldering. It was the smell and smoke of this fire that would bring a local police officer to the scene some two hours later to investigate; that and noise complaints in regards to the loud religious music blaring from the apartment.
Indeed, when the police officer opened the door, smoke poured out. The officer tracked the smoke back to the oven and opened the door.
A month later, the responding officer quit his job. He could no longer function because of what he had seen on that October day.
Lane and Palmer were arrested on the spot and charged with murder, although the charge against Cynthia was later reduced to manslaughter.
The community was beyond shocked. John Lane was working on his defence theory, telling the police officers that the little girl was the devil, that she had turned green and ugly and was trying to kill him, referring to herself as Lucifer. His theme was novel: he was in the midst of exorcizing the devil from his stoned girlfriend and the young child had made the fatal mistake of interfering.
A rookie judge, Bruce Chandler, was assigned to the trial. Both Lane and Cynthia Palmer’s attorneys were clever enough to avoid jury trials but it did not save Lane; he was convicted of murder in spite of his plea of insanity.
While awaiting trial, his cellmates tried to set him on fire. Lane was rescued by prison guards and then had the temerity to file a formal complaint about the incident.
In November of 1985, he was sentenced to life in prison. Maine did not have the death penalty having rescinded it from their statute books in 1887. Still in sentencing Lane, Mr. Justice Chandler may have been one of few to feel gratitude:
"I am very grateful that Maine law does not allow the death penalty because your crime tests the very outmost limits of my belief that that penalty is never a correct one."
Cynthia Palmer, because the Court believed that she was comatose at the time of the crime, was acquitted. Her first words upon release were not for her lost daughter. They were for herself:
"Oh thank you God. Freedom!"
God?
The cover of the next day's edition of the Bangor News carried a picture of a beaming, smiling Cynthia Palmer as she left the Penobscot County Superior Courthouse in Bangor, Maine a free woman.
No Aftermath
Cynthia Palmer tried but did not get custody of her other daughter back from Maine children services. Sarah was likely adopted.
Cynthia Palmer is reported as having died in 2005.
The Government of Maine reinforced child protection investigations and went from being a state renowned for laxity to one of the more advanced American child protection jurisdictions.
John Lane is still inside the Maine State Prison serving his life sentence.
Two different reflections. One, strong with Justice Chandler that even in this most egregious of crimes, the death penalty is unwarranted. The other, probably lining up to pull the switch, as humanity, justice and law continues to agonize and struggle with the place of the death penalty within a modern justice system.
REFERENCES:
- Atwell, Tom, Author Q&A: Beyond Horrible, Portland Evening News, February 6, 2011 [retrieved from the Internet on October 4, 2011]
- Curran, Jeanne, "Palmer Acquitted in Oven Death", Bangor Daily News, November 26, 1985
- Epstein, Elliot, Lucifer's Child (Authorhouse, 2010)
- Lewiston/Auburn Sun Journal, Maine lawyer rights of horrific child abuse case, November 30, 2010 [retrieved from the Internet on October 4, 2011]
- Morin, Rachel, Lucifer’s Child: Epstein’s book recounts horrific murder of little girl, Twin City Times, February 19, 2011 [retrieved from the Internet on October 4, 2011]
- State of Maine v Lane, 532 A. 2d 144 (Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, 1987)