'The system's messed up': Family of Portland shooting victim frustrated with pace of justice after 2 years in court

Jul. 14—BRUNSWICK — Terry Leonard speaks of his youngest brother, Derald "Darry" Coffin, the way only an older brother can.

They grew up together in a four-boy household in Brunswick. Leonard, eight years older, talks about those days with ease — their childhood home, Darry's close relationship with his brother Jerry, who died of cancer when they were in their 20s, and Darry's uncanny (and sometimes annoying) gift for all things mechanical.

"It made me so mad because he's one of those guys where if he touched something, he became an expert on it," said Leonard. "It didn't matter what he did, whether it was painting, working on a car, fishing — he was just that guy who could get into it and do it."

It's with a more serious tone that Leonard runs through the details of his brother's murder.

Coffin died on April 26, 2022, after he was shot during a robbery on Woodford Street in Portland early that morning.

He had been in the city for less than a month but was making plans to return home to the Midcoast. He was with his cousin's girlfriend that day, who was also shot but survived.

Four men were charged that summer. Leonard has been heavily involved in following their cases — he relayed tips to police, was in regular contact with the detective and rallied relatives to attend as many court events as possible.

"That's the only way I can be there for my brother," Leonard said in an interview at the Brunswick gazebo, a common hangout spot when he was in high school that had become less popular by the time Coffin reached that age.

The family has suffered many delays and cancellations as the court system struggles with a backlog. At times, Leonard said court proceedings haven't felt serious. The hearings are theatrical, the judge light-hearted.

He was in the courtroom on Dec. 19 when Damion Butterfield, 24, pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder and robbery after two weeks of trial. He was there months later when Butterfield was sentenced to 35 years in state prison, and on Feb. 9 when Anthony Osborne was sentenced to seven years for orchestrating the robbery that led to Coffin's death.

Another man, Thomas MacDonald, pleaded guilty in April 2023 but has yet to be sentenced. He took a deal from prosecutors and is out on bail, waiting to be called to testify against Jonathan Geisinger, who is tentatively scheduled for trial in August 2025.

Leonard is torn about what the system has done for his family.

The court process has offered them an opportunity to see justice, he said, and the dedicated work of police detectives and the victim witness advocate has given them an idea of what happened, which some families never get.

But it's splintered their tight-knit family, some of whom opted not to watch it all unfold in court and some who physically couldn't attend. Leonard also questions what difference prison time will make for these defendants, many of whom already had lengthy criminal records before Coffin's murder.

"Me, I feel the system today — and I don't know how to fix it, I'm not smart enough — I feel it is very weak on drugs, on crimes in general," Leonard said. "So when I say the system's messed up, I mean, these guys — how do you stop this from happening to somebody else?"

TIGHTLY WOVEN STORY

Coffin's death and the circumstances that led to it are a tightly woven story prosecutors have already recited in countless hearings and court documents.

He and Annabelle Hartnett, a friend who was dating his cousin, had been driving around Portland that day searching for drugs.

Both were ready for recovery — Hartnett testified during Butterfield's trial that she was just looking for something to help with her withdrawal symptoms. Coffin's family has said he was making plans to return home and enter recovery that week, but he wanted to finish working on his cousin's car.

They ran into Osborne, an acquaintance of Coffin's. He exchanged numbers with Hartnett and texted her later that day that he had found a source for drugs.

But Coffin and Hartnett didn't know that Osborne was also arranging for three other men to rob them later that night.

Geisinger, MacDonald and Butterfield pulled up to Woodford Street after midnight. In the dark, the three men approached Hartnett's car. They pulled Coffin out, dragged him onto the street and attacked him, shouting for drugs and money.

Then Butterfield pulled out a gun and shot Coffin.

He fired more shots at Hartnett, who was yelling at the men, offering them her money and trying to stop them. The bullets pierced the brim of her baseball cap and hit her arm. She survived by playing dead.

The story — pieced together from MacDonald's and Hartnett's sworn testimony, as well as countless texts referenced in court documents — could still withstand another challenge at Geisinger's trial. Geisinger pleaded not guilty to felony murder and robbery charges in July 2022.

Police say his fingerprints were on the gun Butterfield used to kill Coffin. Butterfield's lawyers suggested at trial that Geisinger was the shooter, despite eyewitness testimony.

Coffin's family members who still keep in touch with police haven't heard much on Geisinger's case. Leonard said he's been told the man has been quiet.

"I can't believe he hasn't — and they don't know why either — he isn't saying anything," Leonard said.

In a large file at the Cumberland County Courthouse, Geisinger has submitted motions and written letters insisting he be as involved as possible in his defense.

When the four men were originally scheduled to go to trial together in November 2023, Geisinger tried several times to fire his original court-appointed lawyers before a judge allowed them to withdraw in April 2023. He complained in a letter to the court that he didn't trust that the lawyers were sharing with him all of the evidence in his case.

"I was and still am uncomfortable speaking on the issues, but to put it short, I don't trust them and they are not representing my best interest," Geisinger wrote. "For almost a year, I have asked for the most basic of 'evidence' and still can't get it. They continuously try to mold my 'opinion' rather than going with clean facts and evidence. I can't get a clear answer on anything resulting in zero guidance."

He was appointed new lawyers after that, but when the trials were officially severed in September 2023, Geisinger's attorney, Steve Smith, objected to going first.

So prosecutors instead spent two weeks in court with Butterfield, who pleaded guilty at the last minute in exchange for 35 years before the verdict was read.

ONE TRIAL DOWN

Because he pleaded guilty, Butterfield can't appeal his verdict.

But shortly after he was sentenced on June 13, Butterfield's lawyers appealed the judge's ruling denying him a new trial. They argued Butterfield pleaded guilty under pressure after prosecutors snuck in confusing jury instructions at his trial. Prosecutors have vehemently denied this, and a judge disagreed with the defense's characterization.

The whole reason Butterfield was allowed to plead to 35 years, Leonard said, is because the family agreed. Coffin's mother, Cheri Gilley, said in a phone interview that at that point in Butterfield's trial, they were scared by the uncertainty of the verdict and any potential appeals.

"By then, I was exhausted," Gilley said. "Emotionally, physically. ... My physical health has been failing because of this. It's like there's nothing left in me sometimes."

At sentencing, Coffin's family noted the irony.

"Our pain and suffering was only drawn out for four months," Leonard told Butterfield. "I imagine you will only continue to appeal as long as the system allows you to."

They pleaded with the court to remember Coffin was a person, pointing to his children, Darielle and Levi, who have been at both Butterfield and Osborne's sentencings.

"I wanted them to know all the stuff that Darry's kids will miss," said Levi's mother, Dana Wallace. "It's going to affect them a lot, and I wanted them to know all the stuff they've taken from them, from Levi. It's a big loss."

Levi is turning 6 later this month. Wallace said he's Coffin's spitting image — he's gregarious, a jokester who likes pleasing others and can't sit still.

She's open with him about his father being in heaven. She keeps a large book of pictures of Coffin to help Levi remember.

"He was just one of those guys that was a people person," Wallace said. "He knew everybody, he talked to everybody. A good person — and that's what I want Levi to remember him as."

RESIDUAL EFFECTS

Every morning, Coffin's mother wakes up to work in a kitchen at 4 a.m. Though part time now, it's the same work and schedule she followed when she was raising her boys, she said, so she could be home with them when they got back from school.

Coffin was the comedian of the family. He liked to push boundaries for fun, but always brought people back down before the joke went too far.

"He'd back off and say, 'But you know that I love you,' " Gilley said.

Gilley wants to lay Coffin's ashes to rest next to where his brother Jerry is buried. She was going to wait for all the trials to end but thinks now that might go too long.

She wants to move on. But she struggles with this feeling of hatefulness and the senselessness of what happened. Why would someone kill another person, unprovoked?

But deeper than that, Gilley said she struggles with the fact that Coffin's substance use was unresolved.

They had just made up after a fight that March, during which Gilley told Coffin she was tired of his substance use. When he had stopped using for a summer before that, he had been back to the Darry she knew. Then he relapsed. She wanted to see that version of him again.

Days before the shooting, he was back in the Midcoast for a funeral. He hugged his mother, told her he loved her and that he was ready. He had a lengthy conversation with Leonard after that about finding housing. He had a construction job lined up to begin in two weeks.

"It hurt really bad, to know at least that he was trying to make these steps," Gilley said. "He was ready."

Coffin's decision to come home was a moment of relief for his family. But it causes them more grief now — they were so close to getting him back.

Leonard, who said he was often hard on his brother for his substance use but was more than eager to help him recover, struggles with that grief.

"You never move on," Leonard said. "There's never closure. That word, I don't know why they ever came up with that word."

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