The New Hampshire Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of a man serving 43 years in prison for orchestrating the murder of someone he mistakenly believed was a police informant.
The court agreed in its decision Friday that jurors should not have heard testimony that Paulson Papillon had offered to kill another suspected police informant, but it said the error was harmless.
“There was overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt as a co-conspirator and as an accomplice to the murder,” the court wrote. “Compared to the substantial strength of the evidence of the defendant’s guilt on both charges, the challenged testimony was inconsequential.”
Papillon was convicted of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the death of Michael Pittman, who was shot and killed outside his Manchester apartment in November 2015.
According to court documents, Papillon had sold drugs to Pittman two weeks earlier and blamed him as a “snitch” for his subsequent arrest on drug charges.
He was accused of providing three other men with a gun and Halloween costumes to wear as disguises, paying them with drugs and money and telling them they could “get back to business” after Pittman’s death.
In his appeal, Papillon argued that he shouldn’t have been allowed to represent himself at trial, that there was insufficient evidence to convict him and that some of the evidence against him was illegally admitted. He decided to represent himself after two days of trial.
The court rejected Papillon’s other arguments.