PORTLAND, Maine — The attorney for a Tenants Harbor man sentenced to 45 years for murder argued Tuesday before the state high court that his client was in such a bad state of mind when he confessed that the incriminating comments should not have been allowed.
Defense attorney Steven Peterson also maintained that the 45-year prison sentence given to his client, Andrew J. Kierstead, was excessive and for a 40-year-old man amounts to a life sentence.
Peterson said his client was intoxicated and was in such an extreme emotional state that the statements were not voluntary.
Assistant Attorney General Donald Macomber challenged those claims, however, saying that Kierstead was coherent, his voice was not slurred and he offered concise details of the events of Sept. 27, 2012, when he gunned down 48-year-old Richard L. Mills, outside the victim’s home on Far Meadow Lane in Cushing.
Macomber also defended the 45-year sentence imposed in February 2014 by Justice Jeffrey Hjelm.
“He shot a man five times, three times in the back at close range. The sentence was justifiable,” Macomber said.
The justices of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court questioned Peterson at length about why the comments were not voluntary. Kierstead called 911 after the shooting and confessed to police at the scene and later in a formal interrogation.
Peterson told the justices that Mills had provided painkillers to Kierstead and got him hooked on the drugs. When Kierstead attempted to get more drugs from Mills on that day in 2012, Mills refused because Kierstead owed him money for other drugs.
But Mills was the closest thing that Kierstead had to a friend and after the shooting, Kierstead was in an extreme emotional state. Kierstead also did not call 911 until after he ingested a number of pills in what he told police was a suicide attempt.
At Kierstead’s sentencing hearing last year, family members of the victim said that Kierstead not only took Mills’ life but also took his reputation. Mills’ family said that the only person accusing Mills of being involved in drugs was the man who killed him.
They said Mills was a kind and generous man. One justice pointed out that Mills was trying to help Kierstead repair his vehicle when the Tenants Harbor man gunned him down.
Kierstead was convicted of murder in November 2013 after a jury deliberated for three hours following a weeklong trial.
Kierstead claimed that Mills had hooked him on drugs, but the prosecutor disputed that contention in a sentencing memorandum that stated Kierstead used drugs long before he met Mills and had dabbled in drugs as a teen.
The prosecutor contended that Kierstead had started out using marijuana and then experimented with LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms. His first source of opiates was his parents’ medicine cabinet at home, according to the memorandum.