ROCKLAND, Maine — A 57-year-old Maine State Prison inmate serving a life sentence for murder and 80 years for another brutal attack that nearly killed a young girl will be representing himself in an assault case scheduled for trial next month.
Justice Daniel Billings agreed to allow attorney Roger Hurley to withdraw as the lawyer for defendant David G. Fleming.
Fleming, who appeared in Knox County Unified Court, is accused of assaulting a corrections officer during an incident at the prison in June 2014. The prison guard suffered significant injuries, according to the district attorney’s office.
In court on Tuesday, Fleming said he would represent himself against the assault charge but requested a standby attorney to assist him on technical legal questions. The judge said one would be appointed for him.
Court documents indicate that the prisoner has been held in the special management unit of the state prison since after the assault. Fleming claims in his multiple court filings that the corrections department, prosecution and court are working together to force him to plead guilty.
Earlier this year, Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Baroody said the state is pursuing this case, even though Fleming is serving a life sentence, because the rule of law must be enforced in a prison. He said there is a deterrent effect for prisoners who see an end in sight for their prison terms.
Fleming was convicted in 1991 of using his car to strike a 15-year-old riding her bicycle in York, putting her in his car, raping her, then taking her into the woods where he stabbed her in the chest and slashed her throat before burying her under leaves, thinking she was dead, before going to work at a McDonald’s restaurant. The girl survived by pretending to be dead and later crawled out of the woods to find help.
Evidence from that attack led investigators to suspect him of the 1990 murder of Lisa Garland, 18, in Bangor.
Prosecutors believe Fleming randomly snatched Garland off the streets of Bangor, then raped, beat and strangled her and left her body in an Alton gravel pit. Her body was discovered one month later. DNA evidence helped convict him of that murder in 1995, and he was sentenced to life in prison.