PORTLAND, Maine — A drug dealer from New York, who was convicted of murdering a woman he was engaged to marry in 2012, on Thursday lost an appeal to have a police interview and evidence that he fought with his victim hours before she died thrown out.
A panel of six Maine Supreme Judicial Court justices ruled unanimously on Thursday denying the appeal of Anthony Pratt Jr., who was convicted of murder in October 2014 in the shooting death of Margarita “Rita” Fisenko Scott, 29, of Westbrook.
Scott, who was separated from her husband, was baby-sitting when she was shot by Pratt in November 2012 inside a West Concord Street apartment in Portland, and he dumped her body in an SUV owned by her husband that was found on Jan. 17, 2013, in a motel parking lot.
“Pratt contends that the court erred in admitting in evidence an audio recording of his interview with a police detective, and in admitting evidence that Pratt had assaulted the victim hours before she was killed,” Justice Andrew Mead states in the 15-page decision. “We affirm the judgment.”
Pratt, 22, is from Queens, New York, and is serving a 42-year prison sentence for the murder.
He asked the court to throw out his conviction because in an audio tape of a police interview with him, which was played at court, the detective repeatedly called Pratt a liar.
“Although the recording was adverse to Pratt’s cause, it was also probative concerning the central issue at trial — whether it was Pratt or someone else who murdered the victim,” Mead states. “From the interview, the jury could conclude that Pratt’s responses to questions were inconsistent and that some of his actions were insufficiently explained; if it did so, the jury would logically consider the next question: why Pratt answered and behaved that way if he had not committed the crime.”
When discussing the prior assault of his victim, which was investigated by police after a neighbor called to report the crime, the court found that the evidence was important for the jury to hear.
“Evidence that an angry Pratt committed a serious assault against a woman whom he described as his fiancee hours before she was killed was relevant, and therefore admissible,” Mead states. “Because the court did not err in admitting the challenged evidence, there was no violation of Pratt’s due process rights. The entry is: Judgment affirmed.”