ROCKLAND, Maine — A 51-year-old Owls Head man who has been held in jail for more than two years while awaiting trial was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison.
Steven E. Clarke pleaded guilty in Knox County Unified Court to burglary, domestic violence assault, criminal mischief, tampering with a witness, and violating a condition of release. His guilty pleas were entered in what are known as Alford pleas in which he did not admit to the offenses but acknowledged that the prosecution has sufficient evidence to convict.
Justice William Stokes sentenced Clarke to 10 years in prison with all but five years suspended. Clarke will be given credit for time served in jail. He also will serve three years of probation upon his release.
Clarke’s case has been delayed from going to trial because he has repeatedly changed attorneys. He had five attorneys before the current team of Justin Andrus and Lynn Madison.
Clarke was convicted Wednesday of breaking into the home of Kevin Crute in Cushing in May 2013, where he assaulted a woman and broke a window and lamp.
In November 2013, he also was accused of assaulting a former girlfriend in Rockland. He later was charged with tampering with that victim by telephoning people from the Somerset County Jail in an effort to get the woman not to testify.
Andrus said if the case had gone to trial, the defense would have presented evidence that another person, whom he did not name, likely had broken into the home and caused the damage.
The defense attorney also stated that the Somerset County Jail violated law by recording all of Clarke’s telephone calls, including ones to his attorneys. Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Baroody, who prosecuted the Clarke case, said no one in his office listened to any of the tapes that involved the attorneys.
Clarke has a lengthy criminal record that dates to 2003, when he escaped from the Knox County Courthouse while in custody on a domestic violence charge after a door to the holding room was left unlocked. He later was captured, and while in court for a bail hearing in April 2003, he attacked Assistant District Attorney Christopher Fernald. Clarke was convicted of assault in that case as well as another involving assault on an officer.
In October 2012, Clarke was sentenced to another nine months and one day in jail for threatening to kill a group of people in downtown Rockland.