Two men incarcerated at the Maine State Prison in Warren for separate slayings are asking the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to set aside their convictions.
Antoinne Bethea, 43, of Bangor and New Haven, Connecticut, claims that potential jurors should have been asked questions to screen for racial prejudice because he is black. Bethea also alleges that a misstatement that Assistant Attorney General Leane Zainea made in her closing argument was prosecutorial misconduct.
Bethea was convicted by a Penobscot County jury of manslaughter, but acquited of murder, in the 2017 Easter Sunday shooting death of Terrance Durel Sr., 36, of New Orleans. Durel was killed outside the home Bethea shared with Durel’s estranged wife, Danielle Lane Durel, 44, at 2 Highland Ave. in Bangor. Bethea, who was sentenced by to Superior Court Justice Ann Murray to 26 years in prison with all but 18 months suspended, claimed he acted in self-defense after Durel sent a threatening text to his estranged wife.
James Sweeney, 59, of Jay was convicted earlier this year in Franklin County of murdering his ex-girlfriend in July 2017. He turned himself into police after bludgeoning Wendy Douglass with a baseball bat while she slept.
Sweeney claims in his appeal that the 38-year sentence was imposed improperly. Superior Court Justice William Stokes, who rejected Sweeney’s insanity defense, gave too much weight to the aggravating factors and not enough weight to the mitigating factors of the case, his brief said. Sweeney also contends that Stokes allowed inadmissible evidence of prior domestic violence incidents to be introduced.
Briefs filed by prosecutors claim that both judges did nothing wrong in how they handled the cases.
Justices will hear oral arguments on Tuesday afternoon in Bethea’s case and on Wednesday morning in Sweeney’s case at the Cumberland County Courthouse in Portland.
If the state’s highest court were to overturn either man’s conviction, it would be up to the Maine Attorney General’s Office to seek new trials.
The last time the justices set aside a murder conviction was in 2004 when they ordered a new trial for a Lewiston man convicted of stabbing to death a Bates College student during a street brawl in 2002. The court ruled that jurors were potentially prejudiced by an inflammatory phrase about Jesus emblazoned on the defendant’s T-shirt.
Brandon Thongsavanh, now 37, was found guilty of murder agains a year later at his second trial. He was sentenced to 58 years in prison in the death of Bates College senior Morgan McDuffee, who was captain of the college’s lacrosse team.