MONTICELLO, Maine — An Aroostook County man serving 55 years in prison for the murder of his fiancee wants his first-degree murder conviction overturned, alleging multiple trial court errors.
Jayme Schnackenberg, 42, who was convicted in 2025 following a three-day trial in Aroostook County Court in Houlton, asked the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday to vacate his conviction and remand his case back to the Aroostook County Court for a new trial.
In 2023, Schnackenberg shot Kimberly Hardy execution style with two bullets to the back of her head, hogtied her body, wrapped it in trash bags sealed with duct tape and straps and dumped it into the woods off Harvey Siding Road in the unorganized territory about 11 miles from the home the couple shared.
Since 2004, the state supreme court has vacated only two murder convictions. In 2020, the court ruled that the trial court erred in the case of a Massachusetts man, Marcus Asante, who claimed self-defense in the drug-related killing of an Oakfield man. Asante was granted a new trial in 2021 but was convicted again and is serving a 35-year sentence.
Last month, in a 42-page opinion, the court vacated Kailie Brackett’s December 2023 murder conviction for the death of 43-year-old Kimberly Neptune on April 21, 2022.
On Tuesday morning, the seven supreme court justices heard Schnackenburg’s appeal in Portland.
Schnackenberg contends his rights were violated during his trial.
He alleges he shot Hardy in self-defense and several trial court decisions – excluding Hardy’s toxicology results, inadequate jury instructions, allowing graphic photos of Hardy’s skull and an excessive sentence – violated his due process rights and were an abuse of the trial court’s discretion.
According to Schnackenberg’s attorney, Jeremy Pratt, he specifically testified that he shot Hardy because she was threatening him with a knife and without the information that a person using methamphetamines can exhibit violent and irrational behavior, he was unable to present a complete defense.
Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill asked Pratt during Tuesday’s hearing about Hardy’s alleged methamphetamine use and Schnackenberg’s self-defense claim.
“Wasn’t your client using methamphetamine?” Stanfill asked. “Doesn’t that cut both ways? How could that possibly be a harmful error when it undercuts his theory just as much as it supports it?”
Pratt said that Schnackenberg was afraid and it explains his conduct during the alleged altercation with Hardy.
In the January 2025 trial, Assistant Attorney General Kate Bozeman said that Schnackenberg’s self-defense story, which he presented after offering several other accounts that detailed Hardy’s disappearance and shifted blame for her death, did not add up.
“Trying to frame other people for your crime is not the behavior of a person acting in self-defense. Pushing forward after an initial shot and connecting again with your fiancee’s head, and pulling the trigger for a second time is not self-defense and it is not a reflex,” she said.
On Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General Leanne Robbin said that no evidence of self defense was generated in the investigation. Schnackenberg repeatedly told people Kim Hardy walked out of the door and she was alive when she left, she said.
Additionally, Schnackenberg alleges that graphic black and white photographs of Hardy’s skull, presented during trial, were inflammatory, gruesome and only served to inflame and prejudice him in the minds of the jury, Pratt said.
Robbin countered that the photographs were necessary to illustrate that a key piece of evidence was from Hardy’s skull.
The mop found in his home tested positive for blood and when the forensic chemist was pulling it down to look at it, a bone, a piece of Hardy’s skull fell out, Robbin said.
Because Schnackenberg said he often cut deer meat in the kitchen and the bone could have been from an animal, the photograph showed that the fragment fit into the bullet defect in her skull, Robbin said.
Regarding sentencing, Schnackenberg alleges that Superior Court Justice Stephen Nelson erred in sentencing by incorrectly weighing the mitigating and aggravating factors.
Nelson attributed too much weight to the domestic violence aspect of the case and the impact on the victim’s family and community, according to the appeal.
Justice Julia Lipez asked Robbin about possible ambiguity in the trial court sentencing.
“I disagree that it was ambiguous. He specifically said, ‘If he would have simply let her leave she and Mr. Schnackenberg simply would have gone on living their separate lives,” Robbin said. “The family and the community would not have been deprived of her presence, her friendship, her talents and her contributions.”
Chief Justice Stanfill said the court will take the matter under advisement and issue a written decision.
Schnackenberg remains in the Maine State Prison.
