Court to hear appeal in double homicide

PORTLAND – The Maine Supreme Judicial Court today will hear the appeal of a man convicted of a 1999 double homicide. Jeffrey Cookson, 40, of Dover-Foxcroft is seeking a new trial.

He is serving two consecutive life sentences in Maine State Prison for the murder of his former girlfriend and the toddler she was baby-sitting in Dexter.

Cookson’s attorney, William Maselli of Auburn, is asking the state’s high court to overturn the denial of a motion for a mistrial during the November 2001 trial and the post-trial decision of a Maine Superior Court judge that denied Cookson a new trial.

Maselli said Tuesday that he also appealed the “illegal” sentence. Consecutive life sentences were not appropriate, according to the attorney, because the murders stemmed from the same not separate acts.

“Certain factors have to justify consecutive life sentences,” Maselli said Tuesday. “The [state] statutes that outline consecutive sentences don’t apply here.”

After 13 hours of deliberation, Cookson was found guilty by a Penobscot County jury of the execution-style slayings of 20-year-old Mindy Gould and 21-month-old Treven Cunningham.

Two weeks later, Cookson asked for a new trial, alleging that someone else had confessed to the slayings and led police to the murder weapon.

Last summer, Maine Superior Court Justice Roland Cole denied every argument Maselli made for a new trial and criticized Cookson’s attorney for waiting to inform the court until after the verdict was announced that another man had confessed and knew where the murder weapon was hidden.

David Vantol, 22, of Guilford reportedly confessed to Maselli and his private investigator two days before the start of Cookson’s trial.

Vantol later recanted his confession, testifying that Cookson had coached him on the details of the crime – including the gun’s hiding place – and offered to pay him to take the blame.

Maselli is expected to make the same argument today before the state’s high court that he made before Cole – that because the confession was not revealed during Cookson’s trial, it constituted new evidence.

The attorney also is appealing Cole’s refusal to grant a new trial based on ballistic evidence.

The Auburn attorney said Tuesday he also planned to argue that Cole erred during Cookson’s murder trial when he denied the attorney’s motion for a mistrial after Susan Geetersloh, a nurse practitioner at the Dover-Foxcroft Family Medicine Center, testified that during the months before the murders she treated Gould, who was depressed because she was emotionally abused by Cookson.

Cole denied the motion for a mistrial, but cautioned Geetersloh to limit her answers and prohibited prosecutors from referring to that specific testimony during its closing arguments.

Donald Macomber, who handles appeals for the Attorney General’s Office, dismissed Cookson’s chances of winning the appeal. “We’re confident that we will prevail before the Maine supreme court,” he said Monday.

Other appeals the court was scheduled to hear included:

. Kevin Braley, 44, of Hiram, who contended that Maine Superior Court Justice Ellen Gorman should not have admitted evidence of his prior burglary convictions and should have declared a mistrial when the jury heard Braley was on probation when he was arrested. Braley’s attorney, Sophie Spurr of Blue Hill, also is expected to argue that the judge did not adequately instruct the jury on accomplice liability.

Braley was sentenced to 13 years in prison with all but eight suspended in January 2002 for his part in a series of Hancock County burglaries during 1999. He and James Grindel, 37, of Hancock were convicted of stealing thousands of dollars’ worth of antiques.

. Hancock County District Attorney Michael Povich’s appeal from an order that denied his request for the forfeiture of 88 firearms by Jamie Pouliot. His father, Roland G. Pouliot, 62, of Machias, last year lost an appeal to the state’s high court of his conviction for possession of firearms by a felon.