Court hears manslaughter appeal Sally Schofield seeking reduction of 20-year prison term from high court

PORTLAND – The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday heard additional arguments on a former child protection caseworker’s appeal of her 20-year prison term for killing her 5-year-old foster daughter.

The court already heard arguments on Sally Schofield’s appeal but has not yet issued a ruling. Thursday’s hearing focused on the impact of a recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion that affects the way a judge can sentence.

Schofield was convicted of manslaughter in the asphyxiation death of Logan Marr on Jan. 31, 2001. The girl died after being bound with duct tape and left alone in her home’s basement during a disciplinary “timeout.”

“There is virtually no state that has not had to look at its sentencing procedures,” said Jed Davis, Schofield’s attorney. “This Blakely against the state of Washington case that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a few months ago has turned criminal sentencing upside down throughout the country.”

The U.S. Supreme Court threw courthouses into disarray by overturning a Washington state sentencing system similar to the one used by federal judges. That forced a reconsideration of sentences in thousands of cases nationwide.

The court’s ruling in Blakely v. Washington held that juries must decide any matter that can lengthen a sentence beyond the maximum set in state sentencing guidelines, unless the defendant admits to it.

Schofield was ordered in September 2002 to serve 20 years of a 28-year sentence. In his sentencing, Justice Thomas Delahanty said he considered Logan’s age as well as Schofield’s lack of expressed remorse during his sentence.

Schofield was sentenced under a Maine law that created a two-tiered sentencing formula, allowing up to 40 years. Thursday’s debate focused on what constitutes a serious crime and whether a judge has the legal discretion to deem a crime such.

Deputy Attorney General William Stokes, who argued for the state, said the seriousness of Schofield’s crime was indisputable.

“I may be missing something, but this is about as bad as it gets,” he said. “The state’s position is that this is a classic exercise of judicial discretion, how a judge decides where a crime sits on that continuum of zero to 40 years.”