Guilty verdict upheld in murder of girl

PORTLAND – The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday upheld the murder conviction of Olland Reese, who was convicted of the 2002 bludgeoning death of a Brunswick teenager.

Reese, of Bowdoin, was sentenced in 2003 to 47 years in prison for killing 16-year-old Cody Green with the blunt end of a hatchet. Reese was 20 when he was convicted.

The state’s highest court ruled that the trial court legally blocked as inadmissible hearsay evidence purporting to show that another man threatened to kill Cody Green. Reese’s lawyer, Andrews Campbell, argued that admission of that evidence would have created a reasonable doubt as to Reese’s guilt.

Reese never admitted he killed Green, and on the day he was sentenced in Sagadahoc County Superior Court he told Justice Thomas Warren he was innocent, saying, “I cannot express remorse for a crime that I did not commit.”

Green’s body was found a month after her disappearance in a shallow grave behind the home where Reese was living with his mother.

Reese gave investigators several accounts of what happened the night Green disappeared. Prosecutors presented evidence during Reese’s trial that blood carrying Green’s DNA was found inside the Bowdoin home where Reese had been living.

Campbell tried to convince jurors that investigators planted evidence in an attempt to frame Reese.