Sentencing rescheduled for Bates student’s killer

AUBURN – The sentencing of a Lewiston man convicted in the murder of a Bates College student has been put off until January.

Brandon Thongsavanh, 22, had been scheduled to appear Monday in Androscoggin County Superior Court to be sentenced in the 2002 fatal stabbing of Bates senior Morgan McDuffee. A hearing on a motion seeking a new trial also had been scheduled.

Both the sentencing and the hearing asking for a new trial were postponed after a family emergency involving one of the lawyers handling the case.

Thongsavanh was convicted for the second time last month in the death of McDuffee, who was stabbed five times in the chest and back during an early morning street brawl that erupted when two groups of young people randomly crossed paths.

Thongsavanh first was convicted of murder in 2003 and sentenced to 58 years in prison. The conviction was overturned last year by the state supreme court, which said jurors shouldn’t have heard about a T-shirt with an offensive reference on it that Thongsavanh was wearing.

A jury last month found Thongsavanh guilty for a second time in a trial in Portland, where the trial was moved because of substantial pretrial publicity.

Thongsavanh’s attorney, David Van Dyke, has filed a motion seeking a new trial. The motion argues that the judge erred in failing to give jurors the option of convicting Thongsavanh of manslaughter, instead of just murder. A manslaughter sentence wouldn’t exceed 30 years.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese said the judge gave the jury the proper instructions, noting that McDuffee’s five stab wounds weren’t accidental.

After last month’s guilty verdict, Marchese said she would ask the judge for a sentence of at least 58 years, the same sentence Thongsavanh received after his first conviction.