PORTLAND – The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Friday dashed the hopes of a Danforth man awaiting a new trial in his conviction for the 1998 murder of the man who was dating his former girlfriend.

The justices unanimously reversed a lower court’s decision to grant Randy McGowan, 48, a new trial because his defense attorney, Robert M. Napolitano of Portland, did not represent him effectively in his 1999 trial in Washington County Superior Court.

“The decision today confirms that he had a fair trial, that I was found effective as a lawyer, and that the sentence is reinstated,” Napolitano said Friday.

The state’s high court, which previously upheld McGowan’s conviction, considered the case again last year after Superior Court Justice John R. Atwood granted McGowan a new trial on the grounds of ineffective counsel. Atwood retired shortly after issuing his ruling, which the state appealed.

“We never really understood how Justice Atwood got to where he got to, and that’s why we appealed it,” Deputy Attorney General William Stokes said Friday of the decision. “Needless to say, we’re very pleased.”

Verne E. Paradie Jr., the Auburn attorney who handled McGowan’s appeals, said Friday that he was “shocked” by the justices’ decision.

“For the law court to overturn Justice Atwood’s very thoughtful 30-page decision is very shocking,” he said in a telephone interview. “The law court has repeatedly overturned trial judges’ determinations that defendants had ineffective counsel. The standard is that they are to give the utmost deference to trial judges. It’s bewildering.”

McGowan is serving a 28-year sentence for shooting Bobby G. Brown, 43, of Orient. Seven years ago, McGowan shot Brown, known locally as Mountain Man, with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun when Brown accompanied then 18-year-old Jamie Merrill to McGowan’s home on Route 169 to pick up some of her belongings.

Merrill and McGowan had broken up less than two weeks before the murder.

McGowan testified during his trial that he shot Brown in self-defense on Nov. 9, 1998, after Brown lunged at him with what appeared to be a knife. Brown did not have a knife, but was carrying an all-purpose tool in a leather pouch on his belt, according to investigators.

The latest appeal, heard in Portland seven years and one week after the murder, focused on two issues – the failure by the defense attorney to secure the testimony of a blood spatter expert who would support the defense theory that Brown was crouched in an aggressive position when he was shot and whether Napolitano’s cross-examination of Merrill was prejudicial to McGowan.

In both instances, the state Supreme Court concluded that any prejudice arising from the alleged ineffectiveness was insubstantial and did not deprive McGowan of a fair trial.

Bangor Daily News reporter Katherine Cassidy contributed to this report.