Law Court nixes reduced-sentence appeals

PORTLAND – The state supreme court on Thursday upheld the sentences of two men in ruling that an earlier court decision to reduce a Maine woman’s manslaughter sentence does not apply retroactively to their cases.

The ruling came in a consolidated appeal by Everett Ashby for his manslaughter sentence and Stephen Carmichael for his sentence for gross sexual assault.

Ashby and Carmichael were among four Maine convicts serving long prison terms for murder, manslaughter or rape who said a 2005 state supreme court ruling that reduced the sentence of Sally Schofield in the 2001 death of her 5-year-old foster child should also apply to them.

Ashby was sentenced in 2001 to 35 years, with 15 years suspended, for manslaughter for throwing Amy Gaines off the Cousins Island Bridge in Yarmouth in 1998. Carmichael was sentenced in 1999 to 35 years for his third sexual assault.

In their Supreme Judicial Court appeal, Ashby and Carmichael contended that the Schofield decision, along with separate U.S. Supreme Court decisions, entitled them to a post-conviction review of their sentences.

In a unanimous ruling, the justices said that neither the Schofield case nor recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings applied retroactively to Ashby or Carmichael. The decision affirmed a Superior Court’s dismissal of their petitions seeking a new review of their sentences.

Schofield, who was convicted in 2002, was originally ordered to serve 20 years of a 28-year sentence in the asphyxiation death of Logan Marr, who was bound with duct tape and left alone in a basement.

But the state supreme court overturned the sentence, saying Schofield could not be sentenced to more than 20 years without a jury’s finding that the crime was especially heinous. Now she’s serving 17 years in prison.

Lawyers arguing for Ashby, Carmichael, Shaun Libby and Patrick Alexandre said the Schofield case and a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings required a thorough re-evaluation of old sentences.

The court last week upheld Libby’s 40-year sentence for murder during a gas station robbery, ruling that the Schofield sentencing did not apply in murder cases.

The court has not yet ruled on Alexandre’s case. He was sentenced in 2003 to 40 years for manslaughter and kidnapping for the 1989 killing of Joseph Cloak Jr., a partner in a marijuana-growing operation.