High court upholds decision in ’04 accident

PORTLAND – The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the conviction of an Abbot man in the death of two friends in a car accident nearly four years ago.

Heath St. Louis, 24, was sentenced in June 2007 to 10 years in prison with all but 31/2 years suspended after a jury found him guilty of two counts of manslaughter. He has been free on post-conviction bail awaiting the court’s decision.

Now that his appeals have been exhausted, St. Louis has three days to surrender to authorities with the Maine Department of Corrections to begin serving his sentence, according to Piscataquis County District Attorney R. Christopher Almy, who prosecuted the case.

“I’m not surprised,” Almy said of the high court’s decision. “I’m glad for the sake of the victims’ families that we are almost at the very end of this long, drawn-out affair.”

In their ruling Tuesday, the justices said prosecutors did commit a serious oversight in allowing the car that St. Louis and the victims were riding in to be released for demolition before St. Louis was indicted by a grand jury on Oct. 21, 2005, a year and a day after the fatal crash.

But the court said the prosecutors did not act in bad faith. The justices also found that St. Louis’ attorneys had failed to show that the demolished vehicle contained evidence that could have proved his innocence.

Through the appeals process, St. Louis has maintained that he was not driving, but his DNA was found on the car’s air bag. In a footnote to the decisions, the court said that there was no evidence on the record to support his contention.

Efforts to reach Bangor attorneys N. Laurence Willey or Thomas M. Matzilevich, who represented St. Louis at the trial and in the appeal, were unsuccessful Tuesday.

Five of the seven justices heard arguments in May in St. Louis’ appeal at the Penobscot County Courthouse. Justices Andrew M. Mead and Warren M. Silver did not sit in on the arguments. Mead sentenced St. Louis, presided over his trial and issued the pretrial rulings that were appealed. Information on why Silver recused himself from the case was not available Tuesday.

St. Louis was convicted in February 2007 after a two-day jury trial in Piscataquis County Superior Court. He was found responsible for the deaths of Elias Russell, 22, of Parkman and Drake Martell, 21, of Sangerville on Oct. 20, 2004, in Sebec.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

jharrison@bangordailynews.net

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