By Doug Fletcher,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Brandon Thongsavanh doesn’t want jurors to know he has horns tattooed on his head. Nor does he want them to know about the ring of thorns tattooed on his neck.

He’s asked the court to prevent the jurors in his new trial from seeing photos of him taken around the time that he allegedly stabbed Morgan McDuffee to death.

McDuffee, a Bates College senior on the cusp of graduation, died after being stabbed five times early in the morning of March 3, 2002, on Main Street in Lewiston.

Thongsavanh was convicted of killing McDuffee in 2003. He was sentenced to 58 years in state prison.

The verdict was overturned by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court last October. The court held that repeated references by a prosecutor to an obscene slogan on a T-shirt that witnesses said Thongsavanh was wearing the night of the killing prejudiced his first jury.

David Van Dyke, the Lewiston lawyer representing Thongsavanh, now says the horns and thorns might prejudice the next jury.

He’s asking Superior Court Justice Ellen Gorman, who will preside over Thongsavanh’s second murder trial, to prevent the state from showing pictures to jurors that show the tattoos.

During his first trial, Thongsavanh wore turtleneck shirts that hid the tattoo necklace of thorns. He grew his hair to cover the horns.

Van Dyke says the tattoos paint Thongsavanh “in an extremely negative light” and called them “grossly prejudicial.”

Arguments on the motion dealing with the photos, as well as others concerning witnesses and evidence, have been set for Sept. 23 in Androscoggin Superior Court.

Jury selection for the actual trial is slated to begin Oct. 3 in Cumberland County Superior Court. The trial was moved to Portland after Thongsavanh claimed he couldn’t get a fair jury in Androscoggin County due to news stories detailing the murder and his first trial.

Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese will prosecute the case and challenge Van Dyke’s pre-trial motions.

Besides wanting any photos showing tattoos excluded from evidence, Van Dyke is asking Gorman to allow him to call defense witnesses who could testify about an alternative suspect in the killing.

Marchese, in a motion of her own, says the witnesses lack firsthand knowledge of another suspect or would talk about snippets of conversation that lack value as evidence.

Both lawyers also intend to ask the court for guidance in describing the T-shirt said to have been worn by Thongsavanh at the time of the stabbing, which occurred during a street fight involving Bates students and Twin Cities men.

The shirt bears an obscene reference to Jesus. It’s the shirt that the high court already ruled could have influenced jurors.

Van Dyke suggested that jurors be told that the shirt bore a religious message. Marchese disagrees.

In pre-trial filings, Marchese lists 144 potential witnesses, including two from the Arizona Department of Corrections and one from Maine State Prison, where Thongsavanh is being held pending trial.

Thongsavanh had been serving his sentence in Arizona as part of a deal that brought an Arizona inmate to Maine in order to end a prison standoff there. When his conviction was thrown out by the court, he was returned to Maine for retrial.

Marchese also said she intends to submit 54 exhibits.

Van Dyke lists 33 potential witnesses, his list led by Thongsavanh himself. He didn’t testify at his first trial. He also wants the right to call prosecution witnesses as defense witnesses.

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