AUBURN – Brandon Thongsavanh’s sentencing has been put off until January.
Last month, Thongsavanh, 22, was convicted for a second time of killing Morgan McDuffee, then 22 and a Bates College senior and captain of its lacrosse team, in March 2002.
A hearing on a motion filed by Thongsavanh’s lawyer, David Van Dyke of Lewiston, seeking a new trial was scheduled to be heard in Androscoggin County Superior Court this morning.
That hearing was to have been followed by sentencing.
On Friday, Justice Ellen Gorman postponed both the hearing and sentencing. Court officials said a family emergency involving one of the lawyers handling the case prompted the delay.
A court spokeswoman said the hearing and sentencing will be rescheduled for sometime in January.
Thongsavanh’s 2003 conviction in McDuffee’s slaying was overturned by Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court, which found that jurors might have been biased by repeated references to a T-shirt bearing the likeness of a naked woman and an obscene reference to Jesus Christ.
Thongsavanh was found guilty again in his second trial last month in Cumberland County Superior Court in Portland. The trial was moved there to find a jury not tainted by pre-trial publicity.
Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese has said she’ll ask Gorman to sentence Thongsavanh to at least 58 years in prison. That’s the sentence Gorman imposed following the first trial.
Van Dyke wants the judge to toss the trial and order a new one. He says jurors should have been instructed they could Thongsavanh guilty of manslaughter instead of murder. A manslaughter sentence wouldn’t exceed 30 years.
Marchese said the judge gave the jury the proper instructions, noting that McDuffee’s five stab wounds the back and chest, including one that pierced his heart, weren’t accidental.
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