AUBURN – If at first – or second – you don’t succeed, try a different court. That’s what the attorney for a man charged with murder has done.
Leonard Sharon is seeking to replace the judge presiding over the case of his client, Daniel Roberts, 36, of Sabattus. Roberts is charged with murder stemming from the shooting death of his former girlfriend.
Sharon believes Superior Court Justice Joyce Wheeler should step aside and let a different judge take over the case. Sharon has questioned Wheeler’s objectivity, drawing attention in papers filed in Androscoggin County Superior Court to her “substantial work as an advocate for victims of domestic violence,” while she served as a Maine District Court judge.
In denying Sharon’s first motion, Wheeler wrote the suggestion that her past actions had compromised her “ability and impartiality to decide issues involving domestic violence is absurd and must be rejected.”
Wheeler has twice denied motions to recuse herself and won’t grant Sharon a hearing where he would present evidence that shows why she should bow out.
So, Sharon has taken his case to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in Portland to get its opinion.
That court has not yet reviewed Sharon’s motion, a clerk said Monday. If it were to rule in favor of Sharon’s appeal, it would order a hearing in the lower court where Sharon could present evidence supporting Wheeler’s removal, he said. The state also has filed a motion with the high court, seeking to dismiss Sharon’s appeal.
Meanwhile, two other motions in the case are scheduled for hearing in October at Androscoggin County Superior Court. One motion, filed by Roberts, asks that the trial be held in a different county. Another motion, filed by a state prosecutor, seeks to lift the attorney/client privilege between Roberts’ former girlfriend and her lawyers about custody of the couple’s 2-year-old daughter, Savannah Marie Roberts.
No trial date has been set.
Melissa Mendoza 29, was found dead in August from a gunshot wound to the back of her head. Roberts claimed the shooting was self-defense, saying she had come to his house and threatened to kill him, their daughter and herself.
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