AUBURN – The man accused of rolling a pig’s head into a mosque as a joke said he first checked with police to find out whether it would be a crime. He was told, he says, he might have to answer to a charge of littering.

Instead, he was slapped with a criminal charge and a civil rights lawsuit.

Police dispute his version of events.

Brent Matthews, 33, said he ran into longtime friend Lewiston police Officer Eric Syphers at the Lewiston Mall a week before the July 3 incident. Syphers was investigating a shoplifting complaint, according to documents filed Monday at Androscoggin County Superior Court.

In those court papers, Matthews responded to the civil rights complaint stemming from the incident and to a request for a preliminary injunction filed last month by the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

Matthews told Syphers he had a head in his freezer that he had brought home from a pig roast a couple of weeks earlier. Matthews asked the officer whether he would be “doing anything against the law” if he left the severed head in a doorway as a practical joke, court papers said.

Syphers pulled out a copy of the Maine Criminal Statute and told Matthews “as far as he could tell, the only possible offenses (Matthews) might be considered to have committed would be ‘littering’ or ‘illegally disposing of animal body parts,'” court documents stated.

Lewiston police spokesman Lt. Michael McGonagle confirmed Monday that Syphers had talked to Matthews before the incident. McGonagle declined to discuss details of their conversation relevant to the investigation, but said Syphers had advised Matthews of the possibility that he might be committing a hate crime and recommended Matthews not follow through with his hypothetical prank.

Syphers was on duty the night of July 3 and helped identify Matthews as a suspect based on their prior chat, McGonagle said. That information led to the eventual arrest of Matthews.

In his response to the court Monday, Matthews said law enforcement authorities treated the prank as the joke he said it was intended to be. The investigating officers laughed about it, he said. Others joked, including the officer who drove him to jail, the bail commissioner and intake officers. One of those officers, Matthews claimed, said: “I wish I had thought of that.”

McGonagle said Monday that detectives who revisited the mosque and interviewed Somali witnesses didn’t find any evidence that the investigating officers took the incident lightly.

Matthews claimed in court papers that he didn’t know pork was considered offensive by some Somalis and “never assumed” the vacant dual storefronts at 21-23 Lisbon St. he had walked past “nearly every day” were treated by Somalis as a mosque.

His lawyer, James Howaniec, wrote in the defendant’s response that he questioned the legal status of the building and would look into whether it had been registered with the city as a place of worship and, thus, exempted from paying property taxes.

A clerk at the Lewiston assessor’s office confirmed Monday that address was tax-exempt because it was used for religious purposes.

Howaniec argued in the court papers that his client was initially charged with a crime “that does not exist.” A copy of the bond paperwork filled out during booking cites the statute by number and defines the offense as “Interference with a cemetery or burial ground,” but includes in parentheses under it the words “defacement and desecration.”

The actual statute reads: “Desecration and Defacement: A person is guilty of desecration and defacement if he intentionally desecrates any public monument or structure, any place of worship or burial, or any private structure not owned by him.”

McGonagle said Matthews was charged under that law, a class D misdemeanor.

Howaniec also argued in Matthews’ response that the state’s request for an injunction isn’t needed because his client’s bail conditions are more restrictive than what the state was seeking. Violation of bail conditions would trigger a class D crime, same as violation of the proposed injunction, Howaniec said.

Matthews is already barred from having “inappropriate contact” with people he knows to be Somali and isn’t permitted within a two-block perimeter of the Lisbon Street mosque.

The Androscoggin County District Attorney’s Office has not filed a complaint against Matthews. He is scheduled to appear in 8th District Court in Lewiston on Sept. 6.

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