AUBURN — Two days and two trials for railroad protesters Jessie Dowling of Unity and Douglas Bowen Jr. of Porter ended late Tuesday with a guilty conviction and a $100 fine for Bowen and a hung jury for Dowling.

Juries in the criminal trespassing trials began deliberating at Androscoggin County Superior Court shortly after noon Tuesday.

Bowen’s jury delivered its guilty conviction about three hours later. However, Dowling’s jury was stuck.

At about 3:30 p.m., Justice MaryGay Kennedy counseled jurors to keep working and be willing to change their minds. At about 4:45 p.m., they once again sent a note to the judge saying they could not agree.

Kennedy polled all 12, asking each if he or she were deadlocked and if more time or more instruction might help. Each agreed they were hopelessly deadlocked.

A few minutes later, Kennedy ended the trial.

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“It is clear that there were enough members of the jury who believed what I did was not a crime,” Dowling said after her jury couldn’t agree. “I worked in the service of the people of Auburn to make this town safer and protect it from dirty oil trains.”

On Aug. 28, 2013, Bowen and Dowling were arrested by Auburn police when they sat on the downtown railroad tracks near Denny’s restaurant and linked arms. They and more than a dozen others were protesting the trains hauling crude oil. Several weeks earlier, a similar train crashed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and killed 47 people.

Dowling and Bowen agreed to tandem trials in which they shared some witness testimony and evidence but had their own juries and independent opening and closing arguments.

During the trial, which began Monday morning, lawyers for the pair argued that police warnings were unclear and that they were given too little time to react before Auburn police arrested them.

“A warning is not an order,” Dowling’s attorney, Logan Perkins, told members of her jury. “They are two different things and that is important.”

Assistant District Attorney Andrew Matulis, who prosecuted both trials, said the situation was simple.

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“This whole case still, given all the evidence, comes down to the simple proposition that when police tell you you’ve got to get off the tracks, you’ve got to get off the tracks,” Matulis said during his summation.

During their deliberations, both juries examined video and audio testimony played during the trials, including a videotape of the arrest photographed by Auburn police.

During the reading of his verdict, Bowen showed little emotion. Minutes later, he was gracious.

“I would like to express some appreciation that the sentence of a $100 fine communicates that there is some respect here,” Bowen told the court. “There’s not a punitive attitude at all.”

In part, he felt exonerated by government response to the derailment disaster, particularly since U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx called the trains an “imminent hazard.”

Bowen admitted a measure of guilt — “If you commit a crime, you have to accept the consequence of that” — and he gave a little insight into his actions at the railroad tracks.

“Since it’s all said and done, I did intend to stay there and I was hoping to stay there all night,” he said.

“There’s no surprise there,” Justice Kennedy said.

dhartill@sunjournal.com


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