AUBURN — A judge rejected a Lewiston man’s motions for a new trial stemming from his 2014 murder conviction, clearing the path for his long-awaited sentencing.

Michael McNaughton, 28, was convicted of killing 20-year-old Romeo Parent after a three-week jury trial in July 2014. McNaughton’s attorney, Verne Paradie, filed motions seeking a new trial arguing, in part, that important evidence in the case wasn’t shared with him until after the trial.

Two hearings were held on the motions in February and April last year. McNaughton claimed prosecutors failed to provide discovery in a timely manner and presented perjured testimony to support “inconsistent theories” when prosecuting McNaughton, as well as co-defendant and alternative suspect William True, who also was convicted of Parent’s murder five months later in December 2014.

Prosecutors dismissed the defense’s claims, saying the after-trial evidence wouldn’t have resulted in a different verdict. A judge largely agreed with that assessment.

In his original motion for a new trial, Paradie argued that information that should have been provided to the defense before the trial was sent to his office in mid-August, weeks after the trial had ended. Some of the information had been presented at trial, but two items had not, he said.

One of the items was a recording of an interview with True four days before Parent was murdered. Parent had implicated True in a burglary before Parent was killed. The apparent motive for Parent’s death was that he had informed police about True’s involvement in the burglary. True had been charged in that crime; Parent had not. Paradie had been given the incident report, but not the recording of True’s interview.

Androscoggin County Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy ruled that the disc that contained the recorded interview wasn’t material to the defendant’s case and wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the trial.

Prosecutors also sent Paradie a report and a recording about a phone call that one of the state’s witnesses had made to Felicia Cadman, True’s girlfriend at the time of Parent’s murder. In that call, Cadman “apparently admits that she had basically been lying about William True being in the woods on the night of the murder,” Paradie said. That information wasn’t provided to him before or during the trial, he said.

Prosecutors said that information came about as a result of an investigation into True, not McNaughton.

After reviewing the content of the phone call, Kennedy ruled that the call “was not material to any issue regarding Michael McNaughton’s guilt or innocence.”

She wrote in her 16-page order that she found “that even if the phone call had been presented at trial, it is highly unlikely that it would have had an impact on the outcome of the trial. Therefore, the court concludes there was no prejudice to defendant by not having access to the phone call.”

Paradie had argued that he received a packet of information related to an interview dating back to the second day of McNaughton’s trial, one day after True was indicted for murder. In that interview, a detective had questioned Cadman.

During her interview with police, Cadman “admitted to the detectives that William True told her he had killed Romeo Parent,” Paradie had written in his motion. “She also told detectives that on the night before the murder, that Will True had punched Romeo in the face.”

Cadman told detectives that she hadn’t seen or spoken to McNaughton or Nathan Morton, 26, of Greene the day that Parent was slain. Morton, who admitted driving McNaughton to the scene where Parent was killed, testified at McNaughton’s trial that the defendant admitted stabbing and choking Parent to death. But Morton had later told police that True also was at the scene of the murder. Morton, who also had been charged with Parent’s murder, agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for his testimony and a 20-year prison sentence, with half of that time suspended.

When she met with police, Cadman said that True “never once told her that McNaughton had committed the murder,” Paradie wrote in an amended motion.

Kennedy wrote in her June order that despite the state’s certain failure to provide evidence to the defense, “there is no reasonable probability that it would have produced a different verdict” had the video been given by prosecutors to the defense in a timely manner.

Kennedy also declined to sanction prosecutors for their lapses with discovery.

Paradie had argued in his motions that prosecutors had failed to turn over text messages allegedly sent between state police detectives and the state’s witnesses. Kennedy wrote in her order that the defense had been aware of the possible existence of the messages, but had never requested them at trial.

Paradie claimed that prosecutors presented perjured testimony at trial and inconsistent theories of Parent’s murder, violating McNaughton’s constitutional rights.

Kennedy wrote in her June order that the jury was given careful instruction before deliberation about which witnesses to believe and how much of what they say might be credible.

“The court is satisfied that the jury understood the court’s instructions and performed their duty,” she wrote.

Kennedy also wrote that prosecutors didn’t present “inconsistent or irreconcilable theories in (McNaughton’s) trial and that of William True. It was clear in both trials that the state’s theory was that both (McNaughton) and Mr. True were with Romeo Parent in the woods in Greene on April 9, 2013. Both (McNaughton) and Mr. True participated, either as a principal or as an accomplice in Romeo Parent’s murder.”

Paradie said Thursday he expects to appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court both McNaughton’s conviction and Kennedy’s June order rejecting his motion for a new trial after sentencing in September.

True has appealed his murder conviction to the state’s high court.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com

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