AUBURN — The state’s highest court on Tuesday rejected the appeals of a Canton man convicted last year of robbing, raping and killing a pregnant Lewiston woman.

Richard Dwyer appealed his conviction and sentences in September, after a jury convicted him. A judge sentenced him to life in prison on the murder conviction and concurrent 30-year terms for the other two crimes.

Dwyer was hoping for a new trial.

The seven-member Maine Supreme Judicial Court found no error on the part of the trial judge, who was challenged on his rulings regarding:

• Searches of state DNA data banks;

• Presentation of mixed DNA, which results in weaker matches;

• Change of venue due to readers’ comments on Web site stories;

• A photograph of the victim buried at the crime scene; and

• A prior bank robbery conviction.

The high court found that Justice Thomas Delahanty II did not abuse his discretion in ruling on those motions.

Dwyer, 46, was convicted of killing Donna Paradis, 38, who was nearly eight months pregnant. Her naked body was found in a shallow grave in November 2007 behind the Promenade Mall in Lewiston. Strips of cloth were looped around her wrists and neck. Prosecutors said she had been strangled.

Police said Dwyer had lured Paradis into his confidence a month earlier with the promise of a used car. The two worked at a Lewiston credit-card service company near where her body was discovered. She had withdrawn $400 in hundred-dollar bills from her bank shortly before she disappeared. Dwyer was captured on surveillance video buying a pickax and shovel to bury Paradis’ body, apparently with her cash.

To support his oral arguments during appeal, defense lawyer George Hess filed a 40-page brief with the high court, claiming the lower court made 10 mistakes before, during and after his client’s trial and later at sentencing.

Hess argued that Delahanty should have considered Dwyer’s unfortunate upbringing — being raised in a broken home and abandoned by his father at a young age — in deciding his sentence.

The high court wrote: “(G)iven the heinousness of the crime for which Dwyer was sentenced, coupled with his serious, extensive criminal history, the court did not abuse its discretion in imposing a life sentence.”

As for the other two crimes, the high court found them to be “at the most serious end of the spectrum for purposes of a basic sentence and that there were serious aggravating factors offset by no mitigating factors of purposes of determining maximum and final sentences.”

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