Trial by jury is a foundation of our democracy. There will be trials in Maine in 2012 involving murder, mayhem and incidents fueled by drugs and alcohol as well as civil litigation involving health, work, property and money issues of law. Some of the legal maneuvering will spill over into 2013 as appeals make their way to the final arbiters of the law, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
Here are key trials expected to take place in the coming 12 months.
State v. Thayne Ormsby
Multiple homicides are rare in Maine. Those in which a victim is a child are even rarer. The trial of Thayne Ormsby, 21, is set to begin with jury selection April 4 at Aroostook County Superior Court in Houlton. An Ellsworth native who was living in Orient at the time of the killings on June 23, 2010, Ormsby is accused of stabbing to death Jeffrey Ryan, 55, Ryan’s son Jesse, 10, and Ryan family friend Jason Dehahn, 30, all of Amity. All three were found dead about 27 hours after the killings at the Ryans’ home on U.S. Route 1. The victims were stabbed to death with a combat-style knife that Ormsby always carried with him, according to police. Investigators reportedly linked Ormsby to the crime scene through DNA and fingerprint evidence obtained from a beer can and cigarette butt in Ryan’s home. Ormsby told police he killed Jeffrey Ryan because he believed Ryan was a drug dealer. Ryan’s family has denied the claim, and a criminal background check on Jeffrey Ryan revealed no history of drug-related offenses. Even a two-week trial may not answer the burning question on readers’ minds: Why kill a 10-year-old?
State v. Charles Reed Black
Domestic violence is one of the state’s most pressing social problems, but the pushing, shoving, name calling and threatening usually happen behind closed doors, not in a state park. And the alleged motive for the assault rarely approaches $4 million. Black, 68, of Rockland is charged with attempted murder and varying degrees of assault. Police say he smashed a rock over his wife’s head during a hike on Mount Megunticook in Camden Hills State Park on April 7, 2011. He then dragged her to the edge of Maiden Cliff and shoved her off, according to the indictment released in July. Black also fell down the mountain and injured himself. His wife, Lisa Black, 52, of Camden, made it down the mountain alive but injured. A passer-by saw the bloody woman standing in the road and called 911. Police searched the mountain for Charles Black, found him, pulled him down the mountain, hospitalized him and then arrested him a few days later as he was being discharged. Police reports filed in Knox County Superior Court in Rockland, where his trial is scheduled to be held in March, indicated greed as a possible motive. Lisa Black recently had inherited about $4 million, according to court documents.
State v. Bob W. Ryder
Bob W. Ryder’s Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor led police to a decomposing female body hidden under wood in a basement beneath the first floor of a building where the man charged with causing the woman’s death lived. The murder weapon reportedly was a large wooden clock; the victim allegedly a prostitute. Ryder, 21, of Lewiston is scheduled to be tried in May in Androscoggin County Superior Court in Auburn for the murder of Danita Brown, 38, of New Gloucester on June 16, 2011.
State v. Kenneth Bruning
Trevor Sprague’s death was on the list of unsolved homicides for nearly five years before Kenneth John Bruning, 26, of Rapid City, S.D., was charged in November 2010 in connection with the death. Sprague’s body was found face down and on fire under the Harlow Street Bridge in Bangor on March 7, 2006. The 34-year-old Lubec native and Bangor transient was known to camp along the Kenduskeag Stream. Police have not released information about how the two men might have known each other or what led investigators to Bruning, who was serving a sentence in a South Dakota prison when he was arrested. He was returned to Maine in June 2011. In most cases, the circumstances surrounding the crime and the investigation have been made public. Bruning’s trial, which has not been set but could be held as early as July at the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor, finally may reveal what happened to Sprague.
State v. Roxanne Jeskey
Women are much more likely to be victims of homicides than to be charged with committing them. Roxanne M. Jeskey, 48, of Bangor is accused of brutally slaying her husband, Richard Jeskey, 53, in their Ohio Street apartment. His body was found naked and bloody on June 13, 2011, in the bathroom. Police have said she beat and strangled him in an assault that included the use of pliers, a box cutter and a plastic baseball bat as weapons. Her attorneys have said she acted in self-defense. A battered-spouse defense is expected when the trial convenes in September at the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor.
State v. Jay S. Mercier
Jay S. Mercier was a suspect in the death of Rita St. Peter in July 1980. The use of DNA as evidence in crimes then was in its infancy. Today, juries are suspicious when it’s not presented as evidence. DNA from a cigarette Mercier discarded outside his home in 2010 after an interview with investigators matched semen found on the victim, according to court documents. The prosecution claims that Mercier, now 58, of Industry sexually assaulted the 20-year-old, bludgeoned her on the head with a weapon that could have been a tire iron, and partially ran her over with his pickup truck on a field road off Campground Road in Anson. A trial date has not been set, but could be held late in 2012 in Somerset County Superior Court in Skowhegan.
Paula Bratton and Daniel Hills et al v. Halsey McDonough
Paula Bratton and Daniel Hills Sr. of Solon claim that their three children suffered significant and lifelong disabilities because their former landlord Halsey McDonough of Gardiner failed to tell them that the levels of lead in the Solon house they rented from him were unsafe. Under state and federal law, a landlord is required to disclose to renters that a property has high lead-based paint levels, according to the complaint. Bratton and Hills rented the home on South Main Street in September 2004. Four years later, the children’s pediatrician reported high lead levels in the children’s blood to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Penquis agency issued a lead abatement design plan in December 2008. The family sued McDonough a year later seeking compensatory and punitive damages, alleging the abatement plan never was implemented and the home was uninhabitable. The trial is scheduled to be held in March in Somerset County Superior Court in Skowhegan.
Pat Godin v. Machiasport School Department board of directors
The former principal of Fort O’Brien elementary school in Machiasport sued the School Department’s board of directors in March 2009 in U.S. District Court. Pat Godin of Trescott Township claims that she was illegally fired a year earlier after a contentious school board meeting in which it was alleged that she had physically abused two students. The board claims that her position as principal was eliminated as a cost-saving measure. Godin’s attorney has said that her client has not been able to find work since 2008. She estimated lost pay and benefits at more than $260,000. The trial is scheduled to begin Feb. 6 in federal court in Bangor.
Dr. Nanand Col v. Maine Medical Center
A research physician sued the Portland hospital after her male boss referred to her as a girl and described her using the nursery rhyme: “There was a little girl, who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.” Dr. Nanand Col of Cumberland Foreside sued Maine Medical Center in U.S. District Court in June 2011. She claims that she was illegally fired in November 2010 after she complained about her boss. Col is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. A trial is scheduled to be held in May in federal court in Portland.
Eric Stephen Levitt v. Sonardyne Inc.
Eric Stephen Levitt of Hope claims he was fired on Oct. 15, 2010, by Sonardyne, a Houston firm, because he told the U.S. Navy that the company was marketing its diver detection technology to China, a violation of U.S. law. Levitt claims he was fired in retaliation for telling an investigator with the Naval Criminal Investigation Service about the sales to China. He is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. A trial has not been set but could be held later this year in Knox County Superior Court in Rockland.
BDN writers Jen Lynds, Heather Steeves, Alex Barber, Rich Hewitt, Sharon Kiley Mack, Nok-Noi Ricker and Tom Walsh contributed to this report. The Sun Journal of Lewiston also contributed.
We are a republic..not a democracy!
Sadly, most of the uneducated public don’t know the difference and don’t care…
Whoa, that comment makes you seem really smart. What, again, does it contribute to the discussion?
What does YOUR comment have to do with the discussion?
It hints that whether we are technically a democracy or a republic (we are both) does not change the nature of our trial/jury system. Anybody ever tell you that it’s weak form to answer a question with a question?
I see an article as a whole and not just what they want you to focus on, that being said..any
error, even in the introduction, should be called out and fixed.
“State v. Roxanne Jeskey…Women are much more likely to be victims of homicides than to be charged with committing them….”
This is the opening to a story of a man being brutally tortured and murdered by a woman in a jealous rage? When was the last time BDN qualified a child murder trial by
saying “according to every US DHHS study women are more than twice as likely to murder a child then men”. Or how about qualifying child abuse cases by first stating “according to US DHHS studies women are almost three times as likely to abuse children then men.” And when reporting about men being arrested for domestic violence how about BDN qualify the stories by opening with “according to the US CDC studies women have been found to initiate more domestic violence against men.” And when reporting about suicides, BDN could open by stating “men account for nine out of every ten suicides”. And when reporting about breast cancer and mortality rates BDN could qualify those articles by stating “More men die and at a much younger age than women in virtually every category ranging from job accidents to illness…and unlike women, when men get breast cancer they are not even covered by medicaid because no one cares about men.”
Each and every point I raised is worthy of 100 articles the likes of which I doubt I will ever read in BDN. Maine is faced with a full blown crisis of boys falling behind and struggling. Basic resources and even praises by teachers have been diverted from boys to benefit girls. Boys are being demonized and chastised at every turn. Bangor Daily News, you are failing the men and boys in the community with this endless “men bad/women victim” disinformation—even going so far as to qualify a story of male suffering, torture, and murder at the hands of a female by first saying “usually women are the victims…”
Wait 3 years of back pay and benefits for an elementary school teacher is $260,000?
She was a Principal. Take the salary of a principal of about 60,000 times 3. Then add 3 years of vacation, sick time, personal time off, insurance etc. and yes it probably is 260,000.
Ok that makes sense. Thank you
I dunno if I believe they would cut a principle position for cost saving. A principal seems kind of like an important position to have and I have heard of schools doing things like this before, cutting a position because it is easier then firing the person.
She’s been working- so how does ” Pat’ think she hasn’t worked! and with that being said, I have seen her grab kids in the past- in a different town of course. This case is nothing but wasting our tax payers money. Grasping at straws for what is owed, I’d say! AND I AGREE – GUILTY! and should have never even got the postion to begin with, all sweet talk, til it comes to children!
Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Darn it girl, what were you thinking?: Guilty, Uhhh, you have 4 years of high lead content in your kids bloodstream, maybe think of moving?, That’s what you get for teaching in Machiasport, How good was she? That’s what he said! and If the secrets were going to China, why didn’t he get a medal for reporting it? That is all.
Judge Judy….is that you ?….Another celeb that hangs out in Maine .
There have been a lot of crimes committed and continue to be. One of the most bizarre trials I have seen, was that of Joran Van de Sloop who killed the girl in Peru. He also was implicated in the disappearance of Natalie Holloway in Aruba, a few years back. What a cocky, arrogant man he is, facing 30 yrs in prison. These trials in Maine should be interesting too.
What about the people responsible for killing Krista Dittmeyer? Are they being tried in N.H. or something? Would really like to know more about what happened to these people.
Our jury system is both the strength and the weakness of our legal system. It depends on the quality
of the people selected and both sides are going t try to set up a jury in favor of either the prosecution or the defense. So nether side is really interested in a jury that is not biased one way of the other. It is a shame that most people try to avoid jury duty. It is one of the most important citizens duties.
On the other hand one interesting aspect of the Jury is that they are the last defense against bad law, or badly used law. The Jury can ignore law it feels is unfair or unfairly used and simply declare the person innocent and there is not a thing anyone can do to them for doing so.However no jury is ever instructed about this right and have not been since the 1890s. Used rightly it can defeat attempts at tyranny, used wrongly it can prevent justice, as we saw back in the days of all white juries keeping white people from being convicted of murder of black people.
The first six cases are easy. Death,Life,Death,Death,Death,Death. Oh I forgot this is Maine,the liberal state who doesn’t have a death penalty.
The easy part is that an objective court/jury makes the decision, not an outside observer. It’s a totalitarian state that would allow mob rule.