Lawyers for a former Nokomis Regional High School music teacher have appealed his convictions on domestic abuse charges to the state’s highest court.
Andrew Maderios, 29, of Pittsfield, was sentenced in September to 15 years in prison, with all but three years suspended and six years of probation, with the first two of those years to include electronic monitoring.
Maderios, who since has lost his job at the high school in Newport, was found guilty by a jury in Somerset County Superior Court on two counts of felony aggravated assault and two counts of domestic violence assault on his former girlfriend. He was tried on nine charges, and the convictions were on charges related to attacks recorded by the victim on her cellphone.
Prosecutors said Maderios beat, kicked and strangled the victim over several months, from December 2013 to July 2014.
Attorneys Leonard Sharon and Caleigh Milton, of Lewiston, have appealed the verdicts to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.
“We have appealed the conviction to the law court,” Sharon said in an email Thursday. “The transcript has been prepared and the schedule has been set for the briefing.”
No additional details on the appeal were available Thursday. Sharon said a court brief is due to be filed at the beginning of March. He said Milton will be taking the lead on the writing of the brief.
After the trial in September, District Attorney Maeghan Maloney said Maderios put the victim in fear of her life and was happy that Maderios had been ordered to undergo psychological evaluation and treatment and to enter the certified batterers intervention program.
Maloney said Thursday she will be drafting the state’s response to the appeal.
“While I cannot respond to his specific allegations, I can say the trial court competently and fairly decided every dispute and the trial itself went forward smoothly,” she said.
The victim, whom the Morning Sentinel is not identifying because she is a victim of domestic violence, documented the attacks at the Pittsfield home the couple shared with audio recordings and still photographs, all on her iPhone, which became key evidence in the five-day trial.
“The fear of dying was overwhelming,” the victim told Justice Robert Mullen at sentencing, her voice quivering on every word. She said she was sorry she “brought a monster” into her children’s lives.
It was Maderios’ apparent lack of remorse and inability to take responsibility for his actions that moved Mullen to impose the long prison sentence, the judge said. Mullen said he took into account letters of support for Maderios, but because Maderios continued to blame the victim, Mullen said he had no choice but to impose the 15-year suspended sentence.
Sentencing came after a separate decision by Mullen to deny a motion for a new trial. Sharon had argued that new evidence showed the victim had made similar claims of abuse against another man, her former husband. Sharon alleged that Maderios was set up by the victim and that evidence from the former husband saying she had done the same thing to him supports Maderios’ defense.
A letter to the judge from Stephen LaMarre, the victim’s former husband, said that the victim in the Maderios trial sent him threatening text messages once it was learned he might be called to testify in Maderios’ defense. LaMarre alleged that the woman had been physically violent with him in the past and injured herself “in an effort to set him up.”
Mullen rejected the plea for a new trial, based first on the fact that LaMarre was not present in court for the motion and therefore could not be challenged by Maloney or Assistant District Attorney Brent Davis.
Doug Harlow — 612-2367
Twitter:@Doug_Harlow
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