Mark Cardilli Jr., listens to his attorney Tom Hallett during his bail hearing Friday, August 25, 2023. Cardilli’s conviction was overturned last year but the Maine Supreme Judicial Court just reversed that decision. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled Thursday that the manslaughter conviction of a Portland man who shot and killed his sister’s boyfriend in 2019 should not have been vacated.
The court’s decision overturns a lower court ruling that found Mark Cardilli Jr.’s trial lawyers failed to present an adequate argument that he was acting in self-defense and vacated his manslaughter conviction. The new ruling from the high court means Cardilli will not get a new trial and will likely have to return to prison.
Isahak Muse Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer
Cardilli was found guilty of manslaughter in the death of 22-year-old Isahak Muse following a bench trial in 2019. He had initially been charged with murder, but Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills opted to convict him of a lesser crime. He was later sentenced to 11 years in prison, with 3.5 years suspected. Cardilli served a portion of that sentence at the Windham Correctional Facility before the decision to vacate the conviction.
But Cardilli’s appeals attorney, Thomas Hallett, had fought to overturn the conviction, arguing that his client’s original lawyers did not provide effective counsel because they did not argue strongly enough that Cardilli was justified in using deadly force against Muse because he believed his life was at risk.
In their Thursday ruling, the justices wrote that the trial court “expressly found that the State had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that, if Cardilli believed that his use of deadly force was necessary under the circumstances, his belief was objectively unreasonable.”
And because the judge had convicted Cardilli of manslaughter instead of murder, that finding would have negated a self-defense argument, they said.
“Any inadequate advocacy by Cardilli’s trial counsel could not have had an adverse effect on his defense sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome of the trial,” the ruling said. “We therefore vacate the judgment of the post-conviction court and remand for entry of a judgment denying Cardilli’s petition.”
Hallett and a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office did not immediately return messages seeking interviews about the ruling.
During his original trial, Cardilli admitted to killing Muse during at fight at the Cardilli family home in Portland, but said he was defending himself and his family. Muse had been visiting his girlfriend and the conflict started as a disagreement over whether he could spend the night. During the fight, Cardilli ran to his room to retrieve a handgun from a safe.
Cardilli had already appealed the conviction to the state’s highest court once, arguing that he was justified in using deadly force against Muse, but the justices disagreed.
“Even if Cardilli had an actual belief that Muse was about to use deadly force by taking control of the gun that Cardilli brought into the chaos – a belief not asserted by Cardilli at trial – the court found that any such belief was objectively unreasonable,” Justice Ellen Gorman wrote in the court’s earlier opinion.
Cardilli, through his attorney, then requested a post-conviction review, which was conducted by Superior Court Justice John O’Neil. That review focused more on whether Cardilli was offered effective counsel. O’Neil concluded that the trial lawyers failed to “vigorously argue” that he acted in self-defense and vacated the conviction, setting the stage for a new trial. The state then challenged that decision, bringing the matter once again to the supreme court.
This story will be updated.
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