Maine
Maine’s high court to consider dam relicensing case this week
The security of good meters, public funding for elections in Maine’s largest metropolis, two state companies’ dealing with of a hydroelectric dam’s relicensing and the sentencing of accomplices in sexual assault instances are among the many matters Maine’s excessive court docket will contemplate this week when it convenes in Bangor.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court docket will hear oral arguments Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday on the Penobscot Judicial Middle.
Justices will contemplate one other attraction within the ongoing dispute over the potential well being hazards of good electrical meters at 11:30 a.m. Thursday.
Final 12 months, the Maine Public Utilities Fee accepted a request by Central Maine Energy Co. to revise the phrases and circumstances of its program that enables clients to exchange good meters with solid-state meters that don’t transmit information by way of radio waves.
The Maine Coalition to Cease Sensible Meters appealed, arguing that the fee disregarded proof and a federal court docket’s ruling in Washington, D.C., about attainable well being threats from low-level radiation.
The dispute is over a change to CMP’s choices for opting out of good meters.
Initially, the Public Utilities Fee required the utility to supply analog meters for a price to clients who requested them. Then commissioners final December amended the opt-out choice to permit CMP to put in a unique form of good meter and not using a radio transceiver after it allegedly ran out of analog meters.
CMP workers learn these meters each two months.
A separate lawsuit over the month-to-month charges CMP expenses clients who select the opt-out choice is pending in U.S. District Court docket in Portland.
In one other case, justices for a second time will contemplate an attraction by a residents’ group that sought to amend the Portland Metropolis Constitution to permit public funding for candidates in metropolis elections
The case stems from a choice by metropolis officers to dam the group’s initiative from showing on the municipal poll in 2019. Maine’s excessive court docket dominated in June 2021 that officers didn’t present ample reasoning for blocking the initiative, saying that town “did not make findings of truth to clarify its choice.”
Behind closed doorways, Portland officers allegedly created the findings of truth the justices requested for, however Honest Elections Portland maintains in its newest attraction that the method violated voters’ due course of rights as a result of it didn’t contemplate proof or undertake findings primarily based on any proof.
Justices will hear arguments on this case as voters in Portland contemplate one other initiative in subsequent week’s election to determine a fund that gives public marketing campaign financing to municipal candidates who conform to fundraising limits.
These arguments are scheduled for 10:40 a.m. Thursday.
The Supreme Judicial Court docket will hear a case over a hydroelectric dam that has made its approach into this 12 months’s gubernatorial race at 10:40 a.m. Tuesday.
Brookfield Energy US Co. and different entities that maintain pursuits in hydroelectric tasks in Maine sued the Maine Division of Marine Assets and the Maine Division of Environmental Safety over the companies’ actions referring to federal licensing of the Shawmut dam on the Kennebec River. The dam offers energy and consumption water to the Sappi Mill in Skowhegan.
A Superior Court docket decide dismissed the motion as not prepared for judicial evaluate as a result of the federal licensing actions nonetheless are pending. In its attraction Brookfield argues that its claims are match for judicial evaluate as a result of “they problem ongoing unlawful actions” by the state companies and since the corporate will undergo hardship if its claims usually are not resolved now since a federal problem is unlikely to achieve success.
And in two separate legal instances, defendants are asking that their convictions be put aside.
Marcus Asante, 26, of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, is serving a 35-year sentence on the Maine State Jail in Warren after his September 2021 conviction within the 2016 slaying of Douglas Morin Jr., 31, of Oakfield throughout a marijuana deal gone fallacious.
His conviction final 12 months marked the second time he had been convicted. He was initially convicted by an Aroostook County jury in November 2018, however the Maine Supreme Judicial Court docket overturned these convictions due to defective jury directions and ordered that Asante be retried.
That trial was held in Auburn final 12 months with the identical end result and the identical sentence.
In his new attraction, to be heard at 9:50 a.m. Wednesday, Asante claims that the decide in Androscoggin County ought to have given the jury an instruction on self-defense and that his sentence is just too lengthy.
The Maine legal professional normal’s workplace, which is liable for prosecuting homicides in Maines, maintains that the proof didn’t require a self-defense instruction and the sentence was correct.
Beneath Maine regulation, Asante couldn’t face extra jail time after the second trial than was imposed following the primary one.
The attraction of a Sabattus lady serving a five-year sentence on the Maine Correctional Institute in Windham for sexually abusing an 8-year-old lady in 2019 along with her boyfriend, 31-year-old Travis Walker of Bethel, will likely be heard at 10:40 a.m. Wednesday. Bethany Ringuette, 38, claims that her sentence was calculated incorrectly and her 10-year interval of supervised launch is just too lengthy. The Oxford County district legal professional’s workplace maintains that each had been imposed appropriately.
There isn’t any timeline beneath which justices challenge choices.