AUGUSTA (AP) — A Massachusetts man convicted of fatally shooting the mother of his four children and one of his best friends in Maine in 2011 is appealing to the state’s highest court.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court is scheduled to hear the appeal Wednesday of 32-year-old Joel Hayden of New Bedford, Mass.
He was convicted of the July 2011 shootings of Renee Sandora and Trevor Mills at Sandora’s New Gloucester home.
The Portland Press Herald (http://bit.ly/1j39FRy ) reported that Hayden argues in his appeal that the evidence at trial was only enough to convict him of manslaughter, not murder, and the trial judge erred in sentencing him to two life terms.
His lawyers say he was under the influence of oxycodone and cocaine on the day of the shooting, so couldn’t have acted intentionally.
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