AUBURN — A Greene man charged with murder and other crimes in connection with last year’s strangulation death of 20-year-old Romeo Parent is expected to plead guilty next week to some of those charges.
Assistant Attorney General Deborah Cashman said Tuesday that she and George Hess, a Lewiston attorney representing Nathan Morton, 25, had reached a tentative agreement.
A plea is scheduled in Androscoggin County Superior Court for Wednesday. Sentencing will be scheduled for a later date, Cashman said. She declined to share details of the agreement, saying she and Hess still need to iron out terms of the final plan.
Morton was charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder and hindering apprehension or prosecution.
He was scheduled last month for a hearing on a motion to suppress incriminating statements he made to police during interrogations last year. But Morton withdrew that motion shortly before the hearing. Hess said Morton is preserving that argument for a jury at trial. He also had filed a motion to separate his case from that of Michael McNaughton, 26, of Lewiston, also charged with murder.
Three other co-defendants were charged with lesser crimes in the April 2013 slaying.
Morton had argued last year for bail, but was denied by an Androscoggin County judge following a hearing. His appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court also was denied.
Police said Morton drove Parent and McNaughton to a remote wooded area in Greene where McNaughton stabbed Parent with a screwdriver and strangled him with a makeshift garrote fashioned from wire and wood. Police said Morton later helped move Parent’s body to a Monmouth stream, where it was found by police.
Hess had argued that his client eventually cooperated with police, helping them recover the body and discover the scene of the slaying.
cwilliams@sunjournal.com
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