AUBURN — Railroad protester Jessie Dowling of Unity likely will have to wait a couple of weeks before learning whether she’ll be retried on a trespassing charge.
Assistant District Attorney Andrew Matulis said Wednesday he planned to revisit the case by reviewing evidence presented at trial in Androscoggin County Superior Court earlier this week.
“I like to get away from the trial, then look at it a little more objectively after I’ve had some time to decompress from it,” Matulis said.
Once he does, he’ll review all of the trial evidence, including witness testimony and ponder how he might have presented it differently and more effectively, he said.
He also plans to weigh the importance of retrying a criminal trespass case against other cases pending trial, including sexual assaults, robberies and stabbings.
“We are at a point where I need to think about the resources, as well,” he said of the District Attorney’s Office, where he is one of a handful of prosecutors juggling a heavy caseload.
Although Matulis presented nearly the same case against Dowling and co-defendant Douglas Bowen Jr. of Porter, Bowen was convicted of criminal trespass while Dowling’s case ended with a hung jury.
In an unusual twist, the trial featured two juries, one for each defendant. Each jury heard a different opening statement and closing argument. Most of the evidence presented by Matulis applied to both defendants, he said.
He considered all of the possible elements that may have led one jury to one conclusion and another jury to a different conclusion.
Whether the different outcomes resulted from his efforts, the persuasive powers of the two defense attorneys, individual jurors’ perspectives or a combination of those things is impossible to say, Matulis concluded.
“It just takes one” juror out of 12 to deadlock a jury, he said.
On Aug. 28, 2013, Bowen and Dowling were arrested by Auburn police when they sat on the downtown railroad tracks near Denny’s restaurant and linked arms. They and more than a dozen others were protesting trains hauling crude oil. Several weeks earlier, a similar train crashed in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, and killed 47 people.
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