SKOWHEGAN $ Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills this week was still reviewing a request for a new trial for Shannon Atwood, a man she convicted in July of murdering his former girlfriend.
In a motion filed Aug. 8, Atwood's attorney John Alsop says that Mills' decision in the jury-waived trial was "unduly tainted" by prejudicial publicity and prior knowledge.
Alsop contends that Mills, prior to the verdict, acknowledged that she knew a woman Atwood had been convicted of assaulting years earlier. Alsop says the justice used that prior conviction as part of the information on which she based his murder conviction on July 2.

"I do this reluctantly, without trying to suggest the judge has done anything wrong," Alsop said Wednesday. He said judges often filter out prejudicial information, but with his client facing a possible life sentence, he felt an obligation to raise the issue.

"The motion has not been scheduled; (Atwood) is awaiting sentencing," said Alsop, who said his client intends not to participate in a psychological evaluation ordered by the court. "It's not unusual for there to be an appeal following a conviction of this nature."

Atwood in July was found guilty of murdering Cheryl Murdoch, 38, in the summer of 2006 and leaving her bludgeoned body in the woods of rural Canaan, where police discovered it on Aug. 11, 2006.

The charge that he also murdered his estranged wife, Shirley Moon Atwood, 35, was dropped in November 2007. She has been missing since April 2006.

Mills listened to testimony from dozens of witnesses during the week-long trial in Somerset County Superior Court before rendering her verdict, listing issue-by-issue how she reached her decision.

According to Alsop's motion, one of Mills' supporting pieces of information was a statement Atwood made to police on Aug. 10, 2006, when he made reference to the fact that he had served time in prison.

Atwood had gone to prison for assaulting Jennifer Nickerson Steward in Sept. 1993.

Alsop, in his motion, said a story about that assault appeared in June 28, 2008 issues of both the Morning Sentinel and the Bangor Daily News, and that Mills had said in a meeting with attorneys prior to the verdict that she started to read those articles, but stopped when she realized she had once used Nickerson as a hairdresser.

"If we had found out a juror read the paper, we could have argued that would have played a role (in the juror's decision-making) and the whole (trial) would be done all over again," Alsop said.

In the state's response to the motion, Andrew Benson, assistant attorney general and lead prosecutor in the Atwood case, said the court has broad discretion in considering such motions, and the request for a new trial should be denied. He said in his response filed Aug. 15 that Atwood's recorded interview $ which Mills read before she announced her verdict $ was admitted by the defense without objection at the time.

Benson also noted in his motion that Mills immediately called counsel for both sides into her chambers, told them about the newspaper articles and said that when she saw Nickerson's name mentioned, she stopped reading

"In this case, while (Mills) had some familiarity with the defendant's prior victim, there is no indication whatsoever of any lack of impartiality on the part of the court, a fact that defense counsel went to great lengths to point out during the in-chambers colloquy that immediately preceded the court's verdict," Benson said in his response. "At that time, both parties specifically waived, on the record, any concerns about the impartiality of the presiding justice."