A Lewiston man convicted of stabbing his girlfriend 21 times has asked the state’s highest court for a new trial.
Cleveland Cruthirds was sentenced to serve 22 years of a 28-year sentence after he was found guilty last summer of elevated aggravated assault and other charges in the December 2011 attack.
Lawyers for the 27-year-old Cruthirds told the Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday that he should get a new trial because the trial judge made five errors. They included not instructing the jury that it could infer that evidence destroyed by police was favorable to Cruthirds. Among the evidence destroyed was the victim’s bloody clothing.
The Sun Journal reports that prosecutors say there’s plenty of other evidence outside of the clothing that implicates Cruthirds.
The court did not immediately rule.
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