A Waterville woman charged with stabbing two people during an altercation last year pleaded guilty Tuesday to a misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct as part of a plea agreement in which more serious charges were dropped.
Jessica Byrn-Francisco, 33, was originally charged by Waterville police with four felony counts — two counts of aggravated assault and two counts of reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon — following a July 2021 incident on Redington Street in which police said she stabbed a man and a woman, both of whom were acquaintances of her.
Waterville Deputy Police Chief William Bonney said police responded July 1, 2021, to a reported altercation between two women and one man who were acquainted with each other. He said an argument between them turned physical and Byrn-Francisco reportedly stabbed the woman and then the man.
Bonney said at the time that the 34-year-old female victim and 40-year-old male victim were taken to Northern Light Inland Hospital in Waterville with what he described as serious but not life-threatening injuries.
Prosecutor Shannon Flaherty, an assistant district attorney, said in a court hearing at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta on Tuesday before Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy the state was dismissing all four of those felony-level charges. Byrn-Francisco, in turn, pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of reckless conduct.
District Attorney Maeghan Maloney, reached after the hearing, said her office agreed to that plea deal and to dismiss the felony charges because the victims in the case did not want the charges pursued. Prosecutors also have had little to no contact with those victims and there was a “plausible self-defense claim that we cannot disprove without the victims’ testimony,” Maloney said.
The plea agreement was accepted as a deferred disposition, in which Byrn-Francisco must comply with multiple conditions for a year. Those conditions include that she have no contact with the victims, not use or possess illegal drugs or alcohol, continue with counseling and not possess dangerous weapons or firearms.
If she complies with all those conditions, her sentence would be counted as the 60 days in jail that she has already served. If she does not comply, she would face an open sentencing on the misdemeanor reckless conduct charge, a Class D offense punishable by up to 364 days imprisonment.
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