PORTLAND — A lawyer for a former Gardiner man who was found guilty in 2023 of killing one friend and attacking another with a machete argued Wednesday before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court that his client’s conviction should be thrown out and his prison sentence of up to 75 years offends prevailing notions of decency and violates the Maine Constitution.

Dylan Ketcham, 26, was found guilty of murder, attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault for fatally shooting Jordan Johnson in 2020 in the head and then attacking Caleb Trudeau with a machete, nearly severing both of Trudeau’s wrists and cutting his skull to the bone. Trudeau had been a close friend of Ketcham since they were in kindergarten.

Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy sentenced Ketcham to serve 65 years in prison. The sentence includes 45 years for the murder of Johnson and 30 years, with all but 20 of those years suspended, consecutively for the attempted murder of Trudeau.

The sentence means Ketcham is to serve 65 years in prison — 45 years for the murder, followed by at least 20 years for the attempted murder — because Murphy agreed with state prosecutors that the two crimes should carry consecutive sentences.

If Ketcham violates the term of his four years of probation, he could face the additional, suspended 10 years of the attempted murder charge, for a total of 75 years.

Ketcham’s lawyer on his appeal, Michelle King, seeks to have his conviction thrown out and a new trial ordered. She told the state’s high court, which hears appeals as the Law Court, that there were questions about Ketcham’s mental competency when he waived his right to testify on his own behalf,  but no competency examination took place at that time.

King also said text messages illustrated why Ketcham had a reasonable fear that Johnson planned to use deadly force when the two fought the night of the incident, and was thus acting in self defense, were not admitted into evidence for the jury to view.

King said Ketcham’s sentence amounts to a life sentence that was unconstitutionally excessive.

“Even if this court does not order a new trial for the above reasons, it should at the least, remand for resentencing because Dylan’s sentence of 75 years with all but 65 suspended is a de facto life sentence and offends prevailing notions of decency because Dylan was 21 years old at the time of the incident and evolving scientific evidence suggests that offenders of this age — emerging adults — are more like juveniles than adults when making life choices,” King wrote in her appeal.

“Sentencing an emerging adult to a life sentence with no opportunity for rehabilitation or the possibility of a meaningful adult life outside of prison simply offends the Maine Constitution, and therefore Dylan should be resentenced to a term of years that reflects his ability to rehabilitate and provides him the opportunity to do so.”

Prosecutor Leanne Robbin, an assistant attorney general, countered that if the court has questions about whether the sentence imposed on Ketcham was warranted, it should look at evidence from the case and the brutality with which Ketcham acted.

“The brutality of the attack on Caleb Trudeau cannot be minimized or explained away by Dylan Ketcham’s immaturity,” Robbin argued before the justices. “He shot Jordan Johnson in the forehead. And then used a machete to hack at Caleb Trudeau until his hands were nearly detached from his arms and he lay unresponsive in a pool of his own blood.

“The court appropriately considered Dylan Ketcham’s youth and immaturity before imposing a final sentence, that was a term of years, not a life sentence, and reflected the gravity of what he had done.”

As is their practice, the justices did not decide the appeal following arguments from both sides, instead taking the matter under advisement with the intention of later issuing a written opinion.

In the first effort at a trial for Ketcham, police body camera footage of the crime scene was so gruesome that Murphy declared a mistrial after jurors were shown footage of the two blood-covered victims on the first day of the trial. Jurors had not been asked as part of the jury selection process if they thought such video would impact how they might decide the case.

Justice Andrew Mead of the Supreme Judicial Court asked about King’s claim that Ketcham had a reasonable belief that deadly force would be used against him, especially since the only weapons anyone had that night were the gun and machete Ketcham had.

“Only one party brought a weapon capable of delivering deadly results,” Mead said. “There’s no (other) gun there. He pulls out a gun and pops him as a preliminary strike.”

King said the text messages between the group of young men had, throughout that day, contained threats, including that Ketcham would be hit in the head with a baseball bat.