Aubrey Armstrong, center, stands July 13, 2018, with lawyer Brad Grant, left, and translator Tracy A. Johnson during Armstrong’s sentencing in his murder trial at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

The lawyer for a New York man convicted of felony murder in the beating death of an Augusta man in 2015 argued Thursday that the state’s highest court should allow his third appeal of his conviction and 30-year sentence, even though he missed the filing deadline to do so.

Aubrey Armstrong, 35, was first sentenced to 30 years in prison in May 2018, after Justice Daniel Billings found him guilty of felony murder and robbery.

Armstrong and three others were charged in the drug-related robbery and killing of Joseph Marceau in Augusta.

Armstrong successfully appealed his sentence twice, with the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ordering Billings to resentence Armstrong each time. Following both appeals, Billings again sentenced Armstrong to 30 years in prison.

A lawyer for Armstrong argued, again before the state’s highest court, that Armstrong’s request for post-conviction review, a preliminary step to filing an appeal, should be heard by the court, despite Armstrong’s having missed the one-year deadline to file a request for review.

At the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor, lawyer Michelle King said Armstrong missed the deadline by a couple of weeks after seeking unsuccessfully to have a lawyer appointed to help him, miscommunication within the court system and not being able to find a notary public in prison to notarize the required forms to seek an appeal.

King said Armstrong’s case was “a mess,” including that court officials had given him incorrect information about the process. She said the court should hear Armstrong’s post-conviction review because he showed diligence in pursuing his case, and he could have filed on time if he were able to get his court filings notarized while in prison.

“He took a lot of steps along the way to try to exercise his rights and was stymied by the courts,” King said before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Maine Law Court, a reference to the justices in their appellate capacity as interpreter of the laws.

Assistant Attorney General Katie Sibley countered that Armstrong had plenty of time to make his case for post-conviction review by the deadline, but did not do so. Sibley also said the delay Armstrong experienced in getting his court filings notarized does not constitute an exceptional circumstance that would justify making an exception to the filing deadline, and most post-conviction review filings are done without a lawyer being appointed to assist defendants.

“The time crunch here, your honor, was created by Mr. Armstrong,” Sibley told Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill, after Stanfill suggested Armstrong’s efforts to appeal appeared to have been stymied, at least somewhat, by the court.

Stanfill said the court would consider the arguments from both sides and issue a decision in the future.

Under Maine law, a person is guilty of felony murder if, acting alone or with others, he or she commits or attempts to commit a felony — murder, robbery, burglary, kidnapping, arson, gross sexual assault or escape — and this causes the death of another person.

At least one co-defendant pinpointed Armstrong, who is known in the Augusta area as “Butta” and in New York as “ACon,” as the one who administered the fatal beating Nov. 23, 2015, in a trash-strewn fourth-floor Augusta apartment.

Billings found Armstrong of Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, not guilty of the murder, saying he did not believe it had been proven that Armstrong was directly involved in the beating death. Billings, however, convicted Armstrong of the other two charges at the close of a five-day, nonjury trial.

On appeal, Armstrong’s convictions and sentences on felony murder and robbery charges were deemed unconstitutional by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in July 2019 because they violated the U.S. Constitution’s double jeopardy clause.

The high court ruled that being convicted and sentenced for both felony murder and robbery was essentially being punished twice for the same crime, and directed the lower court to merge the two charges and resentence Armstrong.

Armstrong was resentenced in 2019, again to 30 years in prison, also by Billings.

But that sentence, too, was appealed successfully to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, with justices ruling the lower court had erred in not holding a full resentencing and not merging the robbery charge into the felony murder charge, as the justices had directed.

Instead, the state had dismissed the robbery charge, and Billings elected not to have a full resentencing, in part, he said at the time, so members of Marceau’s family would not have to testify again about his death.

Marceau’s family members have said the ongoing legal battle over Armstrong’s sentence forces them to keep reliving the loss of their son and be reminded how he suffered when beaten to death

In 2021, following Armstrong’s second appeal, the judge again sentenced Armstrong to 30 years, the maximum sentence for the class A offense of felony murder.