FARMINGTON — A New Sharon man is asking the state Law Court to vacate his guilty verdict in an unlawful sexual contact case and order a new trial because a juror allegedly contacted the victim following the trial.

Raymond Buck, 76, was convicted by a Franklin County jury following a nearly two-day trial in February. He was accused of sexually molesting a child from age 4 to 10 at his farm in Chesterville. He was sentenced to serve four years of an eight-year sentence in June. He is not in custody because of his appeal to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court.

According to Buck’s attorney, Walter McKee of McKee Morgan law firm in Augusta, new information came to light after the victim, who lives in Canada, filed a civil suit against Buck in September. The victim was served with a request to produce electronic documents in the civil case. The victim, who was 21 at the time of the trial, allegedly produced a text message from one of the jurors less than 10 days after the verdict was reached, according to McKee’s motion for a new trial.

The message read: “Hey (victim’s name) this may be strange but I was one of the jurors on your trial. I just wanted to tell you how strong you are for going through that. my sister had something very similar happened to her in the crazy thing is you have the same birthday. She is a few years older. I also have a four and a five-year-old daughter. only imagine how hard it was to go through that. but I’m glad I could part of the way it turned out.”

The victim allegedly responded: “Thank you so much. It means a lot. When each and every one of you were able to stand and say guilty — it gave me so much closure to the situation that you all heard and understood my story. So again, thank you. I’m sorry to hear what happened to your sister — unfortunately it happens far too much … that is a cray coincidence that your sister and I shared the same birthday too.”

McKee’s motion said all of the information should have been provided by the juror in the course of jury selection.

McKee is requesting a transcript of the jury selection.

“This is not a case where there is no information other than a simple false statement of a juror; rather (the juror) affirmatively reached out to the alleged victim, provided information about his past and sympathies, and showed actual true bias,” the motion states. The alleged juror’s bias could not have been discovered by Buck in any way and was only discovered as part of the victim’s civil lawsuit against Buck for money damages, according to the motion.

“The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees defendants the right to an ‘impartial jury,’ and the Maine Constitution provides for same,” the court document reads.

He wrote that given all of the evidence, the court should vacate Buck’s conviction and order a new trial.

“Anything less than that would erode any confidence in our jury trial system that requires honesty and impartiality, neither of which was expressed by” the juror,” the motion reads.