A Skowhegan man found guilty of the 2023 robbery of a Madison convenience store will get a chance to argue for a new sentence.
Raymond Ellis Jr., 36, had appealed both his conviction and his sentence of 25 years in prison, with all but 20 years suspended, and four years of probation, to Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court. The court heard oral arguments in February.
In a decision issued Thursday, the high court affirmed Ellis’ convictions from the June 2024 jury trial in Skowhegan, but vacated his sentence, sending the matter back to the trial court for Ellis to be resentenced.
As of Friday, a sentencing date had not yet been scheduled, a court clerk in Skowhegan said.
The panel of justices ruled that Superior Court Chief Justice Robert E. Mullen violated Ellis’ constitutional rights when he considered Ellis’ supposed lack of responsibility as an aggravating factor in Ellis’ sentence. Judges consider both mitigating and aggravating factors in a case, as required in Maine’s three-step analysis for determining sentences.
“Here, Ellis exercised his right to have a trial,” Chief Justice Valerie Stanfill wrote in the court’s decision. “He also exercised his right not to testify at trial, and he remained silent and did not allocute at sentencing. The sentencing court did not identify any support for its finding that Ellis failed to take responsibility, nor can we find any in the record. We are thus left with the conclusion that his sentence was increased for asserting his right to trial and his right not to testify, in violation of his constitutional rights.”
Prosecutors had not objected to that aspect of Ellis’ appeal.
During oral arguments, Stanfill asked Francis Griffin, deputy district attorney for Kennebec and Somerset counties, if there was any evidence to support Ellis’ lack of responsibility for his actions.
Griffin’s answer: “No.”
He further acknowledged it was an issue that Mullen considered it an aggravating factor, but told the justices it was a “harmless error.”
Under the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Maine Constitution, a defendant has a right to not testify at trial. A defendant may not be punished for exercising that right, the court’s ruling said.
A judge may consider a defendant’s lack of remorse an aggravating factor at sentencing if he or she did testify at trial or address the court and there was evidence of it, the court’s ruling said.
“A defendant’s sentence may not be increased, however, because he chose to forgo expressing remorse or taking responsibility at trial or sentencing,” it continued.
Remorse and acceptance of responsibility may be considered mitigating factors in determining a sentence, but the absence of that must not be inferred as an aggravating factor, the court’s ruling clarified.
In June 2024, a Somerset County jury found Ellis guilty of one Class A count of robbery, as well as one Class C count of criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon and one Class E count of theft by unauthorized taking.
All of the charges stemmed from the Aug. 5, 2023, robbery of the Big Apple store on Old Point Avenue in Madison.
During his trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Ellis and two teenagers robbed the store, taking $295, seven packs of cigarettes, two Mountain Dew sodas, and the store clerk’s wallet.
Prosecutors, in part, relied on testimony from the two others who participated in the robbery with Ellis. The two were also charged for their respective roles but agreed to reduced sentences in exchange for testifying at Ellis’ trial.
Detective David Cole of the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office, the lead investigator of the case, testified that a sawed-off shotgun seized from Ellis’ vehicle after a lengthy police chase in downtown Skowhegan on Nov. 8, 2023, matched the description of one of two guns used in the robbery.
The police chase was not mentioned explicitly during Ellis’ trial. Ellis separately pleaded guilty to several charges stemming from that incident later in 2024. His prison sentence of eight years was set to run concurrent to the longer sentence in the robbery case.
Ellis, represented by Rory A. McNamara of Drake Law in York, raised other issues in his appeal.
He argued that Mullen, the justice who oversaw the trial, should have given the jury instructions to infer that a witness who was not called to testify would not have corroborated the state’s theory of what happened.
The Big Apple store clerk, believed to be the only eyewitness to the robbery, was not called to testify.
During the trial, Ellis’ attorney, Jennifer Cohen, suggested police did not investigate the clerk sufficiently and also questioned how his identification of the robbery suspect in an initial 911 call did not match Ellis.
The Supreme Judicial Court ultimately disagreed that the jury instruction was necessary, saying that it would have been an “inferential jump” and “improper speculation,” while pointing out Ellis’ attorney could have argued at trial the clerk’s lack of testimony indicated prosecutors’ lack of evidence.
Ellis’ attorney also raised a more technical issue with how Mullen considered Ellis’ use of a firearm in the robbery as a factor in his sentencing analysis. The court left it to Mullen to clarify his reasoning at Ellis’ new sentencing.
Ellis is incarcerated at the Maine State Prison in Warren, according to Department of Corrections records.
