Maine’s highest court on Thursday vacated the murder conviction of a Perry woman accused of stabbing her friend hundreds of times at a Passamaquoddy reservation in 2022.
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that footprint evidence prosecutors used to link Kailie Brackett to the death of Kimberly Neptune should not have been allowed at trial.
The panel of supreme court judges found that even excluding evidence of sock-clad bloody footprints found at the scene and linked to Brackett by a podiatrist, prosecutors still had evidence that was “not overwhelming” but “sufficient to sustain Brackett’s conviction.”
The case was remanded to Washington County Superior Court.
A spokesperson for the Office of the Maine Attorney General declined to comment.
“I think it’s a case where the justices did an amazing job of sorting through all of the evidence and making a very good decision in this matter,” said Brackett’s attorney, Michelle King. “I think justice was done. Kailie was wrongly convicted and is innocent. We hope that that’s a consideration for the state in going forward.”
Neptune, a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, was found dead inside her home in Sipayik, the tribal reservation also known as Pleasant Point, on April 21, 2022.
Investigators said Brackett and an accomplice, Donnell Dana, had intended to rob her friend Neptune, when things went bad. Neptune was found dead with nearly 500 stab wounds.
Brackett was convicted of murder in December 2023, and sentenced to 55 years in prison the following May. A jury deadlocked while deliberating the murder charge against Dana, who later pleaded guilty to hindering apprehension or prosecution for disposing of evidence related to Brackett’s murder charge.
The case rattled the reservation community of 600, where many were connected to Neptune. The news Thursday was unwelcome to those who knew Neptune best.
Melissa Francis, who sits on the Sipayik tribal council and described Neptune as one of her best friends, was in a state of shock.
“My heart is just breaking open,” she said.
In a 42-page opinion, the supreme court panel indicated that the conclusions of the state’s expert witness, podiatrist Dr. Michael Nirenberg, were “not based on any replicable
standard” in the world of forensic science, and that prosecutors wrongly doubled down on those conclusions in closing arguments.
“Whatever could be gleaned from Nirenberg’s testimony, it is not that the sock-clad footprints definitively matched or were in fact Brackett’s,” the opinion read. “But the prosecutor stated that Brackett’s footprints ‘matched,’ and that ‘we know’ that the footprints at the scene were Brackett’s.”
King said she had just left Maine Correctional Center, where Brackett is being held, after delivering the news.
“She was surprised and overjoyed,” King said.
It was unclear Thursday afternoon whether the state would refile charges against Brackett.
The decision stated that the other evidence — surveillance footage, Brackett’s statement that Neptune had stolen money and “was going to pay for it,” and her use of Neptune’s bank card — were all sufficient, but not overwhelming, to sustain a conviction.
“I think that’s an understatement,” King said. “I think the evidence was light at best.”
Reuben M. Schafir is a Report for America corps member who writes about Indigenous communities for the Portland Press Herald.
