The Maine Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments Sept. 14 in the appeal of a former Nokomis Regional High School music teacher who was convicted last year of aggravated assault and domestic violence assault. Proceedings are set for 9 a.m. at the Capital Judicial Center in Augusta.

Andrew Maderios was found guilty in Somerset County Superior Court last September on four of nine domestic violence charges, including two felony aggravated assault charges.

Andrew Maderios, center, and his attorneys, Leonard Sharon and Caleigh Milton, listen to the victim's statement at Maderios' sentencing hearing in Somerset County Superior Court. His appeal will be heard Sept. 14. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel

Maderios, 30, formerly of Pittsfield, was sentenced to 15 years with all but three years suspended and six years of probation, with the first two years to include electronic monitoring.

In his appeal on behalf of Maderios, Auburn attorney Leonard Sharon says the trial judge erred in excluding evidence of the prior conduct of the victim to show her motive, intent or plan in accusing Maderios of beating, kicking and choking her.

Sharon also says the court was wrong to admit as evidence audio recordings and photographs presented by the state and erred in not granting a mistrial on the basis of “improper comments” made by the prosecutor, District Attorney Maeghan Maloney.

Sharon and his co-counsels contend that Maloney expressed her personal opinion about or “vouched for” the witness in an attempt to sway the jury.

Sharon said in court briefs that Maderios’ conviction should be vacated and remanded back to Superior Court for a new trial.

ATTACKS RECORDED BY VICTIM

Maloney had asked for a 15-year sentence with all but six years suspended on Maderios’ conviction of two counts of felony aggravated assault and two counts of domestic violence assault.

He was tried on nine charges, and the convictions were on charges related to attacks recorded by the victim, who was his live-in girlfriend at the time, on her cellphone.

A letter to the presiding judge from Stephen LaMarre, the victim’s former husband, said the victim in the Maderios trial sent him threatening text messages once it was learned he might be called to testify in Maderios’ defense. LaMarre alleged that the woman had been physically violent with him in the past and injured herself “in an effort to set him up,” just as she had done to Maderios.

In her answer to the appeal, Maloney said that raising issues of the victim’s prior conduct with intimate partners would amount to a “trial within a trial” and that the court was correct to deny the motion for a new trial.

Maloney said any evidence of what the victim may have done with or against other men is “not logically related” to the charges against Maderios.

Maloney said the court was not in error when it allowed the jury to listen to audio recordings and see photographs that had been saved to a computer. The original cellphone recordings were no longer available and Sharon suggested the evidence was “secondary” in that the original recordings could have been doctored.

Maloney also said that her statements in closing arguments were not deliberate and did not affect the outcome of the trial.

She said the trial judge refusing to admit evidence of prior conduct and assertions that the audio records were edited copies of original audio already were addressed and dismissed by Justice Robert Mullen.

Prosecutors said Maderios beat, kicked and choked the victim in incidents occurring from December 2013 to July 2014.

The victim documented the attacks at the Pittsfield home the couple shared with audio recordings and still photographs, all on her iPhone, which became key evidence in the five-day trial.

“The fear of dying was overwhelming,” the victim told Mullen at sentencing.

The victim said she was sorry she “brought a monster” into her children’s lives.

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