BANGOR – Rory Holland showed no emotion Wednesday as a jury of eight women and four men found him guilty of murdering two brothers in Biddeford last year.

After seven days of testimony and three and a half hours of deliberation, the jury convicted Holland in the shootings of 21-year-old Derek Greene and 19-year-old Gage Greene during a confrontation outside Holland’s home on South Street.

Holland, 56, delivered “vigilante justice” when he killed the young men, said the prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese, during her closing argument Wednesday.

He was “trying to disguise it as self-defense,” she said.

Holland’s attorneys, Clifford Strike and Amanda Doherty, tried to convince the jury that Holland was justified when he shot the two men on June 30, 2009.

“My boys were heroes,” said their mother, Tammy Cole of Biddeford, after the verdict. “No one else is going to be harmed by that man.”

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Holland faces 25 years to life in prison for each of the two murder counts.

The trial was moved to Bangor at the request of Holland’s attorneys, who argued that he could not get a fair trial in southern Maine because he is well known and the shootings got widespread publicity.

Holland ran twice for mayor of Biddeford, and has filed claims of racism against the city and its police department. When he lived in Kansas in the 1970s, he was convicted of the attempted murder of his 16-month-old daughter.

On Wednesday, Marchese suggested to jurors that Holland was laying in wait for the two brothers. If he wasn’t, she said, “why was he standing on South Street at 1 a.m. with a fully loaded 9 millimeter gun?”

“Rory Holland knew right out of the gate that this was not self-defense,” Marchese said, reminding jurors that Holland, with his house surrounded by police after the shootings, waited five hours before coming outside, then told officers, “No one beats a murder wrap — ever.”

Strike denounced Marchese’s claim.

“He was standing on the sidewalk in front of his house,” Strike told jurors. “That’s our right as citizens of this country. I’m affronted at the state’s idea that” Holland had no right to stand on the sidewalk in front of his home.

Strike told the jury that anyone of any race, religion or sexual orientation “has the right to stand outside their home at 1 o’clock in the morning without being affronted.”

 


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