Abdihamit Ali is led into court in August 2023 for his sentencing in a Riverton Park shooting that injured a woman and nearly hit a sleeping child. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald

Maine’s highest court has ruled that a Portland man who was convicted for a shooting a woman at the Riverton Park housing complex must be resentenced.

Abdihamit Ali, 25, was sentenced to seven years in prison in September 2023, about a year after he was accused of shooting and injuring a 20-year-old woman. Bullets also went through the walls of a 4-year-old boy’s nearby bedroom.

He was found guilty after a jury trial on charges of elevated aggravated assault, reckless conduct with a firearm and criminal mischief.

But Ali appealed the sentencing decision, saying the court should not have allowed certain testimony from a detective during the trial, and that the counts of aggravated assault and reckless conduct amounted to double jeopardy and should have been merged. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court agreed on the second point and ordered in a ruling Thursday that he be resentenced.

“Because the jury could have found Ali guilty of Counts 1 and 2 based on the same conduct, the court’s failure to merge the two convictions constitutes obvious error,” the ruling reads.

Ali, who called from the Maine State Prison on Wednesday afternoon, said he feels “blessed” to have won his appeal.

“I’m just praying, when I go back down there, that I get a sentence that’s fair this time,” Ali said.

He said he graduates from the University of Maine at Augusta in May and is staying positive and hoping to be able to return to friends and family after graduation.

Ali’s attorney, Rory McNamara, said he appreciates the court’s thoughtfulness on the appeal. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment on the ruling and said the new sentencing hearing has not been scheduled yet.

According to investigators, the shooting stemmed from a fight hours earlier at the Woodford Club. Ali later fired multiple gunshots, striking Marwa Mohammad in the leg as she was getting out of her car in Riverton Park, a public housing complex. Some of those bullets pierced the walls of a nearby apartment building and entered the room where a mother and child were sleeping.

Mohammad survived and spent several weeks on crutches.

Ali argued that the jury should not have been allowed to hear testimony from a detective, who testified that Ali was not home after the shooting. But that information came from other officers who went to Ali’s house and heard that information from his mother. In his appeal, Ali argued that the court should not have admitted that testimony because it came from multiple levels of hearsay.

Though the supreme court agreed with Ali’s argument on that issue, the ruling states that the “error was harmless” and would not have affected the outcome of the jury.

Still, the ruling states, Ali should not be punished twice for counts “of the same offense.”

“Ali could have been convicted of two offenses with two different victims, as articulated by the State on appeal, without running afoul of the prohibition against double jeopardy,” the decision reads. “But that is not how he was charged.”

Ali said during the phone interview that he felt that he was overcharged out of prejudice, and said he’s seen others being sentenced for less time for more serious crimes than his.

He compared his case to that of Eddie Roberts, a man who Ali’s attorneys have said was sentenced to one year in prison after pleading guilty to a charge in an unrelated shooting. At that time, prosecutors argued it wasn’t comparable for sentencing because Roberts had pleaded guilty.

“We’re around the same age, grew up in the same area, the only difference was our skin color,” Ali said.