AUBURN — A Lewiston man convicted of murder last summer was back in court Tuesday seeking a new trial.

Michael McNaughton, 27, was in Androscoggin County Superior Court where his attorney, Verne Paradie Jr., aimed to show that prosecutors failed to turn over to the defense information that would have helped McNaughton prevail at his three-week trial in July.

Paradie played for the judge an audio recording of the arrest of Felicia Cadman, 21, of Mechanic Falls followed by a lengthy video interview of Cadman at the Lewiston Police Department.

In that interview, Cadman talked about the murder of 20-year-old Romeo Parent of Lewiston in April 2013. At that time, Cadman had been dating William True, 21, of Lewiston, who was convicted in December of murder in Parent’s slaying.

Prosecutors maintain that True and McNaughton took part in Parent’s murder.

Parent was killed the night of April 9, 2013, in a remote wooded area in Greene. He was stabbed in the back of the neck with a screwdriver nicknamed “Pokie” that belonged to McNaughton, and he was strangled with a makeshift garrote called “chokie,” fashioned from a bicycle cable and wooden dowels.

Parent’s body was stripped and bound and was moved the next day to a dam in Jug Stream in Monmouth, where it was found by authorities three days after he was killed.

Cadman could be heard telling Lewiston Police Detective Wayne Clifford in the video interview conducted on July 10, 2014, one day after the start of McNaughton’s murder trial, “When Will got arrested, we already knew he’d killed Romeo.”

Paradie suggested that statement implicated True, not McNaughton, in Parent’s murder.

Assistant Attorney General Deborah Cashman argued that the reference to “he” could have meant McNaughton, who also had been a subject of the interview up to that point.

Cadman also could be heard telling Clifford that True had told her he had killed Parent, but she said she believed he intended that statement to mean he felt responsible for Parent’s death. She said True told her he had punched Parent the night before he was killed.

When Clifford went to Cadman’s home where she lived with her mother, her mother high-fived the detective because she had recently learned that True had been arrested and charged with Parent’s murder. That exchange was captured on an audio recording from a device Clifford had turned on as he went to Cadman’s house on July 10, 2014, to arrest her on a warrant for the felony charge of hindering apprehension or prosecution.

Paradie said both the audio and video recordings should have been shared with him at the time of McNaughton’s trial. Instead, he wasn’t made aware of them until Oct. 20, roughly three months after the trial ended, he said.

That was when Clifford remembered he had the recordings. Clifford, who testified Tuesday, said he had put the recordings in his desk on July 10, 2014, after making copies. “I was very busy gathering witnesses,” he said. “I simply forgot about it.”

Paradie is expected to argue that statements made by Cadman were favorable to McNaughton’s defense and that it likely would have made a difference in the outcome of the trial.

Prosecutors are expected to argue that the information contained in those recordings wouldn’t have resulted in a different outcome at trial because the factual information contained in them had come out at trial from other sources.

In addition to the Cadman recordings, there are two other recordings prosecutors hadn’t provided the McNaughton defense at his trial, Paradie wrote in his motion.

A recorded conversation between Cadman and her friend, Jessica Gaudette of Lewiston, is expected to be played when McNaughton returns to the courtroom on April 1 to continue his hearing. That recording was shared with Paradie in August, he said, three weeks after the trial had ended. The fourth recording made available to the defense after McNaughton’s trial is an interview by police of True on April 5 about a Lewiston burglary.

True and Parent had committed a burglary a week before Parent was killed, police said. Parent had talked to police and implicated True in the crime. Police had arrested True and jailed him for the weekend. Parent hadn’t gone to jail.

Parent’s statements to police detailing True’s involvement in the burglary are the basis for the motive in Parent’s killing. Parent was branded a “snitch.” Plans for retaliation ranged from a “beat-down” to his murder.

McNaughton’s sentencing date, scheduled for April 1, will be postponed. The judge is expected to rule on McNaughton’s motion for a new trial before his new sentencing date.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com