Radically different testimonies from a politician and a prosecutor before a legislative committee in Augusta this week cast doubt on whether an initiative to ban life sentences in Maine will get far.
After the Democratic state representative who proposed the measure told the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee that she did not speak to any victims of prisoners serving life sentences in Maine while conceiving her bill to ban life sentences in the state, a Penobscot County prosecutor testified to the horrific details of an attempted murder in which she argued for and received a life sentence conviction.
On Monday, State Rep. Nina Milliken (D-Blue Hill) introduced her bill, LD 1335 or “An Act to Prohibit Life Sentences,” to the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee for a public hearing.
Rep. Milliken’s bill would amend the sentencing provisions of the Maine Criminal Code so that courts would not be allowed to sentence a person convicted of any crime on or after Jan. 1, 2026 to life in prison, or a term of imprisonment equivalent to life due to the age of the convicted person.
During Monday’s hearing, Judiciary Committee member Rep. Jennifer Poirier (R-Skowhegan) asked Milliken if she spoken to any victims to “see how they feel about this kind of legislation.”
“I have not spoken to any of the specific victims of people who are incarcerated doing life sentences, no,” Milliken said.
A short time later in the hearing, Penobscot County prosecutor Chelsea Lynds testified to the Judiciary Committee about a case she had recently argued and won in which a person convicted of a gruesome assault was sentenced to life in prison.
The case to which Lynds was referring was that of Djvan Carter, 47, who was tried in Penobscot County Superior Court this winter on charges of aggravated attempted murder, elevated aggravated assault, kidnapping, aggravated assault and terrorizing with a dangerous weapon after attacking a woman with a hammer in 2023.
While Milliken tied her reasoning for her bill to human rights laws in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique, Lynds’ closer-to-home example appeared to impact committee members.
WATCH:
Penobscot County prosecutor Chelsea Lynds’ full testimony can be read below:
My name is Chelsea, I’m a prosecutor in Penobscot County. I recently argued and received a life sentence in an aggravated attempted murder case.
The defendant, Mr. Carter, had already served just shy of 17 years in prison for an incident which ended in a chase, a hit and run, him pointing a gun at law enforcement, and ended in a brief standoff.
Mr. Carter had many uncharged instances of volatile behavior throughout his adult life, like a protection order that the mother of his children had gotten against him for an assault that occurred while she was pregnant.
He was also on probation for a domestic violence assault against a different victim at the time that he committed the conduct that brought him to me. On May 26, 2023, Mr. Carter believed that his then girlfriend, yet another victim, had cheated on him.
He grabbed her by the throat, strangled her. She testified that she thought she was going to die then, and that she felt like her eyes were popping out of her head, but he stopped and told her to sit on the edge of her bed. He wanted answers.
He asked the victim when her children would be home, and told her that they were going to find her body in pieces. She tried to escape, and she did make it outside, screaming for help, but Mr. Carter chased her down and struck her in the head with a hammer.
When she collapsed, he struck her twice more in the temple. He then drug her, incapacitated, to her own car and drove her out to a remote location. Over a period of hours, he beat and terrorized her.
When she would regain consciousness, he would force her to look at herself, beaten beyond recognition, and say to her, ‘you’re dying.’ Dispatch was able to ping the victim’s phone, and when the police arrived, he refused to follow orders to get out of the car.
He tried to drive off with the victim still in the car, nearly striking a trooper who was out of his cruiser and who ultimately had to shoot Mr. Carter to save the victim’s life.
When a search warrant was executed on Mr. Carter’s phone after the attempted murder, there was child sexual assault material on it of children under 12.
The victim surgeon testified that her injuries were appallingly horrific, that she had an excess of 20 skull fractures, and that he and his team had stopped counting. He told me that he had no medical explanation for her survival.
One of the officers testified that as he assessed the victim on scene that day, he thought she had been shot in the head because of the damage to her face and skull.
This defendant was a man in his mid 40s. He had multiple opportunities to rehabilitate throughout his life, but instead, he had continued to be a threat to the public, to the members of law enforcement forced to respond to his crimes, and most of all, to women.
There are many more things I could tell you about him and his case, but I will leave it at this: I developed a conviction that this was a person who should spend the rest of his life in prison, and the judge who sentenced Mr. Carter agreed.
And I do have to believe that if you all saw the evidence in this case, and saw the victim on that day and what she continues to experience to this day, I have to believe that you all would agree as well. And I would be happy to sit down with any of you any time and go over that evidence, and I would also be happy to answer any questions I can.
