Top court hears appeal by Portland man who killed his sister's boyfriend

Megan Gray, Portland Press Herald, Maine
·3 min read

Apr. 6—The state's top court will decide whether to uphold a manslaughter conviction for a Portland man who fatally shot his sister's boyfriend in 2019.

Mark Cardilli Jr. is current serving 7 1/2 years in prison for the death of 22-year-old Isahak Muse. He was initially charged with murder, but Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills found him guilty of the lesser offense after a bench trial. She imposed a total sentence of 11 years but suspended 3 1/2.

Cardilli, now 26, admitted to killed Muse during a fight at the Cardilli home in Portland's Riverton neighborhood, but he said he was defending himself and his family. Muse was visiting his girlfriend that night, and the conflict started as a disagreement over whether he could spend the night. The entire family was involved in a verbal and physical altercation before the shooting.

The court ultimately found that the law did not allow Cardilli to use deadly force during that confrontation in the early morning hours of March 16, 2019. Cardilli appealed his conviction, and the Maine Supreme Judicial Court heard oral arguments in the case Tuesday.

In her ruling, Mills said the state did not prove that Cardilli was not acting in self defense. But she also found that his belief that he needed to shoot Muse was not reasonable. Her conclusion supported neither a murder conviction nor an acquittal, and the result was the guilty verdict for manslaughter.

Attorneys Jamesa Drake and Rory McNamara, who are representing Cardilli on appeal, argued that it was reasonable for him to believe Muse was not allowed to be in the house and that he needed to shoot Muse to prevent injury to himself and his family. They also said Mills made errors in her review of the law related to self-defense.

"The trial court would have been compelled to acquit Mark because his belief that he needed to shoot Muse to prevent Muse from obtaining and using the gun on the Cardillis was not a gross deviation from what a reasonable person would have held in the circumstances," their brief said.

The Maine Attorney General's Office argued that the evidence supported the verdict. Assistant Attorney General Leanne Robbin repeatedly mentioned in her brief that Muse was unarmed during the conflict. Cardilli first told police he fired into Muse's chest, but forensic experts agreed that the shots hit Muse at contact range in the back. The two sides presented competing theories at trial for why that happened.

"The fact that this guest overstayed his welcome did not convert him into an intruder," Robbin wrote in her brief. "It was a gross deviation for Mark Jr. to consider him as such. Since Isahak was a in fact a guest, not an intruder, Mark Jr. was not justified in using deadly force to prevent bodily injury."

The court does not have a timetable to issue its decision.

The Cardillis are white, and Muse was Black. Since the first days after the fatal shooting, the role of racism was a constant question. While police investigated the incident, local Muslim leaders voiced their concern that it was a hate crime. When Mills set bail at $50,000 and allowed Cardilli to wait for his trial at home, protesters questioned whether a Black defendant would have had the same opportunity. And when Chelsey Cardilli took the stand at the trial, she said her brother made racist statements about Muslims, Somali people and Black people.

In her ruling, Mills wrote that she did not find the young woman's testimony to be credible. In the appeal, neither side discussed those allegations.

Cardilli is serving his sentence at the Maine Correctional Center in Windham. He faced a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in prison because he used a firearm to cause the death of another person. The maximum penalty for manslaughter is 30 years.

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