A large backlog of cases and Eliot Cutler’s age were factors that led the district attorney for Hancock County to negotiate a plea deal with the former Maine gubernatorial candidate and Brooklin resident arrested a year ago on child pornography charges.
Robert Granger, who was elected last fall as the county’s top prosecutor, declined to go into specific detail about what sentence Cutler might get.
If the agreement is accepted by the court, it will include “an underlying jail sentence, a distinct period of incarceration and lengthy probation with conditions upon release,” Granger said.
Granger said that there are roughly 1,700 criminal court cases pending in Hancock and Washington counties, where his office oversees prosecutions. The lengthy time during which many cases languish in the court system has been a significant statewide concern since the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, when trials were put on hold and many other court procedures and functions slowed to a crawl.
“Plea agreements are essential if we are serious about trying to bring the criminal dockets under control,” Granger said. “It is not uncommon for cases to languish on the criminal docket for three or more years given the case backlog.”
Because Cutler is 76 years old, Granger said, “we had to also consider the real possibility that he might not ever see the inside of a courtroom during his lifetime.”
Cutler, who was nearly elected governor 13 years ago, is scheduled to appear in court on May 4 to enter a plea, though it is not clear if he will plead guilty or no contest. With either plea, he will be convicted on four counts of possessing sexually explicit material involving a child under the age of 12. His sentence will not be affected one way or the other by how he pleads.
Police searched Cutler’s homes in Brooklin and Portland on March 23, 2022, and in Brooklin found flash storage cards with “literally thousands of videos of very young children being sexually abused,” police later said.
Two days later he was arrested at his house in Brooklin. He spent a few hours at Hancock County Jail in Ellsworth before he was released that same day on $50,000 cash bail.
Since then, Cutler has not been required to show his face in public. His defense attorney, Walter McKee, has made court appearances on Cutler’s behalf. Cutler also has not been indicted. Granger held off on presenting the case to a Hancock County grand jury after he and McKee started discussing the possibility of a plea deal. With the plea, Cutler is waiving indictment.
Granger did not say who first proposed the possibility of a plea agreement.
McKee did not respond to requests for comment.
Granger said that the evidence against Cutler — which includes a statement to his wife in front of police at his Brooklin home that they would find child pornography on one of his computers — put prosecutors in “a very strong position” with respect to getting a conviction.
“I believe Mr. Cutler considered that his only reasonable option was to enter a plea in this situation,” Granger said.
Even with a strong case, Cutler faces only so much time behind bars because of limits on prison terms that have been set by the Legislature, Granger said. Regardless of the factors of any particular case, the maximum period of incarceration for anyone convicted of a Class C felony is five years.
“I am very aware that these types of cases evoke very strong feelings in people because innocent children have been exploited and harmed by adults who have no conscience or morals,” the prosecutor said. “Those who indulge in child pornography create the market for this conduct.”
