PORTLAND — On the opening day of the trial of Brandon Brown, jurors heard two vastly different accounts of how Marine Sgt. James Sanders got shot and paralyzed in the early morning of June 24, 2008.
In Brown's version, he was defending his life against a much stronger man who had just tackled and punched him, and whom Brown believed was about to pick up a knife and stab him.
In Sanders' version, he was trying to break up a fight outside a club in Portland's Old Port when Brown jumped into the fray, pulled out a .357-caliber handgun and shot him for no reason other than an old grudge.
Sanders, who was 27 at the time, says he never punched Brown, never reached for a knife and certainly had no intent to hurt the 21-year-old man.
The jurors must decide which story they believe, and whether Brown is guilty of attempted murder.
The trial opened Wednesday in Cumberland County Superior Court and is expected to run into the early part of next week, with Justice Thomas Warren presiding.
Sanders served two tours of duty as a sniper in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. At the time of the shooting, he was assigned to a reserve company in Topsham. He was an instructor at a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school.
Sanders also worked as a bouncer at Platinum Plus, an adult club on Riverside Street in Portland. That's where he had a run-in with Brown months before the shooting.
Sanders and Shawn Smetana, former general manager of Platinum Plus, testified that Brown and another customer got into an argument inside the club, and Brown took a swing at the other man.
Smetana and Sanders worked together to restrain Brown and get him out of the club. Sanders said Brown had been wearing his pants down around his buttocks, and they fell down around his ankles during the struggle. He said he told Brown to pull his pants up and go home.
Sanders said that Brown made the kind of threats he heard all the time from people he tossed out of Platinum Plus, and that he didn't take any of them seriously.
"It's just another guy that we kicked out," Sanders said.
He testified that he saw Brown again at Platinum Plus, and at clubs in the Old Port, in the months after that incident but didn't exchange words with him.
On the night of June 23, 2008, Sanders was hanging out with his brother and some friends at the Cactus Club on Fore Street. Brown lived in an apartment above that club.
Shortly after midnight, Sanders was smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk when two people began arguing, and he thought a fight was about to happen.
Sanders testified that he eventually tried to cool the situation down, but as he was walking toward the men, another man raced up from behind him. It was Brown.
"I grabbed him," Sanders said. "I put him to the ground."
Sanders said he restrained Brown temporarily, until someone else pulled him off. As he was trying to regain his balance and stand, he saw Brown out of the corner of his eye.
"I heard a pop and then my legs were gone and I was down on the ground," Sanders said. He didn't lose consciousness, and realized that he had no sensation in his legs. The bullet had entered the right side of his chest, gone through his liver, both lungs and his spine, and exited from his back.
"I got shot for no reason," Sanders said. He told the jury that he spent nearly three months in the hospital and has been in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, and on heavy doses of pain medication since the shooting.
The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Meg Elam, told the jury during opening statements that Brown held a grudge against Sanders for the Platinum Plus incident, and that he had told friends that he meant to hurt, and even kill, Sanders.
"No one knew how serious he was," Elam said.
Brown will have the right to testify later in the trial. His lawyer, Sarah Churchill, provided...
Reader comments
Click here to view or add comments on this story
Were you interviewed for this story? If so, please fill out our accuracy form