AUBURN — A judge rejected this week a local man’s efforts to move his trial on two murder charges stemming from a 2023 slaying in Poland to a different county.

Aaron Aldrich Androscoggin County Jail photo

Lawyers for Aaron Aldrich, 47, argued at a hearing in Androscoggin County Superior Court last week that pretrial publicity had made it impossible for their client to get a fair trial.

Defense attorney Ashley Perry offered six published news accounts of the case as examples of media exposure, which include the defendant’s criminal history and details from a law enforcement affidavit filed by prosecutors in support of probable cause for Aldrich’s arrest and the charges against him.

Perry said the exhibits represent “only a fraction of the media coverage that has persisted for this case over the course of the past roughly 1 1/2 years” since Aldrich’s arrest.

In an order written by Justice Jennifer Archer, denying the defendant’s motion to hold Aldrich’s trial outside of Androscoggin County, the judge said there are two circumstances that could compel her to grant the defendant’s motion: presumed prejudice or actual prejudice.

Either or both must be proved by the defendant.

For presumed prejudice to occur, the “court presumes that an impartial jury is not possible when the pretrial publicity is ‘extensive and pervasive’ or ‘taints the atmosphere of the trial,'” Archer wrote, citing legal precedent.

“The presumption arises when the defendant demonstrates that the publicity has the ‘immediacy, the intensity, or the invidiousness sufficient to arouse general ill will and vindictiveness … at the time of jury selection,'” she wrote.

“Actual” prejudice, Archer wrote, requires a “demonstration that it is not possible to select an impartial jury, with the focus upon the impartiality of available panel members during jury selection itself.”

Archer concluded that “the defendant has failed to meet his burden to establish either presumed or actual prejudice.”

Because Perry declined to provide an affidavit supporting her motion and she didn’t call any witnesses to testify on Aldrich’s behalf at a hearing last week, “the court is unable to accept many of the alleged facts proffered by counsel at oral argument,” Archer wrote.

Perry also failed to cite any “particular news article that contained incorrect factual representations or conveyed any impression regarding the guilt or innocence of the defendant,” Archer wrote.

In denying Aldrich’s motion, Archer left the door open for his attorneys to revisit the issue as the case moves closer to trial.

Aldrich was indicted by a grand jury in April 2023 in the fatal shootings of Shoeb Mohamed Adan, 21, of Springfield, Massachusetts, and Mohamed Aden, 16, of Lewiston.

The two victims were found Feb. 21, 2023, by Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office deputies who were dispatched to a mobile home at 205 Tripp Road in Poland for a welfare check.

Officers discovered the body of Aden on the living room floor and Adan’s body on the floor of a different room, according to police.

Aden appeared to have been shot in the arm, back and chest. Spent shell casings from what appeared to have been a 9 mm gun were found near the body; casings that appeared to be the same caliber were found near Adan’s body.

A medical examiner would later rule the two victims died from gunshot wounds.

Aldrich was identified as a suspect and was later captured in New Hampshire.