SKOWHEGAN — Threatening messages a Pittston man sent to an official social media page constituted stalking of Kennebec County’s sheriff, a judge ruled Wednesday.
District Court Judge Andrew Benson found Nicholas Worthing, 37, guilty of one Class C count of stalking. Benson handed down the verdict during a hearing at the Skowhegan District Court more than a month after he heard evidence in a nonjury trial in March.
The guilty verdict came nearly four years after Worthing was initially arrested. The case dragged on while he went through nearly a dozen court-appointed attorneys and various efforts to get the case moved out of Kennebec County and dropped altogether, with mixed success.
The case also raised questions about the First Amendment and how it relates to the criminal offense of stalking and the criticism of public officials like a sheriff.
Over prosecutors’ objection, Benson let Worthing continue to walk free on his previously posted bail, pending sentencing.
No sentencing date was scheduled Wednesday. Benson gave First Assistant District Attorney Tim Snyder and Worthing’s attorney, Ryan Rutledge, several weeks to prepare memoranda for their sentence recommendations.
In his ruling, read aloud to those in the courtroom, Benson laid out a legal analysis incorporating Maine’s stalking statute from 2021, which has since been updated, and several First Amendment cases.
He found that Worthing intentionally or knowingly engaged in a course of conduct; that the conduct was directed at Kennebec County Sheriff Ken Mason; that some of his statements were “true threats” not protected by the First Amendment; and that Worthing was reckless in making the threatening statements. Benson also found that Worthing’s prior convictions satisfied the requirements of the Class C level charge.
Worthing used a Facebook account to send direct messages to the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page from January 2017 to March 2021, Benson found, based on trial testimony and Facebook records submitted as evidence.
Mason, who was in the courtroom Wednesday, had testified at trial that he does not run the page himself. His wife, who is not a Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office employee, and a staff member ran it, he testified.
Benson rattled off some of the dozens of profanity-filled messages that prosecutors presented at trial. Many messages claimed Mason and other law enforcement officers had molested children, a claim that Mason denied on the witness stand.
Worthing was “undeterred” in sending the messages after being served a cease harassment notice in March 2021, Benson said.
Of the many messages, Benson found that a few in which Worthing threatened to murder police officers, run over police officers and act violently toward family members of police officers constituted speech unprotected by the First Amendment.
And he had no question about whether Worthing was acting recklessly.
“This is not a close case,” Benson wrote in his ruling. “Mr. Worthing made multiple statements implying or outright stating a desire to harm or murder law enforcement or their families over several years.”
“It is hard to conceive of more reckless conduct than repeatedly threatening to murder people,” Benson continued later in his ruling. “Because Mr. Worthing ignored that substantial risk when threatening violence against Sheriff Mason and (sheriff’s office) staff for several years, the Court finds that Mr. Worthing was at least reckless concerning the threatening nature of his statements.”
Rutledge, Worthing’s attorney, had framed the case both during the March trial and in a written closing argument around First Amendment issues in a 21st-century society.
He argued that the messages were not “true threats,” in part because they were not made directly to Mason and Mason testified that he was not frightened by the messages.
“Let there be no mistake — the rhetoric presented in this case may be considered reprehensible — but similar statements have become so commonplace within our current society as to be devoid of any prurient, repugnant, or truly threatening content,” Rutledge wrote in his closing argument.
“The lack of civility around political viewpoints has become so rampant that the thought of sitting around the Thanksgiving dinner table creates anxiety,” he continued. “For better or worse, social media has changed the way people interact and communicate, and unfortunately it has opened the proverbial floodgates to widespread misinformation and crude viewpoints. An army of keyboard warriors threaten to kill the president every day, and nobody takes them seriously.”
Mason, reached via email later Wednesday, said that he was grateful for Benson’s guilty verdict but was concerned that Worthing remains out on bail until his sentencing.
“The constant barrage of untrue and slanderous statements about me and my staff for years was certainly trying on our (patience),” Mason wrote. “Not to mention the threats of harm to me, family members and my fellow brothers and sisters serving (as) law enforcement officer’s. And as the verdict showed, (patience) persevered.”
Worthing’s case has been making its way toward trial since he was arrested in August 2021.
Worthing, who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor-level stalking of a state trooper in 2018, has since been out of jail on bail, court records show.
Worthing went through various attempts to get two stalking charges on a 2021 indictment dismissed based on legal issues similar to those Rutledge raised at trial.
Prosecutors dropped a more severe, Class B stalking count on the indictment last year. They also agreed to move the case out of Kennebec County to Somerset County, which is within the same prosecutorial district, after initially objecting to Worthing’s request to change venue in 2023.
Worthing also has gone through nearly a dozen court-appointed defense lawyers, despite a stern warning from a judge that he was at risk of losing his right to counsel.
That judge, Superior Court Chief Justice Robert E. Mullen, called the case’s history “somewhat complicated and problematic” in one of his orders appointing an attorney for Worthing.
