The 18-year prison sentence of a Massachusetts man convicted of the 2023 attempted murder of the mother of his children in a Waterville hotel parking lot has been thrown out by the state’s highest court.

Irineu B. Goncalves, 37, of Revere, Massachusetts, was sentenced to 30 years in prison with all but 18 of those years suspended in July 2024 after being found guilty of attempted murder, domestic violence aggravated assault, domestic violence criminal threatening, assault on an officer and violating a condition of release.

Goncalves wrapped his hands around the neck of a Vassalboro woman, whom he’d had a relationship with and with whom he had two children, squeezed so hard she lost consciousness, and repeatedly attacked her June 14, 2023, in a parking lot behind a Main Street hotel in Waterville.

In an Aug. 7 decision, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Goncalves’ appeal that his sentence should  be vacated and he must be resentenced because Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy erred in including what she said was an assault on the hotel clerk during the incident as an aggravating factor, when in fact no evidence was presented at trial that he had assaulted the clerk.

The justices ruled that considering the alleged assault as an aggravating factor in Goncalves’ sentence could have affected the length of his sentence and so ordered that he be resentenced. They wrote, “We conclude that there is a reasonable probability that the error affected the sentence and thus affected Goncalves’s substantial rights.”

The justices rejected a claim from Goncalves’ attorney, filed in the same appeal, that the court should have considered Goncalves’ mental state during the incident and considered him being in a “blind rage” as a mitigating factor in his sentence.

At trial, Goncalves’ attorney sought to show that Goncalves was so enraged when he thought the woman tried to hit him with her car after she told him he wouldn’t be able to see their kids again that he was not aware of his own actions. A defense expert testified that Goncalves was in a “trauma response” that left him unaware of his actions when he attacked the woman.

The Supreme Court justices rejected that argument, saying Murphy did not err in determining “that Goncalves’s blind jealous rage was not a mitigating factor for sentencing purposes.”

Goncalves is being held at the Maine State Prison in Warren, according to state Department of Corrections records. His earliest release date is listed by the department as July of 2037.

Waterville police arrived shortly after witnesses reported Goncalves attacking the woman. Goncalves bit a police officer’s hand, tried twisting off the officer’s ear, swung at another officer and tried reaching for his gun. Officials said Goncalves showed no response after being shot twice with a Taser, which delivers 50,000 volts of electricity, and repeatedly being pepper sprayed.

Murphy said Goncalves’ attack on the woman was brutal and persistent as the victim slipped away and he kept coming, beating her in her car and then, after she briefly escaped his grasp, getting on top of her on the pavement, wrapping his hands around her throat until she lost consciousness.