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Final Arguments Made in Trial of Landlord in Portland Fire

Fred Bever
/
Maine Public
Landlord Gregory Nisbet (left) awaits final arguments in his manslaughter trial.

Gregory Nisbet’s fate is now in a judge’s hands.

Nisbet faces 6 counts of manslaughter in the deaths of six Portland tenants in a fire at a building he owned in 2014. After a week of testimony, the prosecution and defense made their final arguments Friday, and because Nisbet waived his right to a jury trial, the verdict will be decided by Superior Court Justice Thomas Warren.

Simply put, the prosecution says Nisbet’s criminal negligence played a key role in the deaths of six young people early in the morning of Nov. 1, 2014, when a porch fire fueled by trash quickly engulfed most of 20-24 Noyes St., which he owned. They say he failed to keep smoke detectors in working order, failed to provide other fire safety systems required by code and illegally added third-story units that became death traps for their occupants when the only way to get out — the main stairway — caught on fire.

“They had no chance whatever judge, the windows were totally inadequate,” Assistant District attorney General Robert Ellis says in his closing argument.

Ellis told the judge that but for Nisbet’s negligence, some or all of the victims would have survived. Nisbet’s behavior was most egregious, Ellis suggested, when he renovated and rented out the third-floor rooms.

“He, the defendant, put people up in that third floor knowing full well that if a fire happened — and he thought of that, because he had ladders up there in that closet — knowing full well that if a fire happened, they couldn’t get down those stairs. Totally reckless thing to do,” he says.

Nisbet says it’s not his fault, and his lawyers have tried to nurture reasonable doubt about his guilt, saying that the victims would have died no matter what Nisbet did or did not do.

They say that even if smoke detectors had been working, the fire was so strong and so fast it would have knocked the alarms offline before they could be triggered. They say even if the alarms were working, the tenants would not have had time to escape. And they suggest that some of the tenants were intoxicated that night, and the alarms would not have woken them in time anyhow.

There were arguments over just what codes applied to the building. The state says the house functioned like a rooming house, with a changing cast of tenants who often paid rent individually, and some of whom put locks on their room doors. Defense attorney Matthew Nichols says they were actually a family.

“Every witness who testified who lived there shortly before and during the fire testified that this was a family. They were friends, they worked together, they had one kitchen, they had Thanksgiving dinner together and other meals together, they partied together,” he says.

It’s an important point, because if the judge determines the house was a single-family home, the fire safety codes that apply would be lower than what’s required for a rooming house.

Credit Fred Bever / Maine Public
/
Maine Public
Nikki Thomas' remembrance of her daughter Ashley.

During the week, a handful or more of the victims’ relatives attended the trial. Louis and Nikki Thomas, accompanied by their son Louis III, were there every day, hoping that the man they hold responsible for the death of their daughter Ashley would be found guilty.

Louis says he thinks Warren will not be distracted by the defense arguments.

“If it was a jury trial it may be one thing. But I think the judge is level-headed enough to see through a lot of the crap that they’ve shown. I mean Ashley, our daughter, was stone-cold sober. No alcohol, no THC in her system, and she couldn’t get out,” he says.

If convicted, Nisbet faces up to 30 years in jail. Warren indicated he might have a decision by next week.

A Columbia University graduate, Fred began his journalism career as a print reporter in Vermont, then came to Maine Public in 2001 as its political reporter, as well as serving as a host for a variety of Maine Public Radio and Maine Public Television programs. Fred later went on to become news director for New England Public Radio in Western Massachusetts and worked as a freelancer for National Public Radio and a number of regional public radio stations, including WBUR in Boston and NHPR in New Hampshire.