BELFAST — An attorney for Sharon Carrillo says Maine police and prosecutors tricked officials at a New York school into releasing information about her, including a psychological evaluation.
Carrillo and her husband, Julio Carrillo, are accused of killing of Sharon Carrillo’s 10-year-old daughter, Marissa Kennedy, who was found dead in the couple’s Stockton Springs home in February, allegedly from beatings that occurred over many months. The couple each face a charge of depraved indifference murder.
Sharon Carrillo’s attorney, Laura Shaw, contends that the state tricked Donna Konkolics, chief executive officer of Maplebrook School in Amenia, New York, a private boarding school for students with learning disabilities, into mailing school records about Carrillo, a former student.
In a motion for protective order filed Wednesday, Shaw said the state overstepped the authority of Maine law by trying to command records from an out-of-state school, and made false statements in the subpoena by referring to an upcoming court date that did not exist.
In an affidavit, Konkolics said she received a phone call this month from Maine State Police Detective Jason Andrews, who asked for records relating to Carrillo, who was known as Sharon Kennedy when she was a student there.
Konkolics told the detective she could not release the records without the student’s consent or a subpoena. On March 19, she received a subpoena by mail from Assistant District Attorney Donald Macomber, requiring her to appear in court in Belfast on April 6 with Carrillo’s records.
Alternatively, the subpoena said, she could mail Carrillo’s records to the Maine Attorney General’s Office.
According to Shaw, there was never a court date on April 6, which rendered the subpoena not only invalid but “dishonest and deceitful.”
A clerk at District Court in Belfast found no record of an April 6 court date for Carrillo.
Konkolics said she didn’t question the subpoena and took it as a valid legal document. Traveling to Maine would have been a burden, she said in the affidavit, so she sent all school records on Carrillo to the Maine Attorney General’s Office, “believing those were the only options before me.”
Those records included progress reports, report cards, an individualized education program, and a psychological evaluation, Konkolics said.
Shaw contacted Konkolics on Tuesday asking her not to send the records, but they were already in the mail.
Shaw, in her motion for a protective order, said the way in which the Attorney General’s Office obtained the school records violated the Maine Rules of Unified Criminal Procedure, Carrillo’s privacy and due process rights. She also mentioned the Maine Board Overseers of the Bar definition of misconduct, which refers to lawyers who “engage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”
“The conduct at issue surrounding the service of this subpoena is egregious, and constitutes misrepresentation at best,” Shaw wrote.
Reached by phone Friday, Macomber, the assistant attorney general, said he is reserving his comments for a hearing on the motion, to be held Tuesday in Waldo County Superior Court.
Earlier this month, the state requested its own psychological evaluation of Sharon Carrillo based on information from Carrillo and her family members that she has a documented history of mental illness and learning disabilities.
Maplebrook School has students ages 11 to 18 and a postgraduate program for ages 18 to 21. Students typically have an IQ in the range of 70 to 95, according to the school’s website. Most have a language-based learning disability, and many struggle with social skills and executive functions. Diagnoses of students at the school include ADD/ADHD, auditory processing disorder, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, dyslexia, executive functioning deficiencies, expressive and receptive language deficits, fine/graphomotor skills difficulties and visual processing disorder. The school does not enroll students with a diagnosis of a behavioral disorder or severe emotional needs.
A person who answered the phone at Maplebrook School on Friday said Konkolics was not accepting any calls.
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