PORTLAND — A Lewiston man lost his bid for a shorter sentence when the state’s high court Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling that his relationship with an assault victim could be classified as domestic by the trial jury.

Jamesa J. Drake, an Auburn defense attorney who represented Richard Murphy, 40, during oral arguments before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court last month, argued that her client and the victim hadn’t been “sexual partners,” an element necessary under state law to fall within the classification of domestic violence.

Murphy was convicted by a jury of domestic violence assault. He was sentenced in Androscoggin County Superior Court to four years in prison with all but three years suspended, followed by two years of probation.

The crime was a Class C felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Had Murphy been convicted of misdemeanor assault instead, the maximum penalty would have been less than a year in jail.

Murphy appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court, which heard the case on Dec. 9, 2015.

He was seeking to have the court vacate the judgment and send it back to the trial court for sentencing on an assault conviction, a lesser crime.

Representing the state was Michael Dumas, a third-year student at the University of Maine School of Law and an intern at the Androscoggin County District Attorney’s Office. It was his first time arguing a case before the state’s top court, sitting as the law court.

Police arrived at a Lewiston apartment on March 20, 2014, where Murphy “had put (the victim) down on the floor and put his foot on her face … enough so it made her mouth bleed,” according to the court’s written opinion, authored by Associate Justice Ellen Gorman.

More than a year before the assault, a Lewiston police officer had followed a noise complaint to the basement of a Lewiston apartment building where she had witnessed Murphy and a woman, later identified as the assault victim, having consensual sex.

Drake had argued before the high court that once was not enough to establish Murphy and his victim as “sexual partners.”

She said there were “potential vagueness” issues in the statutory language and noted the Legislature failed to define what constitutes a “sexual partner.”

Dumas said the high court had already addressed the issue, twice. The presumption of a sexual relationship was not enough, he argued. In Murphy’s case, there is “direct and actual evidence” because a police officer witnessed the act, Dumas said.

“This is not an ambiguous statute,” he said. “This is not an ambiguous case.”

The court agreed, ruling so in its unanimous opinion.

A one-time sexual encounter falls within the statutory language defining domestic violence, the court wrote.

“Construing the term ‘sexual partners’ to include persons who have engaged with each other in a single consensual ‘sexual act’ as defined in (the statute) is consistent with the rest of the statutory definition of ‘family or household members’ and with the domestic violence statutory scheme, according to the written decision.

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