A Waldoboro man has received a nine-month jail sentence for threatening a woman with a baseball bat and destroying the woman’s belongings with the bat.
Todd L. Dodge, 42, pleaded guilty to class C criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon, a felony, as well as class D criminal mischief and class E violation of condition of release, both misdemeanors, Oct. 5, according to court documents.
A charge of class E theft by unauthorized taking or transfer was dismissed.
Dodge received concurrent sentences of nine months in jail for the criminal threatening and criminal mischief convictions and six months for the bail violation. He also has to pay $855 in fines.
According to an affidavit by Waldoboro Police Department Officer Jeffery Fuller, Dodge and a woman had an argument late Jan. 31.
The woman told police Dodge “grabbed a baseball bat and got in her face and told her he would smash her face … he went downstairs and smashed the coffee table, the washer, dryer, the stair rail, and a chair in the kitchen,” Fuller said in his affidavit.
Dodge was arrested Feb. 2.
Dodge’s plea was an Alford plea. According to the Cornell University Law School’s Legal Information Institute, an Alford plea is similar to a plea of no contest and means the defendant “accepts all the ramifications of a guilty verdict (i.e. punishment) without first attesting to having committed the crime.”
