ELLSWORTH — A Hancock County man who professes to be the antichrist and has been holed up by his own choice for nine months in the county jail, will be dining today on turkey, mashed potatoes, peas and other traditional Thanksgiving fare with fellow inmates.

Leigh J. MacKeen was arrested Wednesday on a criminal trespass charge after refusing to leave the Hancock County Courthouse at closing time after his jury trial. He was found quilty of one count of criminal trespass stemming from an incident last January in which he violated Hancock County Sheriff William Clark’s order barring him from the sheriff’s department. Two other charges for the same crime were dismissed after jurors failed to reach a verdict.

MacKeen was released without conditions by Hancock County Superior Court Justice Margaret Kravchuk. She said the defendant had already served more than the maximum jail sentence for the one count. She also waived a $10 victim compensation fee he would have had to pay.

Defending himself without an attorney, MacKeen protested the fact the two counts of criminal trespass had been dropped after the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. One by one, the jurors said more time would not help break their deadlock.

“It’s not uncommon for jury deliberations to go days,” the 48-year-old defendant noted, suggesting the jury resume deliberations next week.

“Mr. MacKeen, you have a right to due process, but not unlimited due process,” Justice Kravchuk responded.

At the trial’s outset, MacKeen told the jury he was the antichrist and a gubernatorial candidate intent on exposing and ridding state government of corruption.

MacKeen also accused Justice Kravchuk of conspiring with his former attorney, Julio DeSanctis, and demanded she recuse herself and testify as a defense witness.

“I am not a witness in this matter,” Kravchuk replied.

The defendant also advised jurors before they were sworn in.

“When you raise your right hand, you are participating in a Christian ceremony,” he said. “If any of you aren’t Christians, you might not want to raise your hand.”

A former Marine Patrol officer, MacKeen has a longstanding dispute with numerous local and state law enforcement authorities going back to 1993 when he was involved in a five-hour standoff with police at a Winter Harbor apartment house.

At the time, MacKeen locked himself in his apartment with a handgun and fired it off. The incident was preceded by his refusal to produce his driver’s license after a Gouldsboro police officer pulled him over for a traffic violation. State police negotiators tried to coax him from the apartment and eventually flushed him out by pumping a chemical agent similar to tear gas into the building. Emerging with a revolver, he was charged with reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon and criminal mischief.

Since the standoff, MacKeen has orchestrated a tireless campaign claiming he was wrongfully arrested. He maintains the police caused the standoff. Much of his crusade has been directed at the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department, which barred him from its premises last year.

At Wednesday’s trial, Sheriff Clark testified MacKeen had been barred because his staff had been disturbed by him and his “threatening, assaulting, offensive, provocative” writings. The sheriff claimed the defendant called Pope John Paul II a “faggot” and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton “a homosexual.”

“It’s against the law to write something threatening. Why wasn’t I arrested?” MacKeen asked Clark, dismissing the sheriff’s thick file of letters since they were not presented as evidence in court.

Last January, MacKeen was arrested after he violated the sheriff’s order and went to the sheriff’s department in search of a police report. He claimed a false complaint had been made against him. At the time, he refused to sign bail papers obliging him to appear in court.

Dispatcher David Brady was on duty when MacKeen was arrested. In testimony Wednesday, he said the defendant had previously disrupted him from doing his job answering the telephone and communicating by radio with officers.

“So my attempt to get information from you as a public servant seemed frivolous?” MacKeen asked Brady.

Last February, MacKeen was arrested again on a criminal trespass charge after he refused to leave the Hancock County Courthouse at closing time. He had been released from jail that day by Ellsworth District Court Judge Bernard Staples.

Sgt. Tim Cote was the arresting officer.

“He said it was the principle [of the matter]. He wanted a jury trial and this would accomplish that,” he recalled in court.

Last March, MacKeen again was released from jail but refused to leave the sheriff’s department where he allegedly hovered over dispatcher Tammy Royal and threatened to urinate on the sheriff’s door. He was again arrested for criminal trespass.