The state Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of Dickie E. Anderson Jr. for the 1997 murder of Renee Pellegrino in Waterford, writing in a unanimous decision that the justices had “no hesitation” in finding that trial judge Arthur C. Hadden did not abuse his discretion when he granted the prosecution’s motion to try Anderson simultaneously for two murders.

Anderson, 45, is serving a 60-year prison sentence, having been convicted in 2012 of murdering Pellegrino on June 25, 1997.

The jury in New London Superior Court could not reach a verdict in the case of Michelle Comeau, a woman who had died in 1998 under circumstances similar to Pellegrino.

Both victims were troubled women who had been strangled to death and left on local roadways.

In April, defense attorney Christopher Duby had argued before the high court that the facts of the Pellegrino and Comeau cases were similar but not similar enough for their cases to be tried together, and that the state had used the Comeau case to bolster its case against Pellegrino.

Pellegrino was 41 years old and 17 weeks pregnant when she was killed on June 25, 1997. She was a law school graduate and gifted musician who had turned to crack cocaine and prostitution.

Comeau, 29, had spent years of her childhood in group homes and institutions, struggled with mental illness and as an adult had worked as a prostitute to support a crack cocaine addiction.

Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote in the court’s decision, which will be released officially on Sept. 15, that the seven justices who heard the case had no hesitation in affirming Hadden’s ruling that the state met its threshold in its motion to consolidate the two cases based on the “cross-admissibility” of the evidence.

“The similarities between the victims (both women were prostitutes and drug users), the geographic and temporal proximity of the murders (the crimes were committed 10 months apart within a 15-mile radius), the victims’ cause of death (both women were strangled manually and with a ligature), and the extremely unusual and degrading manner in which the victims’ bodies were disposed of after death (completely naked in the travel portion of a rural roadway), are, standing alone, distinctive enough characteristics to warrant an inference that the same person committed both crimes,” the court wrote.

Prosecutor Stephen M. Carney, who had tried the case with prosecutor David J. Smith, said he was pleased to see the conviction upheld.

“The police worked hard on that case for a number of years, and I’m happy to see their hard work rewarded,” Carney said.

Duby could not immediately be reached for comment.

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN