After 3-plus years, charges dropped in felony marijuana case

LACONIA — The case of a Belmont man who had been charged with six felony counts of selling marijuana has been dropped more than three years after his arrest.

Richard E. Bergeron, 44, of Cotton Hill Road, in Belmont had been charged with selling marijuana in December 2018 and January 2019, according to court documents.

The formal notice of the decision to drop the case was filed in Belknap Superior Court Wednesday.

In a statement emailed to The Daily Sun on Thursday, Bergeron said, “This has been a long, painful ordeal. I wasted a lot of valuable time preparing documents and attending formal hearings. I was always confident that I would win or they would simply give up.”

Bergeron said he was entrapped and was strongly critical of Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois’ handling of the case, laying out his views in a letter to the editor which was printed in The Daily Sun in May 2020.

Three days after the letter appeared, Livernois asked the court to impose a gag order against Bergeron to prevent him from making further public statements about the case.

Livernois said at the time that lawyers must comply with strict rules on pre-trial statements in order to avoid poisoning the jury pool, and since Bergeron was acting as his own attorney, those rules applied to him as well.

The case drew the attention of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union which filed a friend of the court brief which argued pre-trial statements don't apply to criminal defendants who are representing themselves, that the rule has exceptions, including speech made well before trial, which would apply to Bergeron, and that the order, if imposed, would be unconstitutional.

Two months after Livernois sought the gag order the case was turned over to the Grafton County Attorney’s Office because of what Livernois said were potential conflicts of interest.

Deputy Grafton County Attorney Karen Heater withdrew the gag order request shortly after taking over the case.

Before turning over the case, Livernois offered to let Bergeron plead guilty to one felony charge and be sentenced to probation, an offer which Bergeron rejected. Heater then made a plea offer, letting him plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges with no jail time, which he rejected as well.

In the notice to discontinue the case, Heater cited “prosecutorial discretion” as the reason. In a letter to Bergeron, she cited his clean record as another factor in her decision.