AG names dozens more officers on Laurie List

The N.H. Attorney General’s Office on Tuesday disclosed nearly 100 more names on a once-secret roster of police officers with possible credibility issues.

The publicly released portion of the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule, better known as the Laurie List, now has 174 people, including the names of eight more current or former area police officers than had previously been disclosed.

The portion of the list released in December included 10 officers from the region.

Scant details accompanying the names include the police department where they worked, the date of the incident prompting their inclusion on the list and the category of the incident, although in some cases the category is labeled as “unknown.”

The newly disclosed local officers are listed as having worked at the Chesterfield, Winchester, Jaffrey, Dublin, Antrim and Hinsdale departments. The types of incidents include criminal conduct, dereliction of duty, falsification of records and excessive force, and range in dates from 1996 to last year.

A lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and news organizations, including The Sentinel, had long sought the release of the list to shed light on issues of police misconduct, and a state law signed by the governor last year paved the path for this to happen.

The bill required the Attorney General’s Office to notify all officers on the list that they would have six months to decide whether to appeal their placement on it through the Superior Court. As long as an officer’s appeal is pending, their name would not be released, the bill stipulated, and even the full list released Tuesday includes redactions throughout.

Ahead of the latest disclosure on Tuesday, officers named on the list were again notified of their option to appeal, according to a news release from the Attorney General’s Office last week.

The N.H. Department of Justice started to make the list public last year, with the names of 80 officers, placed on the list since May 2018, released on Dec. 29. Most of the additional names released Tuesday were added to the list before May 2018.

The earlier disclosure included the names of three officers from the Hinsdale Police Department, two from the Keene Police Department and one each from the Peterborough, Stoddard, Winchester, Troy and Swanzey departments. (Officers may no longer be employed at the listed department or may be deceased, according to the list.)

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One officer, noted on the Dec. 29 list as having been with the Keene Police Department, is either no longer on the Laurie List or his name has been redacted.

Only allegations of misconduct that are “sustained” after an investigation should be included on the list, according to a 2018 law enforcement memorandum from the Attorney General’s Office.

Another memorandum from that office in 2017 stated, “It is important to recognize that inclusion on the EES does not mean that an officer is necessarily untrustworthy or dishonest — and in many cases the designation on the EES will make clear there is no question of dishonesty.”

“It simply means that there is information in the [officer’s] file that must be disclosed to a criminal defendant if the facts of the case warrant that disclosure,” the memo said.

The 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland requires prosecutors to turn over evidence that is favorable to the defense.

Precedent from that case led the N.H. Supreme Court to overturn the conviction of Carl Laurie, who was charged with murder in 1989. The court determined that a detective involved in the case had a track record of poor behavior that wasn’t disclosed to the defense attorneys.

Following that case, county attorneys began tracking police officers with potential credibility issues on what became known as the Laurie List. That list has more recently been maintained by the Attorney General’s Office and renamed the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule.

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Ryan Spencer can be reached at 603-352-1234, ext. 1412, or rspencer@keenesentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @rspencerKS

These articles are being shared by partners in The Granite State News Collaborative. For more information visit collaborativenh.org.