Logan Clegg was found guilty by a jury last week of multiple charges relating to the murder of Stephen & Djswende Reid. The trial was held in Merrimack County Superior Court, Concord, New Hampshire.
Juries are unpredictable. Would the jurors have come to this conclusion had they not broken for the weekend and potentially been susceptible to outside pressures from a community rocked by the murders of a couple and no known motive?
There are a lot of inconsistencies in the Logan Clegg case that make one wonder whether the Reids’ murder was an orchestrated hit job, whether Logan Clegg was a hired shooter, whether he acted alone or whether he was the wrong man but framed to bring about a fast conclusion to satisfy citizens of Concord. His defense attorney maintains they got the wrong guy. There are certainly indications that she might be right.
Does a community feel safer when someone, anyone, is locked up after a murder or a rape? Does a community actually care whether the right person has been charged and convicted?
In the 1980s, the Central Park Five were convicted of beating and raping a female jogger in New York. Donald Trump infamously put out ads in several newspapers asking for them to be killed and for the reintroduction of the death penalty.
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“At the time of their arrests, they were between the ages of 14 and 16 years old.
While all five had initially confessed to participating in the Central Park attacks (confessions from Wise, McCray, Santana and Richardson were videotaped), the teens and their attorneys insisted they were coerced by investigators into giving false statements during interrogations that lasted hours.
In a 2016 op-ed published by The Washington Post, Salaam claimed the interrogators deprived him and the other teens of food, drink and sleep for over 24 hours.”
“Despite maintaining their innocence, the Central Park Five’s contention that their confessions were coerced didn’t gain credibility until June 2002, when Matias Reyes claimed sole responsibility for raping and beating Meili.
Reyes, a convicted murderer and serial rapist, was serving a minimum 33-year prison sentence when he confessed to the crime. His DNA matched genetic material found at the crime scene and he provided details of the assault that led investigators to take his claim seriously.
Reyes also committed a similar assault on a woman in Central Park two days before Meili was found.
The NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office then began separate reinvestigations of the Central Park jogger case.
Reyes, meanwhile, could not be tried in the case because the statute of limitations had expired.”
Thirty Four years later, the tables of justice have turned. Now, the Central Park Five are victims/survivors of wrongful convictions, and Donald Trump, who spent tens of thousands on ads seeking for them to be executed, is facing over 90 charges.
Elsewhere, Anthony Broadwater insisted for decades that he was innocent of the rape of “The Lovely Bones” author Alice Sebold. She described the crime in her memoir “Lucky.” Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years in prison, denied parole at least five times because he wouldn’t admit to a crime he didn’t commit. He passed two lie detector tests, all to no avail. The New York State Supreme Court Justice Gordon Cuffy only vacated the rape conviction and other counts related to it after a producer who was going to adapt “Lucky” started to question the narrative:
Part of the reason Broadwater’s attorneys, J. David Hammond and Melissa Swartz, got involved in the case is thanks to Tim Mucciante, who was involved in a project to develop a film adaptation of “Lucky.”
Mucciante “had doubts that the story was the way that it was being portrayed in the film,” said Hammond, which led him to hire a private investigator who is associated with their law firm.
I have questioned the criminal investigation and trial of Owen Labrie (held in the same court as NH v Logan Clegg — Merrimack County Superior Court, Concord). I have provided ample material evidence of police and prosecutor malfeasance to the New Hampshire Attorney General and others which demonstrate that Owen Labrie was framed and that there were attempts by one of his accuser’s/state witness’ attorneys to bribe him in order to extort millions from St Paul’s School.
My research led me to discover the criminal investigation and 1994 trial of Father Gordon MacRae, who is still in Concord Prison 30 years later. He claims he is innocent, too. Wall Street Journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz and former FBI agent James Abbott also concluded that he is not guilty.
New Hampshire courts have ignored the exculpatory evidence just as they’ve ignored looking at the malfeasance (now documented with the US Senate Judiciary Committee) in the Owen Labrie trial. Malfeasance was a factor, I believe, in the decision for former NH AG Michael Delaney to withdraw from consideration for judgeship on the First Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year. (He was accused of tampering with state witnesses, about which the prosecutor was informed but ignored and allowed them to testify).
Police officer James F McLaughlin was known well before Father Gordon MacRae’s arrest and prosecution for his dishonesty and misconduct, but New Hampshire & the players in its judicial system have protected him. Not only was McLaughlin protected, but he was given a lifetime achievement award in 2016 while his protegé (PD Julie Curtin), who framed Owen Labrie, was recognized for her work in “justice for the victim,” which included creating a dishonest narrative, hiding exculpatory evidence, witness tampering and helping so-called “victims advocates” and local attorneys profiteer and racketeer.
Does anyone really trust New Hampshire’s criminal justice system any more?
