Dear Governor Ayotte,
As you meet with the Judicial Selection Committee, please note that Mary Tenn of Tenn & Tenn serves on this committee. As I understand it, her law firm represents former Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald in his divorce case. Former US Attorney Jane Young represented Gordon MacDonald despite being on the ADO screening committee he appointed. Current US Attorney Erin Creegan was Gordon MacDonald’s attorney for his interview to become AG and in the Barbara Hantz-Marconi matter – arguing he shouldn’t have to speak under oath at her trial.
Judge Keating was one of the judges who kicked Gordon MacDonald’s divorce case down the road and was then appointed Director of the Administrative Offices of the Court after Dianne Martin’s departure.
Additionally, Judge Tina Nadeau, who has served as an interim justice on the Supreme Court, dismissed an ethics complaint I filed with ADO about Jane Young’s conflicts of interest in representing Gordon MacDonald in the Dianne Martin matter, and was the superior court chief justice. In that capacity, she placed judges for cases in which Gordon MacDonald and Jane Young appear to have had conflicts of interest due to their work with the NHCADSV and the NHCADSV’s work as a lobbyist, but also represented by MacDonald’s law firm, Nixon Peabody. Up to 2024, Gordon MacDonald was listed as an agent at Nixon Peabody on a company managed by Gordon Humphrey, whom he also listed as a reference on his 2019 Supreme Court application.
Has anybody ever probed whether there are kickbacks to judges or other favors in the YDC cases? It’s most interesting that no judge (not Judge Schulmann nor Judge Delker) has ever told David Vicinanzo of Nixon Peabody that he has a conflict of interest representing YDC complainants when the AG’s office referred complainants to his client, the NHCADSV, and the NHCADSV’s Joelle Wiggin jumped ship to become “victim specialist” and paralegal for Nixon Peabody in David Meehan’s civil trial which WMUR (Adam Sexton of WMUR is married to Amanda Grady Sexton of NHCADSV) streamed. But when it came to the criminal trials, WMUR decided to have its TVs turned off and to the wall for much of the time. At whose direction and for whose benefit?
Judge Andrew Schulman praised David Vicinanzo and Russ Rilee in a memorandum after the David Meehan v. State trial instead of admonishing them for communicating with the jurors in the forbidden period.
Judge William Delker allowed David Vicinanzo & Russ Rilee to enter victim impact statements for their clients who were never introduced in State v. James Woodlock (YDC) and whose claims have never been argued either in civil or criminal court. Then Judge Delker used these victim impact statements in his own sentencing statement, and WMUR filmed that, while David Meehan, the primary witness, did not have his statement filmed by WMUR at all.
State v. Buskey (YDC case) was just declared a mistrial by Judge Delker. It seems fairly obvious that it was rigged to be a mistrial and that David Meehan was tampered with by prosecutors or victims’ advocates or his own attorney, David Vicinanzo, into not mentioning the $38million that is currently still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on. It’s been a rumor for a while that Judge Delker wants a position on the Supreme Court, so was the mistrial a political move for favoritism by Governor Ayotte?
Why did judges or the State allow David Vicinanzo to switch sides from arguing against the State in Meehan v. State of New Hampshire/YDC to working with the State in State v. Defendants of YDC abuse?
Why did Judge Broderick allow attorneys to collect funds upfront for their YDC clients in the settlements? Why did anyone allow any YDC clients to receive anything prior to David Meehan, the original YDC claimant, having his case sorted out? All these legal professionals know the rules on conflicts of interest and representing clients whose interests may interfere with existing clients. Now there’s no money for Meehan, while a lot of other people who piggybacked off his case got paid out, and their attorneys are laughing all the way to the bank.
In the end, what’s the point of the Legislature if the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch ignore state and Federal laws and don’t prosecute their own for violating them?
It doesn’t cut it that there was no investigation into Michael Delaney for witness tampering in a high-profile criminal trial – yet a letter from the State’s own witness to the US Senate Judiciary Committee in 2023 states this is what happened. The AG brushed his hands of it. Merrimack County DA Paul Halvorsen washed his hands of it. None of them ever want to deal with anything to do with integrity whatsoever. Merrimack County DA candidate Steven Endres says there’s a “sliding scale of due process”. That is the mentality, and it has to stop.
“Douglas & Douglas: A Splitting Headache” in the Washington Post in 1999 documented the problem with New Hampshire’s club-like atmosphere in the courts. NOTHING has changed 27 years later. NOTHING.
“There has been widespread dissatisfaction for some time in New Hampshire, they say, with the state’s clubby, closed-door method of handling complaints against judges and other lawyers. Her scattershot charges of a self-protective judicial old-boy network, they say, have clearly touched a nerve and accelerated moves toward reform.
(Judge Patricia Coffey, who presided over Chuck Douglas’ divorce, was forced to resign for fraud in 2007 but didn’t go to jail. Nor did Judge Julie Introcaso, despite pleading guilty to two felonies with Michael Delaney, to sort out a no-jail-time deal for her).
Lastly, please do something to prevent the monopoly without accountability. Drummond Woodsum represents the AOC, ADO, and NHMA, which lobbied with Dennehy & Bouley and 13 Mayors against HB111 – a bill that would have provided the public the ability to address public corruption, which has cost the taxpayers billions, not to mention the cruelty to lives lost and harmed as a result of gross abuse and self-enrichment.
Disgusted.
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