By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
Jon Stone never made it to the Laurie List as a police officer, the record of police with credibility problems, after he was fired 18 years ago for an inappropriate relationship with a teen and threatening rape and murder.
However, the allegations against Stone, now state Rep. Jon Stone, R-Claremont, detailed in the Claremont Police Department internal affairs reports were disclosed in 11 criminal cases at the time, and resulted in several drug cases being dropped, Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway said.
“We made the determination it was appropriate that we should disclose under Laurie,” Hathaway said.
Before he was fired in 2006 for threatening to kill then-Claremont Police Chief Alex Scott, and threatening to sexually assault Scott’s wife and children and commit a mass shooting at the police station, Stone was a lead investigator for Claremont’s drug team. Stone’s work was critical to Operation Summer Sizzle, a major anti-drug trafficking operation in Sullivan County that saw numerous arrests months before he was fired. However, Hathaway said between five and six of the Summer Sizzle defendants had their charges nolle prossed, or dropped.
Stone has declined comment to InDepthNH.org.
Those cases were too reliant on Stone’s investigation, and would likely not survive going to trial given the internal affairs reports that had to be disclosed to defense attorneys as potentially exculpatory evidence, or evidence favorable to the defendant.
“The decision was made that they were not viable,” Hathaway said.
Aside from the cases that were dropped, Hathaway informed defense attorneys about the reason for Stone’s termination in 10 state-level criminal cases. Hathaway also informed federal prosecutors involved in a major heroin trafficking case that hinged on one of Stone’s confidential informants.
Hathaway told InDepthNH.org he made those disclosures in 2006 despite Stone never formally being placed on the then-confidential Laurie List by the Claremont Police Department.
“He does not have to be on a list in order for a prosecutor to be under a responsibility to review and make a determination on whether to disclose,” Hathaway said. “Society’s interests were protected by the disclosures, the basis for the disclosure was subsequently undone.”
Stone was removed from two local committees by the Claremont City Council in late April after about a dozen citizens spoke out against his actions when he was a police officer at a city council meeting. The allegations were first reported April 5 by InDepthNH.org’s Damien Fisher, who fought for the records to be made public for several years.
Some Democrats called for Stone’s removal from the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee after the allegations were made public in April, but House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry has taken no action and remains silent on the matter.
InDepthNH.org reviewed a copy of the agreement Stone reached with the department in 2007 which made no mention of the Laurie List. But, that union-negotiated agreement stipulates that the incident for which he was fired, essentially, never happened and his personnel records would be purged. Stone also received $3,000 in lost retirement benefits as part of the agreement. Stone agreed to resign as a police officer in exchange for the considerations.
Scott told Hathaway in early 2006 about the situation with Stone, before Stone used his union backing to fight the termination. At the time Hathaway was informed about Stone by Scott, there was no official finding of misconduct in Stone’s file.
Hathaway made the decision to disclose Stone’s discipline in the pending cases he was then handling. Since Stone left New Hampshire law enforcement after the 2007 agreement, no new cases came up that would have required new disclosures, Hathaway said.
“Stone was no longer an officer. The fact that that discipline disappeared, and the fact he was no longer a law enforcement officer, played a big role in it,” Hathaway said. “The Laurie List is based on a discipline record. If there’s no discipline, there’s no record, no finding, those findings went away.”
In 1995, the New Hampshire Supreme Court overturned Carl Laurie’s murder conviction. Laurie was accused of killing Lucien Fogg in Franklin in 1989. The Court faulted prosecutors for failing to hand over evidence that Franklin Detective Steven Laro had a history of misconduct that included multiple complaints of “manhandling” and choking suspects.
The Laurie List, named after that case and now known as the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule, did not come into existence until 2004. Former New Hampshire Attorney General Peter Heed issued a memorandum in 2004 laying out the foundation of what would become a secret list of police officers with credibility and discipline problems that ought to be disclosed to defense attorneys because they were potentially exculpatory, or favorable to the defendant.
The Heed memo directs police chiefs to send a formal letter to county attorneys when they have an officer who meets the criteria for the Laurie List. The county attorney was then directed to keep a secret list, only notifying defense attorneys about the officers through in-camera motions in court.
But Heed’s memo assumes the officers in question would be placed on the list for sustained findings of misconduct. Further, Heed’s memo states any sustained finding more than 10 years old does not count toward inclusion on the list and may be expunged from the officer’s record.
In 2017, then-Attorney General Joseph Foster issued a new memo renaming the list the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule, and required all police chiefs to update their disclosures after a review of all department personnel files looking for sustained fundings of misconduct, including restoring the names of police who had been removed from the list after 10 years.
Stone’s misconduct never resulted in a sustained finding due to his union intervention. As Scott would write to Police Standards and Training, the deal “rolled back the clock” on Stone’s record and allowed him to effectively resign before the incidents occurred.
Hathaway said criminal charges based on the conduct in the internal affairs investigation would be difficult to bring under the law. Stone never threatened Scott and his family directly, instead he made alarming comments to colleagues about Scott and his family, according to the reports.
The New Hampshire Department of Justice currently maintains the EES. Under public pressure, a limited version of the EES is now public.
