The most recent Laurie List can be seen here: https://indepthnh.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/November-5-2024-EES-List.pdf
By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
It comes as no surprise to see former Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave’s name on the latest public edition of the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule released out Tuesday by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.
Brave is facing multiple felony charges stemming from his alleged theft of public money and perjury, and his alleged subsequent lies to the court that netted him a free public defender for a time. It seemed to be only a matter of time before Brave ended up on the EES, or Laurie List, for police officers with known credibility deficiencies.
But the most surprising name on the quarterly update, which was due last month, is the one that appears to have been removed. Newport Police Officer Shawn Seymour’s name was added to the Laurie List in the July update, but he’s now missing from the November list.
The Laurie List was once a series of secret lists kept by County Attorneys of police officers who had been caught in some form of misconduct that needed to be disclosed to defense attorneys before trial. Typically, officers caught lying during the course of their duties, or who have been convicted of certain criminal charges and excessive force, get put on the list. Officers on the list were reported to the County Attorney by their individual chiefs.
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office was compelled to take over the management of all the Laurie Lists and make the one, master EES list public starting in 2022. Names of officers on the EES generally do not get removed once they have been disclosed. Under the law making the EES public, officers were given notice and allowed to file lawsuits to challenge their placement on the list. The names of the officers with pending EES lawsuits are not made public.
According to the New Hampshire Attorney General’s November report on the EES, the names of 222 police officers have been disclosed to the public. That’s up from 218 disclosed as of the July report. There are dozens of pending lawsuits brought by officers challenging their placements in Superior Court.
The first EES released in January of 2022 included the names of several officers who were all removed from the public list within hours. Those officers all had pending lawsuits at the time and their identities should have remained private under the new law.
Though the law is supposed to bring a level of transparency to law enforcement, it is still slanted toward protecting cops. The lawsuits brought to challenge the placement are given blanket permission to be filed under seal, often without even a redacted version of the complaints being made available to the public.
Officers challenging their placement can have their lawsuits resolved in court, or through an agreement that sends the matter back to the police department that reported them for misconduct. Several officers have taken this route of going for an administrative review. Under both scenarios, the public is left in the dark and often does not have the ability to find out what is going on.
The end result for a challenge, whether in court or in an administrative review, is that the officers are either removed from the list, or their identities are made public.
Even officers whose names are made public for misconduct are shielded. The exact nature of the misconduct is typically disclosed with one or two words, such as “truthfulness,” “untruthfulness,” “conduct unbecoming,” or “excessive force,” leaving the public with little understanding of why that officer is on the EES.
Seymour was placed on the EES for “criminal conduct” that took place sometime in 2023. It’s not known why he was removed this week, or if he was removed in error. The law does not include a mechanism for officers whose identities were made public to get retroactively removed.
