By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
Concord Police never sought a warrant when they obtained the cell phone location data used to find Logan Clegg, the man convicted in the shocking 2022 murders of Stephen and Djeswende “Wendy” Reid.
Clegg, 28, is serving a 50-year-to-life sentence for the seemingly senseless killings. His appeal to the state Supreme Court argues that detectives essentially engaged in an illegal search to find him in Burlington, Vermont, five months after the murders. Police found a 9 mm pistol, ammunition, and $7,000 in cash when they arrested Clegg in October of 2022.
The Reids were shot and killed in April of 2022 while they were out hiking on the Marsh Loop Trail in Concord. Five months later, Concord detectives tracked Clegg to Vermont using his cell phone data.
His appeal, filed earlier this month, argues that since police never got a warrant for the location data, all of the other evidence obtained during his arrest, like the gun and ammunition, ought to have been suppressed at trial. Police had circumstantial evidence possibly linking Clegg to the crime when they obtained his cell phone number on Oct. 11, 2022.
Location data from cell phones are protected under the Stored Communications Act. Under the law, police can obtain that data from service providers if they first obtain a warrant from a judge. However, cellular companies like Verizon allow police to obtain information without a warrant by calling an “emergency situations” hotline.
Concord detectives testified during a pre-trial hearing that it generally takes about two hours to get a warrant from the courts. Instead, the detectives accessed the Verizon data multiple times starting Oct. 11, 2022, through to just before the arrest on Oct. 12, 2022. During the pre-trial hearing, police said they believed exigent circumstances existed that allowed them to forgo seeking the warrant.
“The State may argue that the exigency-generating event was not the murder of [Stephen Reid] and [Djeswende Reid] on April 18, but the police’s discovery of an apparently active phone number for Clegg on October 11,” the appeal states. “The problem with this argument, however, is that there was no evidence that Clegg was aware that the police had learned his phone number. Events of which a person is unaware cannot logically create a risk that the person will commit a violent crime, destroy evidence, or flee.”
Police can act without a warrant in cases where there is a danger that a suspect may flee, destroy evidence, or act in a violent manner. None of those dangers existed on Oct. 11 and Oct. 12 of 2022, the brief states. Police said in the pre-trial hearing that the fact of the murders themselves created an almost permanent exigent circumstance, but Clegg’s appeal disputes this claim.
“While the murder of [Stephen Reid] and [Djeswende Reid] certainly constituted a violent crime, it was committed over five months prior to the challenged search. There was no evidence that the perpetrator of those murders had, during those five months, committed any subsequent violent acts. Thus, there was no basis to believe that a two-hour delay would create ‘a substantial threat or imminent danger to life or public safety,’” the appeal states.
Clegg is also challenging the testimony of two investigators, Wade Brown and Carlton Ryder, who claimed to be able to see shell casings in a photo taken before those casings were found.
After not finding physical evidence for close to a month, a member of the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office found two shell casings from a 9 mm pistol on May 20, 2022. The problem is police searched that area extensively prior to May 20 and came up short. In the days before the casings were found, the area was open to the public.
Clegg’s defense team had a photo expert testify that no shells could be seen in police photos of the area taken on May 10 of 2022. In the middle of the trial, prosecutors called Brown and Ryder to testify they could see objects in an April 22, 2022, photo and the May 10, 2022, photo that may be shell casings. Both Brown and Ryder made their observations for the first time the night before they testified.
Clegg is also disputing a stricken question his defense team asked during the trial. James Benvenuti, a K-9 Fish and Game Officer, searched the site where the Reids were found with his dog Cora, who is trained to find shell casings and bullets. But Benvenuti and Cora never found any evidence during their April 22, 2022 search.
Prosecutors objected when Clegg’s lawyers asked Benvenuti how many times Cora had failed her training certification tests.
“We haven’t failed,” Benvenuti testified.
But that question and answer were stricken from the record. The jury was instructed to ignore all stricken testimony when they began their deliberations.
Clegg had no known connection to the Reids prior to his arrest. He was living in a tent in the woods off the Marsh Loop Trail when the couple was killed. In the days after the shooting, Clegg burned his tent and left the state, eventually traveling to Vermont under an alias. Clegg’s argument is that he was afraid he would be arrested on a warrant out of Utah after Concord Police started searching the area in April of 2022.
When he was arrested, Clegg had an airplane ticket to Germany, cash he reportedly earned from working at a Vermont grocery store, and a Romanian travel card obtained under the name Arthur Kelly. Prosecutors never offered a motive for the killing.
The Reids were retired after coming home to Concord from a career abroad. Stephen Reid was a USAID consultant and travelled the world for his job.