You can read the April quarterly report and find the most recent Laurie List here: https://indepthnh.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/april-2-2025-rsa-105-13-d-exculpatory-evidence-schedule-compliance-report.pdf

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org

A bar fight, a strip search, questionable finances, alleged racist texts, and a sexual harassment complaint are parts of the stories behind several new additions to the state’s Exculpatory Evidence Schedule.

The EES, also known as the Laurie List, is the state’s catalogue of police officers who have engaged in conduct that calls their credibility into question and whose identities must be shared with defense attorneys. The quarterly update, released this week, includes the names of several officers who have been fighting their placement in court.

Former Manchester Police Officer Aaron Brown, fired for sending racist texts to his wife using his department cell phone, tops the list of new names. Brown got caught calling an African American a “jungle cat,” in one message, and writing that he would “slap the black off,” another African American. During the subsequent internal investigation, Brown tried to downplay his comments, saying, “I might be prejudiced but definitely not racist.”

Brown would later get about $181,000 in a payout from the City of Manchester after a union arbiter ruled he should get his job back.

Brown is joined by former State Trooper Haden Wilber, fired after he conducted an illegal search during a traffic stop on a Maine woman’s purse. After allegedly finding heroin residue, Wilber lied in order to get the woman held in jail for weeks where she was subjected to strip searches and a cavity search. His actions ended up costing the state $200,000 to settle the lawsuit brought by the woman.

Former Ossipee Police Officer Kimberly Hatch is on the list for reportedly lying about getting into a traffic accident in her cruiser. Hatch ended up suing the department for sexual harassment and settled out of court in 2020. 

Under the 2021 law that was intended to make the then-confidential list public, officers were afforded due process rights to keep their names and reputations from being wrongly tarnished by filing in Superior Court.

State Trooper Brett Parenteau, who fought his placement, reportedly lied to his superiors about the black eye he was sporting when he showed up for duty in 2018. Parenteau initially claimed he got the shiner during a basketball game, but later admitted that he had been in a bar fight. Parenteau’s name was erroneously made public with the first list released, but was redacted hours later.

Officers who fight their placement do so under John Doe lawsuits that are sealed and protected from the public while their cases are pending. Former State Trooper Michael Feinauer fought his placement to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, which ended up siding against him. 

The Laurie List simply states that Feinauer was “untruthful.” However, his unsuccessful appeal to the state Personnel Appeals Board indicated he was fired after he lied to investigators about the suspicious activity in his elderly aunt’s trust fund. That’s the story of a John Doe trooper in the January Supreme Court case order ruling. The court ruled against John Doe in January, and Feinauer was added to the next quartile update.

State Trooper Derek Holston, another likely John Doe, was disciplined by the department in 2010 after he allegedly lied during his testimony at an administrative law hearing. The story of his discipline is similar to that of a John Doe trooper who took his case to the Supreme Court and lost.

That Trooper John Doe failed to appear at an Administrative License Suspension hearing. When he requested a rescheduled hearing, the trooper claimed he never got the first notification that was sent to his email account, and actually testified he never got the email during the rescheduled hearing. Unfortunately for Trooper John Doe, a follow-up internal investigation found that not only did he get the original email notification, he reportedly deleted that email after he missed the first hearing.