By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
Evidence from the illegal searches that allowed Concord police detectives to arrest Logan Clegg for the murders of Stephen and Djeswende “Wendy” Reid isn’t going anywhere, as Merrimack Superior Court Judge John Kissinger once again sided with police.
Kissinger was under orders from the New Hampshire Supreme Court to reconsider his pre-trial ruling to allow evidence from the unconstitutional searches. That evidence included a pistol, a fake Romanian identity, and $7,000 in cash.
Police skipped getting warrants when they accessed Clegg’s cell phone data through Verizon six months after the 2022 murders, and used that data to find him in Burlington, Vermont. Kissinger originally allowed the evidence stemming from the warrantless data searches on the grounds that police believed Clegg was about to leave the country, creating an emergency situation, or exigent circumstances in the legalese.
The Supreme Court rejected that argument in its March ruling, stating that the constitutional protections against warrantless searches apply even to suspected killers. The Supreme Court ruling sent the matter back to Kissinger for a do-over, this time applying the legal doctrine of “inevitable discovery.”
Inevitable discovery allows the use of illegally obtained evidence if it would have been found legally without the illegal action. Kissinger ruled on Friday that the Clegg evidence would have been found legally shortly after it was found illegally, since police had already filed for a warrant to access similar data through federal law enforcement channels.
“[T]he Court finds that CPD would have inevitably discovered the evidence that was inside of Mr. Clegg’s backpack at the time of his arrest as well as the evidence found at his Burlington campsite,” Kissinger wrote. “Indeed, the historical facts demonstrate that under this scenario CPD would have located the campsite at least as quickly as it was able to following the warrantless exigency requests. Accordingly, the State has carried its burden of showing that ‘it is practically certain [CPD] would’ and could have obtained this evidence lawfully,” Kissinger wrote.
But Friday’s ruling might have been the inevitable result of Kissinger’s decision to allow prosecutors to present evidence during a contested April hearing. Before Clegg’s original trial in 2023, prosecutors pushed the “exigent circumstances” argument and told Kissinger they would not have found Clegg without the illegal data. Police believed they had limited time to find Clegg before he disappeared again, they said in 2023.
But when that argument was deemed unconstitutional and illegal three years later by the Supreme Court, prosecutors changed tack and had Concord detectives testify to the fact they would have found Clegg and the evidence without the bad searches. They were just mistaken, believing that Verizon did not process police requests that have warrants as quickly as warrantless requests, according to the testimony.
Friday’s ruling is likely to be appealed again to the Supreme Court. Clegg’s lawyers objected to the April hearing taking place at all, and argued Kissinger had all the information he needed from the 2023 pre-trial record.
The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office issued a brief statement Friday acknowledging the ruling.
“We are pleased with the court’s ruling. The defendant has a right to appeal this ruling to the New Hampshire Supreme Court, and out of respect for the process we will have no further comment,” the statement reads.
The Reid’s were killed while out hiking in Concord in April of 2022. At the time, Clegg was living in a tent close to the hiking trail. He was not a suspect at the time of the killings, but burned his campsite and fled New Hampshire when police began searching the area after the murders. Clegg was wanted on a burglary warrant in Utah at the time.
Police arrested Clegg in October of 2022, several months after the murders, by using the cell phone data. The data pointed detectives to the Burlington, Vermont public library where Clegg was using a public computer. During his arrest police seized a 9 mm Glock pistol, $7,000 in cash, and a Romanian identification card. At the time, Clegg had a ticket under an alias to fly to Germany. That plane was scheduled to take off two days after his arrest.
Clegg maintained his innocence through the trial, and there’s never been an explanation for why he killed the Reids. He never met the couple, and there is no evidence they were robbed or otherwise interfered with during or after the killing.