By KATHARINE WEBSTER, InDepthNH.org
Eleven years ago, Robert Wilson defended himself on a felony charge prosecuted by Rockingham County Attorney Patricia Conway – and won, a rare feat for a criminal defendant acting without a lawyer.
Tuesday, he faces Conway again, this time as the Democratic candidate for Rockingham County attorney. Conway, a Republican, is the incumbent.
Wilson is unlikely to win, as the county leans Republican and has repeatedly re-elected Conway, who first won the office in 2014.
But even if Wilson were to prevail at the polls in a Democratic wave, he is not qualified to take office under state law because he is not licensed to practice as an attorney in New Hampshire, according to an article in the New Hampshire Union Leader on Monday.
In email exchanges with Union Leader staff that he forwarded to InDepthNH on Monday, Wilson said that he had attended law school and applied for admission to the New Hampshire Bar. However, state law says that candidates for office must be qualified when they file to run.
In an off-the-record telephone conversation Monday and in response to follow-up emails, Wilson declined to answer questions about where he went to law school, when he graduated and whether he had passed the bar in any state.
He is not listed on the roster of candidates who passed the New Hampshire bar exam in July, but there are several other ways that people can be admitted to the state bar.
Wilson also declined to answer questions about why he was running against Conway and whether he had campaigned actively or sought endorsements from Democratic groups and leaders. He used a Harvard University alumni email address, but would not say what he studied there.
The Union Leader reported that it was unable to contact Wilson and could not find any web or social media sites for his campaign. A search of the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s campaign finance system indicates that Wilson has not raised or spent any money to promote his candidacy.
Lisa DeMio, a candidate for state representative in Hampstead and the chair of the Rockingham County Democratic Committee, did not respond to emails Monday asking about how or whether the committee vets candidates.
On Monday, Wilson expressed frustration that the Union Leader had failed to contact him at the UPS mailbox in Portsmouth that he listed in his candidate filing with the Secretary of State’s Office. “I can be reached,” he headlined one email.
“I understand that you guys are either liars or paid at this point but please correct the article and give context,” Wilson wrote in another email, asking that the newspaper issue a correction stating that he had a law degree and was “in the process of applying to the bar.”
Union Leader Managing Editor Dave Pierce said in response that the newspaper would not issue a correction because Wilson had not shown that any of the facts reported in the article were incorrect.
A spokesman for the New Hampshire Judicial Branch, which includes the Office of Bar Admissions, was unable to confirm whether Wilson had applied for a law license by late Monday afternoon.
In 2014, when Wilson was 27 years old, he was charged with felony criminal threatening and misdemeanor criminal mischief, according to contemporaneous media reports.
A roommate said Wilson had grabbed a chef’s knife during an argument over who was entitled to use the oven and then thrown the roommate’s cell phone on the floor when he said he was going to film the encounter. Wilson was jailed for several months, unable to make bail, before a judge released him on personal recognizance.
Wilson, a former president of the University of New Hampshire student body, opted to defend himself after dismissing his public defender, having a court-appointed attorney quit, and dismissing a third attorney, according to media reports at the time.
At trial in 2015, Wilson said that he and his roommates had argued, but he maintained that he had not wielded a knife.
Wilson, who is Black, asked jurors to consider whether racial bias had played a role in police reports and affidavits. The jury found him not guilty.