By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
CONCORD – A recently discovered unmarked box containing physical evidence from the 35-year-old Sharon Johnson murder case is causing problems for the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office and delaying Jason Carroll’s attempts to prove he didn’t do it.
Attorneys for Carroll, the long imprisoned man who is trying to get his conviction in Johnson’s brutal 1988 slaying overturned, now want assurances there are no other boxes of evidence out there waiting to be found.
“I just want to make sure there’s no other physical evidence,” said attorney Cynthia Mousseau during Tuesday’s evidentiary hearing in the Hillsborough Superior Court — North in Manchester, according to the court’s audio recording of the hearing.
Now the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office is under court order to provide formal reports about evidence in the case.
Mousseau, a lawyer with the New England Innocence Project, has been trying to track down all the evidence in the murder case for months. While some pieces of evidence in the case have still not been found, the box found by Senior Assistant Attorney General Ben Agati contains items Mousseau didn’t know existed until this week, according to a list provided by the Department of Justice.
“I don’t know what I am missing,” Mousseau said. “There are a number of things on here that were not things we were aware of before seeing them on this list.”
Assistant Attorney General Charles Bucca was informed by Agati about the existence of the box this week, shortly before the hearing in front of Judge William Delker. According to Bucca, the box was found the week of Dec. 11 during a walkthrough of the 33 Capitol St. building in Concord that the New Hampshire Department of Justice is vacating.
The DOJ moved out of the building that is now slated for demolition as part of a plan to expand parking around the State House. Agati and a DOJ staffer were going through the basement storage area to make sure nothing was inadvertently left when they found the box, Bucca said.
The box was alone on a bare shelf in the side of the storage area for records on civil cases, Bucca said. Agati quickly ascertained it was actually evidence in a criminal matter, and not records from a civil action.
The box has since been handed over to New Hampshire State Police for cataloging and keeping, Bucca said. Agati kept Bucca in the dark about the newly found evidence until this week, Bucca said. Bucca was involved in an unrelated trial the week the box was found, and Agati decided to withhold information about the evidence so that Bucca could focus on the trial, Bucca told Delker.
As soon as he was informed about the evidence, Bucca contacted Mousseau, he said.
But the discovery raises the question of whether or not there is more evidence in the case out there waiting to be found, Mousseau said.
“A box of evidence may still be out there,” Mousseau said.
In response, Delker issued an order on Dec. 19 requiring New Hampshire State Police and the Bedford Police Department to formally document all efforts made to find evidence in the Johnson murder, and to file police reports detailing those efforts with the court. The Attorney General’s Office is also required to file formal reports on how this particular box of evidence was found, and what was done with the evidence once the box was discovered. Delker also wants a formal report detailing how all the boxes of evidence moved out of 33 Capitol St. were handled. All of those reports are due by the end of January.
The New Hampshire Innocence Project is helping Carroll in trying to get his conviction for murdering Johnson overturned claiming he is innocent and his confessions coerced.
Carroll, now 52, was 19 when he confessed to killing Johnson, 36, from Bow. Carroll immediately recanted his confessions, but they were allowed in evidence during his trial. He has since maintained his innocence.
Defense attorneys insisted his confessions did not match the physical evidence in the case.
Johnson’s stabbed body was found in a Bedford construction site on July 29, 1988. She was seven months pregnant at the time of her murder.
Carroll’s conviction stands out as he was one of three men charged in the killing, but the only one found guilty and he has been incarcerated in state prison since.
Johnson’s then-husband Ken Johnson and Anthony Pfaff, who worked with Carroll in an industrial cleaning business at the time, were also charged.
Ken Johnson was accused of hiring Carroll and Pfaff to help kill his wife. Pfaff knew Ken Johnson as he had dated Ken Johnson’s daughter.
But, Pfaff was acquitted at trial and the charges against Ken Johnson ended up getting dropped for lack of evidence. Pfaff and Ken Johnson have both since died.
Carroll was not a suspect until November of 1989 when he was interrogated by police over a three-day period. One of the officers who was in the room questioning Carroll was his own mother, who was a Bedford police officer at the time, but attended as his mother, not law enforcement, according to court records.
The state Supreme Court opinion in State v. Carroll, 138 N.H. 687 (1994) is online here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6230770203815055289&q=Jason+Carroll&hl=en&as_sdt=4,30
Carroll’s confession, claiming to be the first person to stab Sharon Johnson, has been challenged in the courts before.