Court documents released in three cases of officers seeking to get off the 'Laurie List'

Jul. 23—Unsealed court documents shed light for the first time on the reasons three former police officers want courts to remove their names from the "Laurie List" of police with credibility issues.

Two former Weare officers want their names removed from the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule because they had been told they were not on the list, according to court documents. A former Manchester police detective wants to be removed from the list because he thinks the "insensitive" comments he made in text messages were not serious enough wrongdoing to land him on the list.

The Exculpatory Evidence Schedule, also called the "Laurie List," is a list of New Hampshire law enforcement officers whose past behavior may impact their credibility while testifying in court. The list was made public at the end of 2021, though some names were redacted.

Most names — 174 — have already been disclosed. The list shows problems ranging from untruthfulness to domestic assault.

Seventy-two officers are challenging their placement on the list in court. Another 11 are fighting their placement through their local grievance process.

The process for an offer to challenge his or her placement on the list allowed officers to file sealed court pleadings to challenge their placement on the list.

Hillsborough Superior Court Justice Will Delker ruled this spring that sealing these cases would not be appropriate, according to copies of the rulings provided to the Union Leader.

In the ruling, Delker wrote that sealing the cases obscured too much information. Redacting officers' names and identifying information while unsealing the files would better balance privacy and the public's right to know, he wrote.

"(A) case can be litigated in public without jeopardizing the identity of the officer," Delker wrote. "In fact, it is common practice in this state to use a pseudonym such as 'John Doe,' 'Richard Roe,' 'Jane Doe,' or the like to preserve the anonymity of the litigant in matters of equal (if not greater) sensitivity."

Last month, a judge rejected a law professor's effort to reveal the names of officers suing to remove themselves from the list.

The three unsealed versions of cases — two from Weare and one from Manchester — were released to the Union Leader. The officers were given pseudonyms.

The Weare officers' ranks and certain dates were redacted in the unsealed documents.

Officers' complaints

The two former Weare officers, anonymized in the court documents as Lindsay Roe and Jayden Doe, said they had not been aware they had been on the list.

The complaints for both former officers alleged that multiple people told both officers they were not on the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule.

The former Weare police chief made several attempts to explain that he had not listed any Weare officers, according to the complaints, and had asked if other authorities could put officers on the list. The complaints filed by Roe and Doe both say it is not clear why they are on the list.

Roe and Doe only learned they were on the list when they received notices from the state last year, according to their complaints, informing them that the list was about to be made public.

The Manchester officer, under the pseudonym John Doe, asked the court to remove his name from the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule by taking issue with the internal investigation that led former Manchester Police Chief Nick Willard to place Doe's name on the list.

In his complaint, Doe argued that he should not be on the list because a 2018 internal investigation into his conduct was too broad and took joking text messages out of context. He argued that only "sustained" findings of untruthfulness, excessive force or criminal conduct should land an officer's name on the list.

The texts that led to his termination "were not made with malice nor is there any evidence that (name redacted) is a racist, as charged by the (Manchester Police) Dept., nor has (name redacted) acted in a malicious manner during his entire career, and, aside from this instance, (name redacted) has no disciplinary record.

The complaint quotes Strafford County Attorney Thomas Velardi's statements to the Union Leader in 2019, when Velardi announced he would not file criminal charges against former Manchester officers Darren Murphy and Aaron Brown.

Reporter Mark Hayward contributed to this report.