Clegg Lawyers Oppose New Evidence In Murders Of Retired Concord Couple

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH

CONCORD, NH — Prosecutors should not be allowed to introduce new evidence in an attempt to justify the unconstitutional search already slapped down by the New Hampshire Supreme Court, according to convicted murderer Logan Clegg’s defense attorney, Thomas Barnard.

Barnard’s motion opposing new witness testimony at an upcoming evidentiary hearing to be held in Merrimack County Superior Court comes in response to prosecution plans to call five Concord police investigators and one Verizon Wireless employee for the hearing.

Clegg is serving a 50-year-to-life sentence for the 2022 murders of Stephen and Djeswende “Wendy” Reid. Last month, the state Supreme Court ruled investigators’ use of Clegg’s cell phone data without a warrant is unconstitutional.

Instead of throwing out the evidence obtained during Clegg’s arrest in Vermont, an arrest made possible by use of the data, the Supreme Court ordered Superior Court Judge John Kissinger to reconsider the evidence in light of the inevitable discovery rules.

But Barnard argues Kissinger already has all the testimony and information he needs from the original three-day hearing.

“Although the Supreme Court authorized this Court to conduct 'further proceedings,’ it limited such proceedings to those that this court ‘deems necessary.' Because the State has failed to identify any evidence that is both (a) relevant, and (b) new or different from the evidence previously presented at the three-day evidentiary hearing, there is no objective basis in the record to conclude that a further evidentiary hearing is ‘necessary’ for this Court to determine whether Clegg’s motion ‘should have been denied,’” Barnard wrote.

Kissinger ruled last week that he will allow witnesses only if they will offer testimony about the inevitable discovery issue. Under the inevitable discovery legal standard, illegally obtained evidence can be presented to a jury if that evidence would inevitably be found through legal means during the course of the investigation.

This is the problem for prosecutors and Kissinger. The state told Kissinger during the 2023 evidentiary hearing that Clegg would not have been found and apprehended without the illegal cell phone data. At the time, the state and investigators made the claim that there were emergency, exigent circumstances that justified the illegal use of the data.

But the Supreme Court was unequivocal about the emergency arguments.

“It is unreasonable that any individual’s freedom from governmental intrusion might be curtailed by virtue of how long it may or may not take a third party to respond to a warrant,” the justices wrote.

Police arrested Clegg in October 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.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.