Sister Of Dead SPU Inmate Sues NH DOC, Accuses Ex-Commissioner Hanks Of Coverup

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH

CONCORD, NH — The sister of Jason Rothe, the mentally ill patient who died in state custody, is suing the Department of Corrections, former Commissioner Helen Hanks, and several corrections officers involved in his death.

Aimee Khatib filed her lawsuit Wednesday in the United States District Court in Concord, accusing the DOC and Hanks of failing to train officers in room extractions and safe use of force, as well as accusing Hanks of destroying evidence in the wake of Rothe’s death. Khatib is being represented by attorneys Michael Noonan and Leah Cole Durst with Shaheen & Gordon.

“Commissioner Hanks held inappropriate investigative meetings on two separate occasions with the involved officers despite being noticed by the Attorney General that these COs were considered witnesses in investigations into Mr. Rothe’s death,” the lawsuit states. “Commissioner Hanks failed to properly investigate the Use of Force deployed in Mr. Rothe’s case, relying on incomplete reports, and completing performance reviews of the implicated COs. More outrageous, Commissioner Hanks then coached the implicated COs, instructing them to revise their statements, and destroyed their original statements. Commissioner Hanks also destroyed her own notes taken during these improper meetings.”

Much of the grounds for Khatib’s lawsuit came out during the trial of former Corrections Officer Matthew Millar. Millar was charged with murder for Rothe’s 2023 death, but found not guilty at the end of last year’s trial. The jury took less than two hours to reach its conclusion and free Millar after he spent more than a year in jail awaiting trial.

Millar now joins Hanks and the DOC, as well as all the other staff involved in Rothe’s final moments, Lesley-Ann Cosgro, Paul Sanchez, Timothy Wright, Josephine McDonough, Maria Bissonnette, and nurse Jennifer Fitzgerald, as defendants in the lawsuit.

Rothe was 50 when he died on April 29, 2023 after fighting with several officers who were attempting to remove him from a day room inside the Secure Psychiatric Unit at the men's prison in Concord. Rothe suffered from severe schizo-affective disorders, was obese and had heart disease. He was also known to be violent when agitated, according to court records.

Evidence and testimony at trial show Cosgro, the officer in charge, decided to lead an extraction team to get Rothe out of the SPU dayroom without enough officers to do it safely, without protective gear, without a plan of action, and without a civilian nurse present, among other violations of DOC policy. She also tased Rothe eight times, once in the head during the ensuing melee despite the DOC limit of three taser shots.

The nearly 10-minute fracas with Rothe included officers punching him in the head, pressing him down on his stomach, and putting him in a prime stress position before he was put onto a stretcher, according to the lawsuit, as well as other court records. Millar was accused of putting a knee on Rothe’s back for up to several minutes, causing his death. However, there is no evidence Millar did that, and none of the other officers testified to that during his criminal trial.

After Rothe’s death, Hanks conducted interviews with all of the officers despite knowing that the New Hampshire State Police and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office considered them witnesses, according to the lawsuit. During those meetings Hanks decided Millar was to blame and instructed all of the officers to change their statements on Rothe’s death, according to the lawsuit.

After Millar was charged in early 2024, Hanks had another round of interviews with the officers, bringing Personnel Director Fallon Reed with her. Again, at this point Hanks had been instructed by the DOJ not to speak to potential witnesses in a criminal case, according to the lawsuit.

Hanks shredded her notes of the meetings, and issued disciplinary letters to three of the officers. Hanks did not disclose the meetings or the letters to the DOJ for more than a year, with the information only coming to light weeks before Millar’s trial. When it came to light, the evidence showed Reed also kept notes, and those notes differed from the information in the disciplinary letters, according to the lawsuit.

Hanks resigned from her job suddenly last year, soon after the evidence of her inappropriate meetings with the officers came out in court. Around the same time, members of the Executive Council learned about a $2 million shipment of Taser weapons to the DOC that was kept from the Council. Hanks had been seeking approval for the purchase of the weapons at the time their existence was discovered. Hanks adamantly told InDepthNH.org during prior reporting she resigned of her own volition and was not forced out of her job.

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