NH Jury activists gathered this morning outside Cheshire superior court in Keene to perform jury outreach prior to jury selection for the trial of James Cleaveland which begins tomorrow morning (Tuesday 12/15) at 9am.
James is facing two “Class A” misdemeanor charges with a possibility of up to two years in prison for being arrested while recording video of police at the scene of a suicidal man in the summer of 2014. The charges are “disorderly conduct” (the state’s favorite catch-all charge) and “resisting arrest”.
James has already had a bench trial at Keene district court, the video of which can be seen here, and was found guilty. District court judge Edward J Burke sentenced him to 1.5 years in jail, suspended, plus a $625 fine. After sentencing, James opted for his right to a jury trial “de novo”, which means, “from the beginning”. So now, not quite a year later, he is being given that trial.
This morning was jury selection. Nearly all of the jury pool of about 58 people had received the NH Jury trifold last month. (In Cheshire county, petit juries are empaneled for two months.) Usually the jury outreach process involves handing out flyers and opening the door for folks, but in addition today it included activists holding signs featuring phrases like, “2 Years 4 Filming?”, and “Filming the police is not a crime!”
More activists are expected to be on-the-scene tomorrow morning at 8am for further sign-holding, with the trial starting at 9am and expected to last two days. If you can’t make it in person, live tweets will be available here at FreeKeene.com and later the full trial video will be posted.
In past years the media panels at Keenevention have been nuts-and-bolts how-tos on being the media. This year was similarly informative and useful, focusing on monetizing liberty media efforts. Shire Dude headed up an excellent panel of experienced liberty media producers for this year’s Media Panel. Panelists included Derrick J Freeman of Flaming Freedom, Darryl W. Perry of Free Press Publications, and Brett Veinotte of the School Sucks Project. Here’s the full, nearly-90-minute panel:
Big thanks to our 2015 video sponsor – Roberts & Roberts Brokerage – when you’re serious about precious metals – they take bitcoin!
During the Chalk Wars of 2014, we were introduced to an unsavory character in town named Justin Paquette. The Boston native was accompanying James Michael Phillips when Phillips attacked a peaceful man for chalking in downtown’s Central Square, knocking him into the fountain and causing serious injury. While Paquette did not commit the attack, he was definitely pals with Phillips, grabbed at people’s cameras (attempted assault), and threatened people, claiming gang affiliations.
Now, Paquette is in the news again. Today’s Keene Sentinel features his mugshot and an article alleging that he robbed the West St. Circle K and the Winchester St. Sunoco early this morning, while brandishing a knife.
UPDATE 5pm 2015-12-11 – The above paragraph is in dispute. A local business owner familiar with Justin Paquette says that the Paquette in the photo below from the Chalk Wars is not the same Justin Paquette who was arrested for robbery this morning.
I’ve had loads of news from New Hampshire of interest to libertarians that have been stacking up over the last couple of months that I just haven’t been able to make the time to post individually here. So, this is my attempt to catch up on my backlog by putting them all in a news round-up post:
This week, social media was exploding with various posts of a breathless, alarmist piece on a bitcoin news website called DinBits: “Bitcoin Sales Now Prohibited In the State of New Hampshire“. Things looked quite dire from the headline and the article itself was also misleading. “How could you liberty activists let this happen?”, cried many on the facebooks.
“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” – Bitcoin
There’s no doubt that HB 666 (yes, 666) is not a good bill. However, it did not prohibit the sales of bitcoin, as the headlines have claimed. What it actually does is adds a definition of “convertible virtual currency” to the “money transmitter” statutes. Money transmitters are companies doing business selling and sending “stored value”, which now includes virtual currency in New Hampshire.
Despite that broad definition, state banking department attorney Emilia Galdieri told the Union Leader (in a sane, excellent article on this) that the new statutory changes affect money transmitters, like Western Union, Coinbase, or MoneyGram, but is not aimed at person-to-person transactions, consumer-to-business, or bitcoin ATMs.
Bitcoin Vending Machine at the All-New “Route 101 Local Goods” at 661 Marlboro Rd in Keene
Somehow, the changes did sneak under the libertarians’ radar, which is a hard thing to do in NH, where we have the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance that has a batch of volunteers reviewing as many bills as possible each year. However, they didn’t spot this one, which means they need more help! Even if you’re outside of NH, you can volunteer for the NH Liberty Alliance and review some bills.
NH’s liberty and bitcoin activists are not happy they were caught off-guard on this and are already working to repeal it and help protect bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into the future. If you are one of the people who’s acting shocked that this could happen in the “Free state”, I’d like to remind you that despite the amazing groundwork the early movers for the Free State Project have laid here, the official move has yet to begin. This is not a free place yet – it’s just better off than others and a good starting point for a freedom movement. We need more people to join the FSP and move to New Hampshire. The FSP is nearing 90% of our goal of 20,000 liberty activists pledging to move to NH, so completion is right around the corner. If you’ve been on the fence about joining the most amazing and successful liberty migration, just DO IT.
