The last time we heard about how many taxpayer dollars the city of Keene has spent on their frivolous lawsuit to try to crush the rights of Keene’s Robin Hooders, it was December of 2013, the year they filed the suits against us.
Keene’s Robin Hooders were feeding expired parking meters in relative obscurity until the city filed its suit in May of 2013. That suit blew up into a huge storm of publicity, making Keene’s government the laughingstock of the world.
Attorney Charles Bauer is getting very rich from taxpayer dollars.
Determined not to show any good sense, the city gang continued to lavish tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on failure after failure in this case. They hired the go-to law firm for all NH municipalities, “Gallagher, Callahan, and Gartrell” (the same firm that lost the Gericke case, which upheld the right to record police). Hey, it’s not like it’s the city’s money – they stole it from Keene’s productive class – the people.
Now the case is going back to the NH supreme court on appeal, but mayor Lane claims the law firm is going to cut them a break on this appeal and do it pro-bono. How generous of Bauer’s firm! (Robin Hood attorney Jon Meyer has been pro-bono from day one.)
At one point, Pierce was illegally locked out of the courtroom, as Cheshire superior court has a strange policy that locks the doors during opening and closing statements. Defense attorney Paul Garrity objected to both closings on constitutional grounds, as it should be a public trial. Judge John C Kissinger, who in many cases comes across as a relatively fair judge, refused to budge on his policy and kept the doors locked.
In other media news, the Keene Sentinel published a small report. The full seven-hour trial video is encoding as I write this and should be up hopefully sometime tomorrow. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest.
If you love liberty and want to work towards making more of it happen, why not do it in the best place for it? New Hampshire is already more free than other places and there are thousands of libertarians and voluntarists, many of whom love jury nullification, that are moving there as part of the Free State Project. Why not join us and help more liberty happen, sooner?
Yesterday the trial of Free Keene blogger James Cleaveland for recording police wrapped up with an excellent closing argument by defense attorney Paul Garrity (video still to come) advocating jury nullification. The jury was sent to deliberate and could not reach a verdict by the close of court. This morning, the jury was back to deliberating at 9am – the fact that it’s taking this long could be a good sign for James.
On December 14, 2015 Judge Brian T. Tucker of the Strafford Superior Court denied the injunction brought by the NH Department of Education and Attorney General against the Croydon School Board. The Department of Education and Attorney General claimed that four Croydon students would be irreparably harmed if allowed to remain at the Newport Montessori School as part of the town’s school choice program.
The website School Choice for New Hampshire reports, “The final hearing of Croydon vs the NH DOE is scheduled for January 13, 2016.” Adding, “You can subscribe to our events page so you receive notification as soon as it is posted.”
