Editorial: Claremont Still Waiting for Answers on Hanging Incident

It has now been a full year since allegations surfaced that an 8-year-old biracial boy suffered injuries in Claremont when a group of young teenagers pushed him off a picnic table with a rope around his neck after taunting him with racial epithets.

And it has been eight months and counting since the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office promised to release a detailed report about its investigation of the incident and its findings “as soon as the law permits.”

So far the law has not permitted its release.

This long delay in disclosing what exactly went on in this disputed incident — whether it was a “lynching” as alleged by the boy’s family or a “backyard accident” as described by the parents of one teenager involved — represents a stark failure by the New Hampshire legal system to recognize and act quickly in the public interest.

The culprit in this case appears to be a series of state laws whose sensible aim is to protect the identity of juveniles involved in the court system, on the theory that immature individuals should have the opportunity to rectify misconduct without either damaging exposure to public obloquy or the creation of a permanent public court record.

However, the statutes go beyond this to prohibit disclosure of any information about juvenile proceedings without court permission, even if the name is redacted. The Attorney General’s Office has petitioned the court in this case for permission to release its investigative report, but that petition is still tied up in litigation.

Meanwhile, Claremont is left to wonder just what kind of community it is: one in which a small boy was the object of a hate crime, or one in which a misunderstanding among children blew up into a notorious, nationally reported incident? Mark Hughes, co-founder and executive director of Justice for All, a Vermont-based civil rights group, framed the issue precisely soon after the incident. “Folks don’t just deserve to be informed about what’s going on; it’s imperative that we disseminate this information,” Hughes said. “Because to not do this feeds into the problem.”

And it creates other problems.

It’s never healthy to allow incidents such as this one to fester, creating or perpetuating ill-will and division in the community. And Claremont is trying hard to revitalize and reinvent itself. That goal would be furthered by attracting young families with children to live in the city, thereby boosting home values and tax rolls, populating the schools and invigorating civic life. Having a racially tinged question mark hanging over the community is bound to limit that potential.

There’s little to be done at the moment beyond urging the judge to assign a high priority to getting some information out to the public. But next winter the Legislature should look at revising the statutes governing the disclosure of information about juvenile cases, perhaps with an eye to letting the attorney general, when he or she determines that a compelling public interest exists, release in a timely fashion a general description of the facts of a case, taking care not to reveal names or other individual identifying information.

And while legislators are at it, they should repeal the section of the law that attempts to make it illegal for newspapers and other news media to publish or broadcast information about the arrest of juveniles or juvenile court proceedings without court permission. This is almost certainly an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment rights of the press, even though the situation arises infrequently.