CLAREMONT — The New Hampshire Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a request from the Attorney General’s Office to release roughly 400 pages of “investigatory records” from a 2017 incident involving the near-hanging of a biracial Claremont boy who was playing with older juveniles with a tire swing rope.
But the seven-page ruling also indicates that a lower-court judge in the case has cleared the way for the release of a 25-page summary on the matter and that one of the juveniles was cited for delinquency in the case.
The Attorney General’s Office sought permission to release some details about the August 2017 incident in which 8-year-old Quincy Chivers was allegedly pushed off a picnic table after putting the rope around his neck. He suffered rope burns and was taken to the hospital.
The Supreme Court concluded, in an opinion issued Tuesday, that Circuit Court Judge John Yazinski did not err when he ruled that the Attorney General’s Office’s lengthy investigatory records in the case are confidential because they involve juveniles. Under New Hampshire law, juvenile court records remain confidential without “the express permission of the court.” A provision of the law does allow information to “be furnished by the court about the disposition of a case when the delinquent act would constitute a felony if it were the act of an adult,” as long as the juvenile isn’t named.
And the Supreme Court opinion indicates that Yazinski has authorized the release of a 25-page report from the Attorney General’s Office, or “AGO,” on the case, though it is written to protect “the confidentiality of the victim and the witnesses.”
New coverage of the incident drew national attention to Claremont, with some activists casting the near-hanging as a “lynching.”
Attorney General Gordon MacDonald sought release of his findings, and the investigatory records, citing in part “the public’s right to an accounting of the basis for the AGO’s conclusions in a matter involving important social justice issues and the public’s skepticism of government’s willingness and ability to deal competently with those issues,” the document says. “The state asserts that release of the AGO report but not the records will make the report itself appear non-transparent and undermine public confidence in the AGO’s investigation and conclusions.”
The report, which hasn’t been released, outlines the scope of the investigation, the facts it found and its conclusions based on those facts.
“We are reviewing the ruling and we are reviewing our report,” Deputy Attorney General Jane Young said Tuesday, declining to answer other questions about the case.
A new detail revealed in the Supreme Court opinion is that Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway did file “delinquency petitions” against one of the juveniles involved in the matter. If a child is judged a delinquent, he or she has “committed an offense that would be considered a crime if the person was an adult,” according to the state judicial website.
The Attorney General’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and the Claremont Police Department all investigated the Aug. 28, 2017, matter.
According to a version of events relayed by the boy’s grandmother, Laurie Slattery, who spoke to the Valley News about a week after the incident, a group of young teenagers allegedly taunted Quincy with racial epithets and then intentionally pushed him off a picnic table with a rope around his neck in a backyard off North Street in Claremont.
Quincy later told a television talk show that a young teen grabbed a tire swing rope and put it around his own neck, and that when it was his turn, he put the rope around his own neck because he “wanted to be cool.”
“Then the 13-year-old boy, he scooched closer to me, so I felt scared for a second and then after that second when I felt scared, he pushed me off the picnic table. … It just happened so fast,” Quincy said on the show The Real.
In an interview published in September 2017 on the website of Newsweek magazine, one of the teens’ parents said their son attempted to prank the younger boy, who they said was startled and jumped off a picnic table with a rope around his neck. The mother denied that her son pushed the younger boy and said her son came to the boy’s aid. The parents also denied there were any racial slurs involved.
Tuesday’s Supreme Court opinion cites Yazinski’s lower-court ruling that says a “false narrative” about the case developed, which could be one reason some release of information would be warranted.
“If no information is released to the public, the false narrative that currently exists will continue to be the only information that the public has access to,” the judge wrote, and that the “false narrative continues to haunt the juvenile in this case.”
Reached on Tuesday, Quincy’s mother, Cassandra Elcock, said she is “patiently waiting” for the release of the attorney general’s report on the incident.
“I to this day am not satisfied with the outcome and truly believe the state of New Hampshire continues to try and sweep the truth under the rug,” she said.
The Supreme Court opinion states that if any party to the matter thinks specific records should be released, that party should file a motion identifying the records and the reasons they should be released.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.