Newport
Adam Gaw, of Manchester, and Joseph Furlong, of Sunapee, were both charged with multiple misdemeanors including forgery; false report to law enforcement; and false documents, names or endorsement. Furlong’s case was dismissed in August and Gaw’s was dismissed last month, both for the same reason.
The state Attorney General’s Office, which prosecuted the cases, dropped the initial charges and filed new charges against both men in July. In Furlong’s case, the new charges said he acted in concert with Gaw instead of having altered the email in question, as the initial complaints alleged.
In August, Newport District Court Judge Gregory Michael ruled in favor of the defense to dismiss the new charges against Furlong because the one-year statute of limitations for misdemeanors had expired in March.
Michael then reaffirmed that decision in an October ruling, saying that the changes in the charges were “material and not insignificant.” He further criticized the state for failing to “properly investigate” the facts around the allegations.
According to James Vara the chief of staff in the Attorney General’s Office, the same set of circumstances existed in Adam Gaw’s case. Vara said the new charges against Gaw were similar to Furlong’s in that Gaw was charged with acting in concert, and because the judge ruled in Furlong’s favor based on the statute of limitations, he expected the same result with Gaw and decided not to pursue the charges any further.
Vara said he consulted with Gaw’s attorney before filing a motion to not process the charges against Gaw.
Furlong and Gaw were arrested about a year after allegedly altering an email and resending it under the name of Jan Bettencourt, a candidate running in the 2016 Sunapee School Board race.
The email may have impacted that election, in which Furlong’s wife, Heather Furlong, won the seat over Bettencourt, according to an affidavit from Cahill. Heather Furlong was never charged in the case, but she did resign from the board shortly after her husband’s arrest.
Bettencourt’s husband went to police about the email, prompting an investigation. Days after Furlong was arrested, Gaw acknowledged to police that he sent the email but Cahill did not believe Gaw existed, Furlong’s attorney said in a filing.
“Notwithstanding that fact that Adam Gaw directed written confessions to both Jan Bettencourt and the Chief of Police taking responsibility for the email, the State’s investigation thereafter committed to the notion that Adam Gaw did not exist,” attorney James Rosenberg wrote in a Sept. 8 motion. “Instead, the state theorized both that the defendant directly altered and sent the email and then created Adam Gaw as a fictitious straw man to take the fall for this alleged conduct.”
On Friday, Rosenberg said Cahill should have looked more closely into Gaw’s existence.
“The case was not responsibly investigated,” Rosenberg said. “He largely ignored Gaw because it just didn’t fit (his) narrative.”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
