A judge allowed the state to present additional evidence in Logan Clegg’s double-murder case, after the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled a warrantless phone search violated his constitutional rights.
Concord police requested cell phone location data from Verizon without a warrant to track and arrest Clegg, accused of killing a Concord couple, Steve and Wendy Reid, in 2022.
Investigators argued their warrantless request was justified because Clegg was a flight risk who posed an imminent danger to public safety. The state’s highest court disagreed, remanding Clegg’s motion to suppress the warrantless evidence back to a lower court.
Merrimack Superior Court Judge John Kissinger on Friday said the central question before him now is whether the evidence used to track and arrest Clegg would have inevitably been discovered through lawful means, a legal doctrine that, if proven, could keep the evidence in play despite the constitutional violation.
Kissinger said he is “inclined to allow the state” to present additional evidence to demonstrate that investigators would have ultimately located Clegg through lawful means, even without the warrantless cell phone search that led to his arrest six months later in Vermont.
If the lower court decides that the evidence would have been discovered anyway, his conviction will stand and there won’t be a new trial. But if the court rules that the evidence shouldn’t have been used, and that its discovery was key to the outcome of the case, Clegg could end up getting a new trial.
Maya Dominguez, Clegg’s attorney, pushed back.
“The state here did have the opportunity to make objections, to make arguments regarding inevitable discovery, and it should not be allowed to expand those arguments from what their original arguments and evidence were,” Dominguez said.
Clegg is currently serving a 100-year prison sentence for the Reid murders at the New Hampshire State Prison in Berlin, N.H.
He was scheduled to appear in court on Friday morning, but according to Dominguez, a miscommunication prevented him from attending. The court said he declined to attend the proceedings.
Hearings on the warrantless cellphone search are expected to begin in April, with the state required by Monday to decide whether to submit additional evidence and to file it. The state must also give notice identifying any potential witnesses and the topics of their testimony.
The Supreme Court has given Kissinger until June 15 to hold further proceedings and reconsider Clegg’s motion to suppress the evidence.
“I’m on a fast track schedule, so you are all also on a fast track schedule,” Kissinger told attorneys for Clegg and the state.
The state also indicated it is weighing whether to file a motion asking the Supreme Court to reconsider its own ruling.
Police can legally obtain evidence without a warrant in certain circumstances, when a situation is so pressing that there’s a “compelling need” for immediate action. The New Hampshire Supreme Court determined that the threshold was not met.
“It’s unreasonable that any individual’s freedom from governmental intrusion might be curtailed by virtue of how long it may or may not take a third party to respond to a warrant,” the Justices wrote.
