Owen Labrie wants a new trial, claiming his former defense attorneys waited too long to contest the felony charge that ultimately ensnared him: using a computer to lure an underage girl into a sexual encounter.
The 20-year-old St. Paul’s graduate, now a registered sex offender serving a year in jail for statutory rape, says the attorneys failed to object before or during trial to the relevance of the charge, and that they further stumbled by not pressing for more exhaustive juror instructions on it.
“Presumably, the trial strategy was to challenge the aggravated felonious sexual assault charges, assuming that the computer offense would thereby be defeated,” Labrie’s current lawyer, Jaye Rancourt, wrote in a motion filed late Tuesday. “This was objectively unreasonable” and “resulted in a miscarriage of justice for Mr. Labrie.”
Labrie was acquitted of the most serious charges, aggravated felonious sexual assault, but he was convicted of having sex with the girl when she was too young to legally consent. In addition, jurors found him guilty of the computer-use crime, a felony that requires lifetime registration as a sex offender.
Labrie’s trial team, led by high-profile Boston defender J.W. Carney, argued after the convictions that Labrie’s use of a computer fell outside the intent of the criminal statute, which they said was to target pedophiles using the internet in search of underage victims. Labrie, they countered, merely used his email and Facebook to schedule a date with a fellow student who already knew him.
The argument failed to sway trial Judge Larry Smukler of Merrimack County Superior Court, who said Labrie’s actions still met the technical requirements of the law.
Labrie has since appealed the case to the state Supreme Court and was expected to file a supporting brief later this spring. Rancourt asked to put that process on hold in light of the new motion.
Prosecutors declined to comment Wednesday.
The timing of the request is not insignificant. Labrie’s bail was revoked last month after he admitted to violating the curfew imposed as part of it by making repeated trips to Boston from his home in eastern Vermont. If a new trial is granted, he could argue again for release.
No hearing has been scheduled on the motion.
Rancourt was part of Labrie’s defense team before trial but did not actively participate in it, a decision she now says she opposed.
“Trial counsel moved to have attorney Rancourt’s presence waived at trial,” she wrote in the motion. “The court granted this request over attorney Rancourt’s expressed concerns that she could not fulfill her obligations to Mr. Labrie and the court should she be excused from trial.”
Rancourt claimed Carney failed to adequately anticipate the computer-use charge and at a minimum should have requested that jurors be informed about what it encompasses.
“Had the jury been properly instructed, it could not have convicted Mr. Labrie of the computer offense because it is evident that Mr. Labrie did not avail himself of the use of a computer to entice (the girl) in a way that would not be possible using other conventional medium (sic),” Rancourt wrote.
She further asserted that Carney failed to introduce evidence he had undermining the credibility of two former friends of Labrie who testified against him, one of whom shared a room with him at school. Carney had access to emails, Rancourt said, showing that both teens had sent similar solicitous emails to underage girls.
“Charges were not pursued against either of these individuals,” Rancourt noted.
Rancourt suggested that Carney could have pushed for jury nullification, in which jurors find the defendant not guilty even though they believe he or she committed the crime, because the charge was wrongly or unfairly applied. In this case, Rancourt said Carney could have argued that prosecutors went after Labrie while they had evidence that other students at St. Paul’s were engaging in the same conduct.
Rancourt also criticized Carney’s cross-examination of the victim, who was 15 at the time of the encounter, in May 2014. Rancourt claimed he had photos of the girl taken the day after the encounter showing her jumping on a trampoline and smiling.
“The photos certainly do not support her contention that she was in pain, so much pain that she could barely walk down stairs,” she wrote.
The girl testified that she agreed to Labrie’s initial advances but tried to stop him when he pushed for intercourse, telling him no three times. She said she felt overpowered by Labrie, a popular senior and appointed student leader who had been headed to Harvard that fall.
(Jeremy Blackman can be reached at 369-3319, jblackman@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JBlackmanCM.)