A judge on Tuesday disqualified Owen Labrie’s attorney from helping him fight for a new trial, agreeing with prosecutors that she can’t claim Labrie’s defense team failed him when she was technically part of it.
Because the attorney, Jaye Rancourt of Manchester, “retained her obligations as local counsel to the defendant and because she participated in certain aspects of the trial, she cannot seek to distance herself from the very same defense team she now claims was ineffective,” Judge Larry Smukler of Merrimack County Superior Court wrote in an order Tuesday.
The decision could be a serious setback for Labrie, 20, who petitioned for the new trial last month in superior court. He claimed in part that his defense team waited too long to contest the felony computer charge that he was ultimately convicted of, which mandates lifetime registration as a sex offender. Labrie was also convicted of statutory rape and endangering the welfare of a child.
Rancourt is one of several lawyers who have represented Labrie since his arrest in 2014. The St. Paul’s School graduate fired two other New Hampshire attorneys before settling on prominent Boston defender J.W. Carney. But out-of-state counsel can’t participate unless a local attorney is also brought on, often to advise on the specifics of New Hampshire law. That was to be Rancourt’s role.
Rancourt has insisted she played a minimal part in the trial preparation, and took no active role in the trial itself. She’s repeatedly noted that Labrie waived her appearance at trial.
A team of Washington lawyers that Labrie recently hired have argued that Rancourt is fit to stay on because she was prohibited from reviewing key documents before trial, barely helped strategize and took no part in depositions of expert witnesses.
Prosecutors, however, said she had an active enough role to jeopardize her effectiveness now. Though Rancourt never argued openly at trial, she participated in a judge’s conference before it began, advocated for Labrie in a meeting with Smukler near the end and personally prepared the graduate’s notice of appeal afterward, they said.
In his order Tuesday, Smukler reasoned that Rancourt’s participation, however limited it may have been, created an irreparable conflict, both for her and Labrie. If she had argued the defense was ineffective, she could have been forced to criticize her own work. If she didn’t go after them hard enough, she could have undercut Labrie’s chances of success.
“An attorney in such a situation, ‘instead of advocating fully for the client, might be interested in protecting and preserving (her) own professional reputation,’ ” Smukler wrote, quoting previous case law.
Labrie was released from jail last week after Smukler reinstated his bail. He is staying at his mother’s house in Vermont and is being electronically monitored.
There are several foreseeable paths forward for Labrie. He could appeal Smukler’s order to the state Supreme Court. He could hire a new local attorney and continue pursuing the new trial request, or scrap it and file a new one in superior court. Or he could turn his attention away from the new trial request altogether and go back to his original direct appeal, which has been stalled in the Supreme Court.
(Jeremy Blackman can be reached at 369-3319, jblackman@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @JBlackmanCM.)