A prosecutor is asking a judge to reconsider whether a newspaper reporter should be compelled to testify in a voter suppression case against a former Concord Democratic activist.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen LaBonte said Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Richard McNamara overlooked several facts when he quashed the subpoena requiring a Monitor reporter to testify against Carl Gibson, 29.
The judge “inaccurately assumed” the attorney general’s office made no effort to find alternative sources, and that a search warrant was “a reasonable alterative” to reporter Nick Reid’s testimony, LaBonte argued. Further, he said, McNamara mischaracterized Reid’s sources, excluding Gibson, as confidential.
Gibson is facing two felonies and one misdemeanor after he said he emailed news outlets a phony concession statement purported to be from Republican state representative candidate Yvonne Dean-Bailey in May 2015. Gibson said the email was meant as a joke.
Dean-Bailey, 19, was running to fill a vacant seat in Rockingham County’s 32nd district, covering Candia, Deerfield, Northwood and Nottingham. The statement, traced back to Gibson, said she was dropping out of the race days ahead of the election to focus on her college studies.
Gibson’s identity was contained within the electronic properties of an attachment in the email. Gibson told Reid during a phone interview that he “probably had a few too many beers” before engaging in “a prank I thought I would play in the heat of the moment.”
The Monitor, through its attorney Bill Chapman, argued to quash the subpoena, arguing it violated newsgathering privileges established under the New Hampshire Constitution and the First Amendment and MacNamara agreed.
However, in his motion for reconsideration, LaBonte sheds new light on efforts his office took to collect evidence against Gibson, including a subpoena for business records, linking the hoax email to Gibson’s IP address. That subpoena, he argues, provides the state with “virtually the same evidence that might have been obtained through the seizure and search of the defendant’s computer.”
No evidence, though, is as powerful as a confession, and Gibson’s confession is something only Reid can testify to, LaBonte told the court.
Chapman challenges that conclusion in his objection to LaBonte’s motion. Without Gibson’s computer, prosecutors don’t have access to his emails or contact list, and therefore don’t really know if he made other incriminating statements, he wrote.
Gibson’s attorney Michael Iacopino could not be reached for comment this week about developments in the case. He previously said McNamara made the right call by granting the Monitor’s motion to quash the state’s subpoena.
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319, adandrea@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @_ADandrea.)