A federal judge has agreed to suspend all court proceedings for an additional six months in a former Manchester lawyer’s bid for a new trial on sexual exploitation charges.
However, U.S. District Court Judge Paul J. Barbadoro said he would grant no further continuances in the case Lisa Biron filed in late March against the government. He previously signed off on a 120-day extension that expired June 23.
Biron, who is in her mid-40s, is serving more than 30 years in prison for sexually exploiting a teenage girl. She was convicted in late 2012 of arranging and filming repeated sexual encounters between the then-14-year-old girl and two young men, which included a weekend trip to Ontario.
But Biron is now arguing her trial attorney at that time was ineffective.
In a motion filed in March, her new attorney, Charles Keefe, argues Biron’s mental health and the credibility of government witnesses should have been investigated before her trial, and that the trial itself never should have proceeded as early as it did. Biron was convicted just two months after a grand jury handed up indictments against her in November 2012.
Biron is being held at the Federal Medical Center in Carswell, Texas, a facility for inmates with special medical and mental health needs.
Keefe first asked the U.S. District Court in Concord in March to postpone any court proceedings on Biron’s motion for a new trial because he said he made dozens of calls to her prison counselor with no return call. In a June motion, he said he has since made contact with Biron, but is now reviewing the approximately 1,562-page case file which he plans to supplement with the results of his own investigation.
Keefe argues that trial lawyer, veteran Concord defender Jim Moir, never investigated “an insanity or diminished capacity defense,” and did not give himself enough time to prepare for the case.
Moir previously declined to comment on the claims, but said he respected Biron’s right to raise them.