The New Hampshire Supreme Court has denied the appeal of a man convicted of second-degree murder in the 2010 beating of a fellow Concord inmate.
The justices’ issued their decision Thursday in the case against Thomas Milton, who is serving a minimum of 38½ years for carrying out the fatal attack against Anthony Renzzulla.
Milton, 33, argued that testimony from an expert witness, as well as another inmate’s testimony about a separate assault should not have been admissible at trial. The Supreme Court disagreed, ruling Thursday that the value of the evidence outweighed any perceived prejudice toward Milton.
Prosecutors said Milton and fellow inmate William Edic fatally attacked Renzzulla on behest of the white supremacist gang, the Brotherhood of White Warriors (BOWW). Prosecutors said the two lured Renzzulla – accused of snitching on two members of the gang – into a cell block and then jumped him from behind.
Renzzulla, a frail 42-year-old inmate who walked with a cane, was found unconscious near a pay phone and died 16 months later from his injuries.
Milton never contested his affiliation with BOWW. Rather, he took issue with the extent to which the organizational structure of the gang and its criminal activities were discussed by Tim Coulombe, a gang expert and former investigator for the state’s Department of Corrections.
But the justices called Coulombe’s testimony for the prosecution important for several reasons.
While Milton had admitted to knocking Renzzulla down, he denied repeatedly striking him in the head and then cleaning up the scene. As a result, prosecutors still had to prove Milton’s motive and intent for committing the murder.
Further, they said, the testimony provided essential information for jurors about BOWW’s chain of command, basic gang rules, such as how BOWW deals with “snitches,” and how those rules are enforced.
The justices said the average juror would be “ill-equipped” to assess why certain witnesses, many of them inmates, would be reluctant to cooperate and testify. That reluctance “stemmed, not from fear of retaliation from the general prison population, but rather from a particularized fear of retaliation from BOWW,” they said.
Milton had also challenged the testimony of Allan Nicholson about a pretrial assault he suffered at the hands of another inmate with a BOWW tattoo. Milton argued that jurors could have drawn an inaccurate conclusion that he was involved in that assault, even though he was not an inmate then.
But the Supreme Court disagreed that Nicholson’s testimony led jurors to inaccurately infer that Milton was still affiliated with BOWW or somehow involved in the incident.
“Additionally, the defendant later offered testimony that he had severed his connection with BOWW in the year leading up to his trial,” the order states.
Edic, who was sentenced on similar charges, has also appealed his convictions but on different grounds. He is arguing that the lower court erred in limiting his cross-examination of key witnesses and by not allowing others to testify. The Supreme Court has not issued a decision in his case.
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319, adandrea@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @_ADandrea.)