A Warner man convicted in 2017 of raping a child at gunpoint decades ago is arguing to the state’s highest court that he did not receive a fair trial.
Ricky Flanders, 52, maintains the man he is convicted of sexually assaulting between 1988 and 1993 had an ulterior motive that was not adequately presented to jurors who found him guilty.
Appellate defender Stephanie Hausman told the New Hampshire Supreme Court Tuesday the man only disclosed sexual abuse to authorities after his cousins were arrested for physically assaulting Flanders. She presented the theory that the cousins assaulted Flanders in retaliation after learning of the alleged sexual misconduct and rape. While the victim testified under oath that he had no knowledge of the attack on Flanders before filing his police report, Hausman argued he did know and spoke to his cousins about it.
“He finally decided to go to police, not because he was no longer afraid of Mr. Flanders, but because, suddenly, his cousins had acted on his words and were facing serious consequences,” Hausman said, adding that the man then felt he had to “legitimize his lies.”
Senior Assistant Attorney General Stephen Fuller disagreed with the defense’s theory that a series of lies had manifested over decades.
“The theory just simply could have been, now he knows the defendant isn’t invincible, and it gave him the courage and the opportunity to go to police that he didn’t have before,” Fuller said. “That doesn’t mean the report itself is false.”
Fuller said the trial court judge had concerns about allowing one of the victim’s cousins to testify, in part, because his statements could have lead to “a trial within a trial” and distracted jurors from the sexual assault case at hand. Judge Richard McNamara ultimately ruled that the cousin could testify on a limited basis but defense attorneys never called him.
Flanders is serving a minimum of 20 years in state prison for raping the boy at gunpoint on two occasions and attempting sexual assault a third time. The boy was under the age of 13 at the time and known to Flanders, according to court testimony.
During the February 2017 trial, prosecutors attempted to show jurors through witness testimony how Flanders continued to threaten the victim and impose psychological harm on him for decades after the abuse. They tried to answer for jurors why the victim had only disclosed to certain family members and not filed a report with police for roughly two decades.
Flanders is questioning on appeal why county prosecutors were able to introduce two interactions between himself and the victim that did little to explain to jurors why it took 20 years for the victim to report to authorities. Instead of illustrating how the victim supposedly feared Flanders, those interactions simply painted Flanders in a negative light, Hausman argued Tuesday.
Additionally, Flanders questioned whether the trial judge should have allowed evidence of drug use to be admitted. Prosecutors said Flanders injected drugs immediately proceeding an assault while asking the victim, a young child, to hold his firearm. The judge ruled that the evidence showed Flanders’s psychological state at the time and the severity of the abuse, Fuller summarized.
McNamara originally sentenced Flanders in August 2017 to a minimum of 12½ years in state prison for his crimes, but the Merrimack County Attorney’s Office asked for a further review by a three-judge panel. In a rare move, the panel voted unanimously to increase the minimum sentence to prosecutors’ recommendation of 20 years.
Three Supreme Court justices presided over Tuesday’s oral arguments in Concord. They will issue a written decision at a later date.
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319 or at adandrea@cmonitor.com.)