“A failure of supervision” — In murder trial, defense argues institutional shortcomings at Department of Corrections failed Matthew Millar

Former N.H. Corrections Officer Matthew Millar enters the Merrimack County Superior Court on Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Millar is charged with second-degree murder for causing the death of patient, Jason Rothe at the Secure Psychiatric Unit of the Department of Corrections. GEOFF FORESTER
Published: 07-01-2025 3:17 PM |
Former corrections officer Matthew Millar didn’t receive adequate training or direction ahead of a fatal encounter where he restrained a psychiatric patient, a law enforcement standards expert testified on Tuesday.
State prosecutors charged Millar with the second-degree murder of Jason Rothe, a 50-year-old patient at the Secure Psychiatric Unit located at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord. Rothe was not an inmate at the men’s prison but had been transferred to the Secure Psychiatric Unit in 2022 after exhibiting aggressive behavior at New Hampshire Hospital, where he’d been a patient since 2019.
Defense attorneys argued that the blame should fall not on Millar, who’s accused of causing Rothe’s death in April 2023 by placing his knee on the patient’s back. Instead, they made the case that Millar’s supervisor and the Department of Corrections’ training protocols failed him that day, placing him into a risky situation without preparation or protection.
Daniel Busken, a former police chief who now works as a law enforcement consultant, said his review of the case indicates that Millar correctly followed de-escalation protocol leading up to the encounter that led to Rothe’s death.
Rothe had refused to leave the common area, and Busken said Millar followed de-escalation tactics by walking away and then coming back later several times to try and retrieve him again.
Eventually, the supervising officer, Lesley-Ann Cosgro, who testified last month, directed officers to go in and extract Rothe from the common area. She did so without conducting a briefing to assign roles or plan the extraction, and the officers were not wearing full protective gear, which Busken said was a “huge mistake.”
Before the officers entered, Rothe threatened to kill them if they came in with their tasers. Busken said that should have prompted Cogro to question, “This has a strong possibility of going bad, and do we need to rethink what we're doing here?”
Instead, the supervising officer should’ve hit pause on the operation, continued de-escalation and called for more back-up, he said.
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After internal review, Cosgro was demoted from her role as a corporal and reassigned to desk duty as a case manager in the rehabilitative services division.
Millar, accused of kneeling on Rothe’s back during the encounter, used what Busken called a “transitional move” — one that is commonly taught to officers as a way to maintain control of a person while handcuffing them. He said the maneuver is consistent with use-of-force standards.
Defense attorneys argued that Millar didn’t get proper instruction. Busken testified that the Department of Corrections is supposed to send officers to a two-week training at New Hampshire Hospital, where they get on-the-job experience that prepares them for handling psychiatric patients at the prison. In his review of the evidence, he didn’t see that these officers had undergone that training.
When cross-examined by prosecutors, Busken said correctional officers like Millar are still taught about de-escalation and use of force, including positional asphyxia — when a person’s body position, like the prone one into which Rothe was restrained, inhibits their ability to breathe.
Prosecutors argued earlier in the trial that Millar ignored both his training and common sense and that, regardless of any institutional failures, it was Millar’s use of force that killed Rothe.
Another correctional officer who was involved in the encounter that day, Josephine McDonough, testified last month and described the incident in more detail. She said she never saw Millar place his knee on Rothe, as reported by the Monitor.
The chaos of the incident, Busken said, falls on Cosgro.
“It was a failure of supervision. Just a broad, wide-range failure of supervision,” he said, pointing to a particular “culture” among law enforcement that can show in a stressful situation. “If you allow those things to happen, then your culture takes over and bad things happen.”
Fallon Reed, the department’s director of personnel and information, said ex-commissioner Helen Hanks “no longer has” her handwritten notes of the investigation.
Questions over Hanks’s handling of that evidence surfaced in a court filing in May around the time of her abrupt resignation from the Department of Corrections. Officials never gave a reason for her exit.
Other than Reed’s statement, those questions were largely passed over in court on Tuesday.
Reed said she and another human resources employee saved their official transcript-like notes from the pre-disciplinary meetings with the officers involved. During those meetings, officials discuss investigation findings and potential disciplinary actions.
Hanks took her own handwritten notes during those meetings but later destroyed them, according to a court filing. Judge Daniel St. Hilaire did not require Hanks to be questioned but instead allowed lawyers to depose Reed.
Closing arguments are scheduled to begin Wednesday at 9 a.m.
Charlotte Matherly can be reached at cmatherly@cmonitor.com