Andrew Livernois and The New Hampshire Drug Task Force Are Wasting Your Tax Money on a FRIVOLOUS PROSECUTION!

 BELKNAP COUNTY--

      New Hampshire is an "island of prohibition" in New England, the one state where Marijuana remains highly restricted. Heavily regulated medical access to the drug is available, but the current governor will not budge on his anti-recreational stance. The legislature is still trying to present adequate bills aiming toward legalization, but Governor Sununu wants no part of taking any formal step toward the slippery slope to full legalization. 

      The local law enforcement scene is just as obstinate. While the state gets big payoffs from the government to assist with the crack down on opioids that have killed countless kids, your Drug Task Force is wasting ridiculous amounts of time (AND YOUR TAX MONEY!) on going after petty marijuana offenses. Show me the statistics of how many kids weed is killing, please. Show me where the urgent need to eradicate the use of this harmless drug really is, because I'm still trying to wrap my head around the amount of wasted resources that have gone into a case like mine.

      There was a months-long "investigation" initiated on false pretenses to set up the case for the County Attorney here. There were funds put out to pay all the officers involved in the controlled buys and minimal surveillance involved. Additional funds paid to set me up as the State of New Hampshire's marijuana delivery driver. They knew at all times that I was not by any means a drug dealer and did not ever have any significant supply on hand, so they purposely ramped up the charges in an attempt to force me to have to actually connect with the person I acquired their orders from in a time frame that would allow them to tail the real suspect. No evidence in the case points to any other independent sales outside of the ones the task force officers instigated. There is absolutely no evidence of any predisposition. 

     Additionally, these officers leveraged me with the deception of 1.) pretending to be colleagues of mine in the logging business and 2.) acting like they wanted to help me get my rented UHaul out of a ditch in the middle of a snowstorm. So they totally manipulated the situation to make me feel as if I owed them something for stopping to see if they could help me. During the first contact that led these officers to set me up for 6 felonies, there was not one single mention of marijuana. I actually gave the undercover officers my business card and offered to help them if I received any calls looking for loggers in the area they lied about originating from. The lies these officers used to justify this case included representing my record as having two convictions on it which were not convictions at all. Even if they had been convictions, they occurred multiple years ago and were not in any relation or connection to anything to do with drug sales. 

     Knowing these facts, because I told him personally (see my email chain with the Andrew Livernois, Belknap County Attorney) and warned him the case would fail, the local prosecutor decided to push this case to trial. I used an obscure but sensible and novel legal argument called "Outrageous Government Conduct" to get the case dismissed by the judge, but he completely denied the majority of my legal arguments. The completely backwards approach of the justice system, KNOWING I WAS GOING TO USE ENTRAPMENT AS A DEFENSE, was to claim none of my arguments had anything to do with whether or not I sold marijuana to undercover officers. 

     I wonder how any of these legal "professionals" even graduated law school if they think this case can survive an appeal if I lose my jury trial this summer. The problem with letting every major decision in this case hinge on whether or not I sold drugs to undercover officers is to completely ignore and look past the whole outrageous government conduct argument. Did these sales happen is the wrong question to ask under the circumstances. How did the government arrive at the decision to initiate these sales and was the resulting operation a proper use of governmental power, now that is the real question to ask. But, please, don't take my word for it. Consider the words of the County Attorney himself at my hearing on the motion to dismiss:      

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wxt8keeetfkrw3n/fairprocess.mp3

17:30 “The second argument he’s making is more novel. That’s this argument that he was subjected to Outrageous Governmental Conduct. As I explained in my pleadings, your honor, this is a defense that derives from the 14^th Amendment of the United States Constitution. And the idea, which makes sense, is that if the government engages in particularly outrageous conduct which shocks the conscience, that the court could dismiss those charges on a finding that the defendant was not subjected to a fair process.”

     Only someone who was protecting people he considers friends and allies would act the way Attorney Livernois acts in this case. It is no coincidence that Livernois was the Gilford, New Hampshire Attorney when the town was sued in relation to a Drug Task Force raid gone wrong. Livernois covered up the case by settling with the plaintiff in an agreement designed to "buy peace."

     That is relevant information to my case, but the jury will never hear it. It's been excluded from any and all discussion that Livernois had any such history with the DTF, even though two of the officers involved in that case will be witnesses in my own. 

     It is no coincidence that Livernois argued in open court that this case was just a "run of the mill undercover operation" that was "no different from any other undercover buy operation you see." He will not be able to prove that lie when the jury hears the real facts of this case. There were multiple glaring errors and examples of official government misconduct. These errors did not just land in the lap of the task force. They also rest squarely on the shoulders of the county attorney. This man lied repeatedly in this case, refused to allow any meaningful cooperation on my part to eliminate leaks in the local justice system, and obstructed justice by seeking to exclude evidence at my trial that would incriminate people within law enforcement that were involved in my case. 

     Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois accused me of using the fact that there were law enforcement leaks in my case as a "ploy" or a trick to gain some kind of favor in this case. As someone who saw his father's life ripped apart by a government leak (who was brutally murdered for cooperating), that whole idea is ridiculous. I would not invent something as serious as this. I even made serious attempts to derail those leaks, but Livernois interfered with that process and made it impossible to trust him. Then he had the nerve to say (again, in open court) at one point that all the evidence on outrageous government conduct that I raised could be brought up at trial:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yxq5ykcugqfcbc1/raiseitattrial.mp3

19:40  “It’s still far too early to even raise that defense at this point because your honor doesn’t have the facts before you of what actually transpired in this case. There will be a trial presumably in this case, and at that trial you will be able to determine the facts, a jury will be able to determine the facts, but you will hear the evidence in that case, your honor. And if the defendant wanted to raise that claim, that somehow the government engaged in outrageous conduct, and therefore he was not treated fairly, he can raise it at trial.”

     That statement was another bold-faced lie from Livernois, because he later successfully moved to exclude the vast majority of the pertinent evidence he claimed would be coming out at trial. It also turned out the idea that I could raise the Outrageous Conduct Defense at trial was another bold faced lie from Livernois. The judge agreed with my contention and interpretation of the law, which required a judge to make the decision on Outrageous Government Conduct before trial. He denied that motion and a motion to reconsider.

     Now take a hard look at what this County Attorney pulled to execute this whole fiasco. All that is nothing but tricks, tactics, and ploys to avoid being called out for what he actually is: a key part of this heavily poisoned process that is continuously wasting your tax dollars on frivolous, victimless "crimes." If he actually opened his eyes and looked at the real facts of this case before he bulled forward to a grand jury with this garbage, this article would not have to be written. Your money would not be thrown out the window for a completely lost cause. 

     A trial will only incur more expenses for the state, but Livernois does not care about spending your money wisely. He's in it to win it, whether it's a fair process or not, whether the case makes any difference at all in the local crime scene or not. He has to protect his friends and the sacred system, which is so full of integrity that at last check, the State of NH received a D- grade for Judicial Integrity (2015). 

  

     Here are a few of the real relevant questions that make the whole case pointless if the answers are no: Was this case initiated, pursued, executed and then consummated in this courtroom in a process that was respectful of my due process rights? Were the the rules, protocols, training and procedures of law enforcement all in alignment to suggest I was actually a worthy target in the first place and deserved to be prosecuted with impunity? Was the entrapment scheme (justified or not, successful in the eyes of the operators or not) actually permissible under the legal parameters commonly followed in similar cases in which convictions are routinely secured?

     It makes no difference that the sales for which I’ve been charged with allegedly occurred during a series of deliveries made directly to the Drug Task Force Agent who initiated this entrapment scheme. They were not independent acts subsequent to the inducement, but were part of a course of conduct which was the product of the inducement. Additionally, it was the DTF agents and their unit command who made a distinct effort to increase the amount of the alleged sales. I never asked anyone to buy more of anything. This was done not exclusively to prosecute me for these felony sales, but in an effort to get to a bigger fish by me testifying against that person or me leading them to him.  

     The state’s representatives here are getting away with playing the victim card, like I’m trying to bring some oppressive and unconventional hammer down on them. In reality, all I want to do is expose the truth. I want to argue a legal theory that even Attorney Livernois admits is a novel one. 

     There has to be evidence of predisposition PRIOR to the police interaction. Before the government came on the scene:

 

The function of law enforcement is the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals. Manifestly, that function does not include the manufacturing of crime. Criminal activity is such that stealth and strategy are necessary weapons in the arsenal of the police officer. However, `A different question is presented when the criminal design originates with the officials of the Government, and they implant in the mind of an innocent person the disposition to commit the alleged offense and induce its commission in order that they may prosecute.' Id., at 372, quoting Sorrells v. United States, 287 U. S., at 442. (Emphasis Added)

Mr. Justice Roberts in Sorrells put the idea in the following words:

The applicable principle is that courts must be closed to the trial of a crime instigated by the government's own agents. No other issue, no comparison of equities as between the guilty official and the guilty defendant, has any place in the enforcement of this overruling principle of public policy. 287 U. S., at 459.

Whatever may be the demerits of the defendant or his previous infractions of law these will not justify the instigation and creation of a new crime, as a means to reach him and punish him for his past misdemeanors. . . . To say that such conduct by an official of government is condoned and rendered innocuous by the fact that the defendant had a bad reputation or had previously transgressed is wholly to disregard the reason for refusing the processes of the court to consummate an abhorrent transaction. Sorrells v. United States, supra, at 458-459.

Several federal courts have adopted the objective test advanced by Mr. Justice Roberts and Mr. Justice Frankfurter, or a variant thereof, focusing on the conduct of the government agents, rather than the "predisposition" of the particular defendant. See, e. g., United States v. McGrath, 468 F.2d 1027, 1030-1031 (CA7 1972); Greene v. United States, 454 F.2d 783, 786-787 (CA9 1971); Carbajal-Portillo v. United States, 396 F.2d 944, 948 (CA9 1968); Smith v. United States, 118 U. S. App. D. C. 38, 44, 46, 331 F.2d 784, 790, 792 (1964) (en banc); United States v. Chisum, 312 F.Supp. 1307 (CD Cal. 1970). Cf. United States v. Morrison, 348 F.2d 1003, 1004 (CA2 1965); Accardi v. United States, 257 F.2d 168, 172-173, n. 5 (CA5 1958); United States v. Kros, 296 F.Supp. 972, 979 (ED Pa. 1969).

     Attorney Livernois did not recognize that this case represented the worst possible situation for him to confront in a presidential election year. 2020 will be an earth-shattering year for marijuana reform, especially if a Democrat is elected to the presidency. The majority of candidates running on that ticket will not only legalize the drug for recreational use, but they will also expunge all convictions. These are the official platform positions of the vast majority of Democratic candidates. As I said at the beginning of this case, it is a "lost cause" that drives the whole fiasco. Marijuana prohibition as we know it is over. The balance of interests have changed.

     These times call for unique and dedicated efforts to refuse to keep laying down and accepting the lies our government keeps telling us. The justice system is not working for anyone when it interrupts an honest man's life and forces him to defend spurious charges that the government manufactured. The only lives being improved by this whole scenario are that of the lawyers, judges and agents involved who are collecting their steady paychecks for ignoring the old "innocent until proven guilty" mantra.