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New Hampshire
Judge asked to question jurors who awarded $38 million in New Hampshire youth center abuse case
Crime
The attorney general’s office is seeking to reduce the award under a state law that allows claimants against the state to recover a maximum of $475,000 per “incident.”
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Attorneys for a man who prevailed in a landmark lawsuit over abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center asked a judge Tuesday to reconvene and question jurors, some of whom have expressed dismay that the $38 million award could be slashed by nearly 99%.
A jury on Friday awarded $38 million to David Meehan, who alleged that the state’s negligence allowed him to be repeatedly raped, beaten and held in solitary confinement as a teenager at the Youth Development Center. But the attorney general’s office is seeking to reduce the award under a state law that allows claimants against the state to recover a maximum of $475,000 per “incident.”
Three distraught jurors have since contacted Meehan’s attorneys, including the jury foreperson, who described feeling “devastated” and “duped,” and another who said the state is misinterpreting the verdict.
No hearing has been scheduled, but here are some things to know about how the dispute unfolded.
The trial
Meehan, 42, went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Since then, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 other former residents of what is now called the Sununu Youth Services Center have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual and emotional abuse spanning six decades. Charges against one former worker, Frank Davis, were dropped Tuesday after the 82-year-old was found incompetent to stand trial.
Meehan’s lawsuit was the first to go to trial. Over four weeks, his attorneys contended that the state encouraged a culture of abuse marked by pervasive brutality, corruption and a code of silence.
The state portrayed Meehan as a violent child, troublemaking teenager and delusional adult lying to get money. Defense attorneys also said the state was not liable for the conduct of rogue employees and that Meehan waited too long to sue.
The verdict
Jurors unanimously agreed that Meehan filed his lawsuit in a timely fashion, that he was injured at the facility and that the state’s negligence caused his injuries. They awarded him $18 million in compensatory damages and an additional $20 million in enhanced damages after finding the state acted with reckless indifference or abused its power.
Jurors were unaware of the state law that caps damages at $475,000 per incident. When asked on the verdict form how many incidents they found Meehan had proven, they wrote “one.”
What counts as an incident?
That’s where it gets tricky.
In pre-verdict discussions without the jury present, lawyers for the state argued that all of Meehan’s claims arose out of a single incident of alleged negligence. Meehan’s lawyers insisted that each act of physical or sexual abuse be counted as a separate incident, even those that happened simultaneously.
“Merely raping a kid is bad enough, but it’s even worse, and a separate incident, if it also involves hitting him in the head or kicking him in the ribs or other things to get him to comply,” Meehan’s attorney David Vicinanzo said.
At one point, the judge considered including a list of the type of abuse alleged on each date on the verdict form and asking jurors to determine whether an injury occurred and whether the state was liable. But the state argued that providing such a list would be prejudicial to Meehan’s side.
Judge Andrew Schulman said he disagreed with both parties and if forced to define “incident,” he would consider all the acts that happened in a given “episode” to be one incident. That put him closer to the plaintiff’s view, but in the end, he said he would leave it up to the state Supreme Court to settle.
“Why go out and define something that there’s a 50% chance of being wrong if it doesn’t need to be defined in the first place?” he said. “They can deal with it, but I don’t think I have to.”
Attorney Martha Gaythwaite, representing the state, did not address the issue in her closing statement to jurors. Vicinanzo told the jury that Meehan was raped an estimated 200 times, beaten 200 times and held in unjustified solitary confinement for roughly 100 days.
“I want to emphasize to you that the numbers are very important,” he said.
In his verbal instructions to the jury, Schulman said that rather than asking jurors to list “incident by incident” decisions, he asked for “just the number of incidents for which you find liability based on timely claims.” The verdict form itself defined incident as a “(a) single episode during which the plaintiff was injured; (b) for which injuries the jury has found DHHS liable in response to previous questions; (c) on claims the jury found to be timely claims in response to question 1.”
In response to that question, the jury wrote “one.”
But what did they mean?
One juror explained it like this:
“I can not state strongly enough that we the jury were in unanimous agreement that David suffers from ‘one’ incident/case of complex PTSD, as the result of 100+ episodes of abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) that he sustained at the hands of the State’s neglect and abuse of their own power,” the juror wrote to Meehan’s attorneys on Sunday. “We wrote one incident, because the PTSD will last with David forever and could never be clearly defined by a date or a single episode.”
In an earlier message, the juror said the question’s wording was “wrong” and criticized the state for its interpretation of the answer. In separate emails to the attorneys, the jury foreperson described a sleepless night of crying after learning about the cap.
“We had no idea,” the jury foreperson wrote. “Had we known that the settlement amount was to be on a per incident basis, I assure you, our outcome would have reflected it.”
What happens next?
The state has not yet responded to the motion to reconvene the jury. But earlier Tuesday, it filed an objection to Meehan’s initial request for a hearing, saying there was no legal basis for relief with respect to the jury’s “unambiguous” finding of one incident. As for not being told of the cap, Assistant Attorney General Brandon Chase noted that the judge expressly ruled that the jury would not be informed of it, in keeping with judicial precedents. In criminal trials, for example, juries generally are not told of the penalties a defendant will face if convicted to avoid affecting the outcome, he noted.
Meehan’s attorneys, however, insist the judge is obligated to poll the jury when it appears a jury has misconceived its duty.
“This is not a case in which the moving party is speculating about jury error in some way grasping at straws,” the wrote. “It is a case in which three of twelve jurors have taken their duty seriously enough to come forward and attempt to correct what they perceive to be a miscarriage of justice.
A former New Hampshire state representative was sentenced to more than 33 years in prison for involvement in a child exploitation case — almost double the mandatory minimum.
Stacie Marie Laughton, 42, pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual exploitation of children after soliciting and receiving nude photos of three toddlers from an ex-girlfriend who worked at a daycare.
Lindsay Groves, 41, of Hudson, N.H., was sentenced to almost 22 years in prison earlier this month after pleading guilty to the same charges as well as an additional count of distribution of child pornography.
According to court documents, Groves took the photos of the victims in 2023 at Creative Minds daycare in Tyngsboro, where she was a teacher, during designated bathroom breaks and nap times.
She then sent the photos to Laughton, who requested the images and asked that Grove touch one of the minor’s genitals. In the conversation included in the records, the pair sexualizes the victims.
“Did the girl give you an issue,” Laughton texted after receiving the photos.
“No… the boy didn’t either,” Groves texted back.
In a sentencing memorandum, Laughton’s counsel had argued that she should receive a shorter sentence than Groves and asked for the minimum mandatory sentence, which would have 15 years for each count to be served concurrently.
“Stacie Laughton is a complex 42-year-old woman,” the memo said, noting that she was the first openly transgender woman to be elected to the New Hampshire legislature.
The filing described Laughton’s history of mental health, substance abuse, sexual abuse, and trauma as mitigating factors the judge should consider.
“One of the few consistencies in Ms. Laughton’s life is her challenges with mental health illnesses,” the memo said. “She began receiving mental health treatment at the age of four and has been in and out of extensive treatment programs ever since.”
The death of Laughton’s wife in 2020 and a tumultuous relationship with Groves also added to her mental health struggles, the memo said, stating that the defendant drank every day and had tried heroin for the first time leading up to her arrest.
A doctor quoted in the filing said that Laughton likely had a low IQ, tied in part to her premature birth, as well as “normal sexual interests.”
“This finding shows both how caught up Ms. Laughton was in her relationship with Groves that she participated in activity counter to this and is … an important factor in considering whether Ms. Laughton would be a future threat upon release,” the memo said.
The filing described Laughton’s actions as “horrendous, reprehensible, and shocking,” but said that even though the crimes were “utterly inexcusable,” she should still receive a shorter sentence than her codefendant out of a sense of justice.
However, in their own sentencing memo, federal prosecutors requested Laughton receive 40 years in prison.
“These crimes only came to light when Laughton reported them in an apparent attempt to punish Groves for ending their relationship,” prosecutors wrote. “The defendant, of course, did not disclose her own role in the creation of the imagery.”
“She ultimately admitted that she told Groves to touch one child’s penis, and claimed that she was feeding Groves’s attraction to children,” their memo said.
The prosecutors said that Laughton’s voice was the “more prominent one” in the conversation about exploiting children.
In addition to her prison sentence, Laughton will also serve five years of supervised release.
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement that she felt the sentence fit the crime.
“The victims in this case were toddlers – children who were not yet old enough to care for themselves and, in some cases, not even fully verbal. Everyone who learns about the conduct in this case should be outraged,” United States Attorney Leah Foley said in a statement. “The sentences imposed reflect the depravity of the conduct and the seriousness of the crimes. My office will seek the most serious charges and the stiffest sentences for anyone who preys on children.”
New Hampshire
Three seriously injured in head-on crash on I-293 in Hooksett, N.H. – The Boston Globe
Three people suffered serious injuries Tuesday in a two-vehicle crash in Hooksett, N.H., police said.
The head-on collision happened around 5:40 a.m. on Interstate 293 northbound, State Police said.
Police said that Timothy Hubbard, 43, of Rome, Maine, was traveling south when he lost control of his car and crossed the median into oncoming traffic, police said.
Hubbard, his passenger, and the other driver were taken to hospitals to be treated for serious injuries, police said. The injures were not believed to be life-threatening.
Police said speed was believed to be a factor in the crash, which is under investigation.
Hannah Goeke can be reached at hannah.goeke@globe.com.
Sara Doherty
Franklin, NH – Sara Jane (Sanford) Doherty, 79, of Franklin, New Hampshire, passed away peacefully at her home on June 11, 2026. A beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and friend, Sara was born on June 5, 1947, in Hanover, New Hampshire, to Harold and Sadie (Pettengill) Sanford.
As the daughter of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers employee, Sara spent her childhood moving throughout New England, living in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. She graduated from high school in Hudson, Massachusetts, and later returned to New Hampshire, eventually settling in Franklin, where she made her home for more than forty years.
Sara built a successful career in the textile industry. She worked as a seamstress at Howland Originals before joining Star Specialty Knitting, where she began as a stitcher and, through hard work and determination, advanced to Plant Manager. She retired in 2003, and one of the greatest joys of her retirement was caring for several of her grandchildren, whom she adored.
Sara was a remarkably talented and creative artisan. She sewed clothing for her children when they were young and later created outfits for her grandchildren and their dolls. She was a gifted painter and artist whose extraordinary drawings and paintings brought joy to those around her. An accomplished seamstress, knitter, crocheter, cake decorator, and musician, Sara had an exceptional ability to create beauty in many forms. Her handmade gifts and treasured creations will be cherished by her family for generations to come.
Her talent for cake decorating blossomed into a successful side business that spanned more than thirty years. Sara created hundreds of stunning and imaginative cakes, including wedding and birthday cakes for her own children and grandchildren. Her passion for baking was so well known that for many years her license plate proudly read “CAKES+.”
Sara also had a remarkable gift for bringing people together. She hosted countless family reunions, each one more creative than the last. With elaborate themes, games, prizes, delicious food, and endless laughter, she created memories that her family will treasure forever. She was also known for her generous holiday gatherings, often welcoming more than thirty family members and friends into her home for Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations. Summers brought cherished Fourth of July cookouts by Webster Lake, where Sara delighted in decorating the waterfront and gathering loved ones to enjoy the annual boat parade.
Sara’s love of giraffes was known by all who knew her. She spent years collecting hundreds of them, giving each a special “G” name. Before her passing, she shared one of her favorites, “Geebri,” with her granddaughter Sydni, who is expecting Sara’s first great-grandchild.
Her warmth, creativity, generosity, and love of family touched everyone who knew her. To say she will be missed is a vast understatement. She was truly the heart of her family.
Sara leaves behind her devoted husband of 43 years, Joel Doherty; her sons, Todd (Michelle) Chapman of Sanbornton, New Hampshire, and Paul (Cheryl) Chapman of Northfield, New Hampshire; her stepdaughters, Ali (Oliver) Frates of Amherst, New Hampshire, and Kate Hodge of Durham, New Hampshire; and her beloved grandchildren, Shelby, Sydni, Morgan, Owen, Duncan, Calum, Macy, and Elyse, and Step-grandchildren, Matthew, Jennifer, Eric, & Kevin.
Sara was predeceased by her parents.
Sara’s family would like to express their heartfelt thanks to Franklin VNA for their rapid and seamless response in setting up hospice, and to The Payson Center for their dedication and care, which gave us more precious time with her.
A graveside service will be held on Tuesday, June 30, 2026 at 11:00 AM in Franklin Cemetery, Thompson Park in Franklin.
For more information or to leave the family an online condolence, please visit www.smartmemorialhome.com.
Click here to sign the guest book or honor their memory with flowers, donations, or other heartfelt tributes
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