Dying in Prison in the ‘Live Free or Die’ State

News articles allege that Detective James McLaughlin falsified reports and/or evidence but this was kept hidden from the jury in the 1994 trial of Fr. Gordon MacRae.

July 13, 2022 by Charlene C. Duline

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by noted author, Charlene C. Duline. Retired from a distinguished career as a diplomat and Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. State Department, Ms. Duline served the United States in several nations across the African Continent, in East Pakistan and Panama, and at United Nations Headquarters in New York. She holds degrees in journalism and political science from Indiana University and a Master’s degree in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC.

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I am outraged at the State of New Hampshire! Every citizen in the State should be! Recent news articles by Damien Fisher and Nancy West at InDepthNH.org have pulled the shroud of secrecy from a grave injustice. Few people in that State knew about a list formally called the “Exculpatory Evidence Schedule,” now better known as the “Laurie List.” The list was revealed in December 2021 by the New Hampshire Attorney General as a result of litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism which remains a litigant seeking the full publication of that list.

The court-ordered release of the list of compromised police is based on a Supreme Court decision holding that if favorable exculpatory evidence has been knowingly withheld by the prosecution in a criminal case, the burden shifts to the State to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the undisclosed evidence would not have affected the outcome of a trial. If such a violation occurred and the State failed to meet its burden, a defendant has been denied his right to present all favorable proofs and is entitled to a new trial or to have his convictions vacated altogether.

Former NH detective James McLaughlin, the shady detective who was instrumental in pursuing lie after lie about Fr. Gordon MacRae sending him to a long prison term in 1994, was prominent on the Laurie List for “Falsification of Records” and/or evidence. Over 28 years of wrongful imprisonment in the New Hampshire State Prison, MacRae has consistently asserted that the case against him was built on lies, cheating and distortions aided and abetted by a dishonest police officer.

Just as Innocence Project founder Barry Scheck predicted in his 2003 book, Actual Innocence, those assertions have since been ignored or explained away at higher levels of the justice system by judges with a clear bias in favor of police and against defendants — and this defendant in particular. Judge Arthur Brennan, the first New Hampshire judge to hear this case, told jurors to “disregard inconsistencies” in accuser Thomas Grover’s testimony. As The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in The Trials of Father MacRae, they had much to disregard.

In addition to new evidence and witnesses that other judges declined to hear, much of MacRae’s failed 2012 Habeas Corpus petition was about Keene, New Hampshire sex crimes detective James McLaughlin and the shady tactics he employed to generate claims, prosecute, and convict MacRae in 1994 paving a path to lucrative settlement deals from the Catholic Diocese of Manchester.

Now it turns out that McLaughlin was sanctioned on a secret Attorney General’s list for “falsification of records” in 1985, nine years before the trial of Father MacRae. Under a U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors were required to reveal that fact to Defendant MacRae and his legal counsel. They did not. This was especially egregious because a central issue in this case has been the falsification of police reports and witness tampering.

Since there were no consequences, McLaughlin continued what he did best. The record in this case is filled with post-trial witness statements that he threatened, intimidated, coerced and lied to witnesses, and falsified records. At least one witness today claims that this detective attempted to suborn his perjury with a monetary bribe. Judge Joseph Laplante, the New Hampshire federal judge who heard MacRae’s Habeas Corpus petition, ignored all of this and allowed none of these witnesses to testify under oath.

Few people know that Fr. MacRae was offered two plea deals before his trial and one during trial. He was told that if he would plead guilty he would receive only one year in prison. This honest man turned down the plea deals. The lengthy criminal rap sheet of 27-year-old accuser Thomas Grover includes multiple arrests for forgery, theft, burglary, drugs, and assault. He broke his future ex-wife’s nose when she questioned his perjury.

The jury never heard any of this. Neither did they hear that Thomas Grover several times received financial payments from his personal injury lawyer, advances on his expected windfall in his accompanying civil lawsuit — a practice that is forbidden by the rules of professional conduct for lawyers. Grover was awarded almost $200,000 for crimes that never took place. There are photos of him dancing with stacks of $50 bills.

At the trial, Judge Arthur Brennan warned MacRae that if he took the stand in his own defense, the judge would open the door for Thomas Grover’s brothers to testify to their own false claims in related civil lawsuits. Gordon MacRae was the only person never heard from in this trial. In a flimsy 1996 appeal represented by a public defender (because MacRae’s diocese refused to help him), MacRae was not even allowed to be present. At three attempts at a Habeas Corpus appeal before state and federal courts since this trial, neither MacRae nor any witness for his defense were permitted to give testimony. At no time has any court official allowed a single word from this defendant.

The man who actually controlled the Diocese of Manchester during much of MacRae’s sentence was Monsignor Edward J. Arsenault, now known as Edward J. Bolognini. He violated Church law regarding Father MacRae who was never told, despite repeated requests, what the Diocese conveyed to the Holy See in Rome about this matter. Arsenault was later dismissed from the priesthood after pleading guilty to stealing almost $300,000 from the Diocese and the estate of a deceased priest. He reportedly spent the stolen money in the company of a much younger gay musician.

At the time of his nearly $300,000 embezzlement, Arsenault held a $170,000 per year position as Executive Director of the St. Luke Institute for troubled priests in Maryland. He served only two years of a 20-year prison sentence before being released and his sentence vacated when an unnamed third party paid his entire restitution. Now a convicted felon with a new name, he today administers a lucrative contract for the City of New York.

I believe that Father MacRae’s bishop and diocese owe him apologies for their abandonment of him, their presumptions of guilt, their refusals to visit or even correspond with him for 28 years in prison where Father Gordon MacRae remains a priest. He offers Mass in his cell each week, and has been instrumental in saving lives and souls. One of them is the life and soul of my Godson, Pornchai Moontri, a conversion story beautifully told by Marian Helper Editor, Felix Carroll in the great Divine Mercy book, Loved, Lost, Found.

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Editor’s Note: Charlene Duline’s Godson, Pornchai Moontri, now residing in Bangkok, Thailand, was the subject of a stunning investigative report by Father Gordon MacRae:

“Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam”.

For additional information on Charlene Duline’s article, see the following:

AG Hides Some ‘Laurie List’ Names Hours After Release By Damien Fisher, InDepthNH.org

Famed Keene Cop Called Out for Federal Entrapment By Damien Fisher, InDepthNH.org

A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court By Ryan A. MacDonald

The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud by Ryan A. MacDonald

The Toll of Decades in Prison on a Mind, Heart, and Soul

Pornchai Moontri was released after almost three decades in prison. A new development could also release Fr. Gordon MacRae, but what does freedom look like for them?

June 8, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Someone who is an old friend to both Pornchai Moontri and me posted a Facebook rant in 2021 that was printed and sent to me by an angry reader who saw it. Our friend was reacting to a cut in Covid pandemic relief services. Clearly, the last two years have posed challenges for many people. Our friend’s rant protested the budget cut while bemoaning all the “free services” that he believes had been afforded to prisoners: “Free food, free housing, clothing, health care, legal representation, and free education!” I understood his argument. It is one held by many people, but none of it is true.

Prisoners where I have been forced to live against my will for 28 years are required to hold a prison job. However most prisons have become so overcrowded that more than 50-percent of prisoners are in the category of “no job available.” Prison jobs here pay a base rate of $1.15 per day for four hours of daily work. Both Pornchai Moontri and I held relatively privileged positions in specialized jobs that required some skill. These full time positions required working a full day, five days per week. Pornchai was the Safety Trainer for the prison woodworking shop managed by the Recreation Department. I am the sole legal clerk in the prison law library, a position that every prison is required to have by law. Both jobs were salaried positions with a rate of pay at $43 per month.

Prisons are required to provide the most basic level of sustenance including food, housing, clothing, etc. Beyond that, most prisons — this one included — sell food, hygiene items, and clothing items to prisoners either directly or through a prison-approved vendor who manages these sales with a healthy kickback to the prison’s recreation fund budget. A pair of shoes costs about six weeks’ pay.

Because the prison food budget affords lots of carbohydrates but far less protein, most prisoners strive to supplement food intake through purchases from a commissary. Those who cannot afford food, or who do not have families to help them, contrive all sorts of means to assure that they have adequate food. There is a lot of exploitation. Some prisoners will purchase food, and then sell it at inflated rates to the hungry who then rack up debts that they sometimes cannot pay.

The main meal of the day here is between 3:30 and 4:00 PM. By policy, prisoners are allowed 10 minutes to eat. It seldom ever takes that long. Neither Pornchai nor I were ever well off here, but we could not turn away prisoners who asked for a package of ramen noodles to fend off hunger at night. We both bought and stored them just so those around us would not have to owe someone who wanted to exact a profit — or worse.

The same is true with coffee and postage stamps, neither of which are provided to prisoners. A four-ounce bag of generic instant coffee is $5.00. A four-ounce packet of chicken is $3.25. A book of ten postage stamps is more than three days’ pay. Over the years, Pornchai and I have loaned enough coffee — seldom if ever repaid — to keep Juan Valdez on his burro for decades to come because those earning one dollar per day cannot afford coffee.

Many other items are required, but acquired only through purchase at the commissary. This includes soap, shampoo, toothpaste and toothbrushes, deodorant, cough syrup, Tylenol, bandages, toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, and, during the pandemic, face masks. Those who can afford to do so also purchase multivitamins, Omega-3, Vitamin D3, and other essential supplements. There are over 260 food and hygiene items sold to prisoners in the commissary here and in most other prisons.

Some enterprising prisoners develop little side ventures such as a laundry service. The more artistic ones create and sell greeting cards. Several have a sneaker cleaning service. The costs do not end with food, clothing and postage. A visit to daily Sick Call at Health Services has a co-pay that for some is the equivalent of three days’ pay. Telephone calls must be prepaid and are charged by the minute.

Money Laundering

Union Supply Direct, a company that markets only to prisoners, has cornered the commissary market here and also has a mail order business for prisoner clothing, electronics, and other needs. The catalog sells just about all clothing items except the actual New Hampshire prisoner uniform which consists of dark green slacks and a matching long sleeve buttoned shirt. Prisoners here may request three sets every two years. However, what we receive is used clothing. Ironed-on patches have the prisoners’s name and number. Prisoners often turn the replacements back in if they are in worse shape than the ones we already had. The last set I received had four prior ironed-on labels under the one with my name. The last set of new clothing I received was in 1998. The last used replacement set that was in good enough condition to keep was in 2012.

Purchased clothing is at risk of being stolen and then resold to other prisoners. This has never happened to me or to Pornchai, but it has happened to some of the people around us. My current roommate does not want to lose the new towels and clothing he purchased so he never puts them in the prison laundry. Instead, he washes them himself in the bucket that I use for Mass. In our small cell, he hangs them on a removable shoestring clothes line and aims a fan at them. Some enterprising prisoners have set up a sideline for private laundry services. They will pick up newer clothing, wash and dry it, and return it folded, all for a bag of coffee or food. Union Supply sells a gray fleece jacket for $42.95, and just about everyone will pay the fee to have it washed because it is a hot item for theft and resale.

The Union Supply Catalog sells about 200 items including clothing, sheets, towels, hygiene items, electronics, televisions, etc. at seemingly inflated prices. A small flat screen Clear Tunes TV is $275. In the latest catalog, a 4-ounce tube of Crest toothpaste is $12.95. A poor quality Swintec typewriter doubled in price this year and is now $375.95.

This could go on and on. Every category that our friend’s Facebook rant described as free for prisoners was falsely stated. When you consider the ratio between a prisoner’s expenses and what he or she can earn, prisoners are typically the most impoverished citizens on the planet. I know that the common argument for seeing this as “okay” is that “prisoners put themselves in prison.” That is indeed true for some, perhaps even most, but I hope that readers know by now that it is by no means true for all.

The Seeds We Sow in Prison

Surely the most advanced society on Earth can come up with a better model for the management of criminality than the current prison system, which has a recidivism rate of 50-percent. As a culture, we cave to our worst instincts for instant vengeance by the establishment of laws that make an adequate criminal defense virtually impossible. I am not guilty of the crimes attributed to me and I am by no means the only one now saying that.

When I heard Judge Arthur Brennan intone the jury instructions at my trial, I knew then that I was doomed. This was a case without evidence. None whatsoever. Judge Brennan first instructed the jury to “disregard inconsistencies” in accuser Thomas Grover’s claims. Then he told them that under New Hampshire law, (RSA 632a-6) “no evidence or corroboration is necessary for a conviction” under this category of offense.

After dutifully disregarding all the inconsistencies, the jury convicted me in less that ninety minutes. You already know that after refusing three efforts to convince me to take a plea deal to serve a minimum of one year in prison, Judge Brennan sentenced me to a term of 67 years. Attorney James Higgins, speaking for my bishop and diocese at the time, wrote to me in prison: “To the extent that you are without funds for an appeal, contact the Public Defender’s Office.” I was sent to prison at age 41 in 1994. I will be 70 on my next birthday. I will be 108 when my sentence is completed. I was 29 when the fictitious crimes were claimed to have occurred.

My peers in priesthood and in life are preparing for retirement. In contrast, I have spent the last nearly three decades of my life earning and trying to live on $43 dollars per month. Some readers have helped over time, and both Pornchai and I have survived almost solely because of that. We have profound gratitude. This blog could not exist without such help. One of the tragedies of prison is that people here for decades leave with nothing — with no life built up and no buffer or support system upon which to build one.

For a priest in prison, whether guilty or innocent, survival after would depend on the willingness of his bishop to observe Canon Law and provide some basic infrastructure such as housing, health insurance, etc. In the neighboring Archdiocese of Boston, a 75-year-old priest coming out of prison was told to go find a homeless shelter. Over time in the abuse scandal, fear reigned and the observance of Canon Law has diminished. Some bishops simply discard priests deemed inconvenient, again whether guilty or innocent. My bishop has given no indication whatsoever that he would assist me in any way. He visited me briefly ten years ago, but he would not let me speak of any of this.

Back in January, 2022, a surprising development surfaced. A New Hampshire court ordered the Attorney General to make public a previously secret list of police officers whose investigations or testimony have been tainted and discredited by misconduct. It turns out that former NH Detective James McLaughlin is on that list as revealed in “Predator Po1ice: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell.”

He is on the list for a 1985 incident of “Falsification of Records and/or Evidence” which is exactly what I have claimed of him for three decades. I am now expected to hire legal counsel for a new appeal based on this newly discovered evidence. I have been frozen in place ever since then. Only time will tell whether and how this develops. Saint Paul wrote that three gifts abide, Faith, Hope, and Love, and the greatest of these is Love (1 Corinthians 13:13). But Hope is the most fragile.

A part of me does not dare to hope or to even move on this. The last such hope in 2013 met a dead end with a prosecutorial judge who refused to review new evidence or hear new witnesses. Justice from men is not always even or just. At almost 70, I feel closer to meeting God’s justice than that of anyone in New Hampshire. Shall I try or shall I simply wait? Stay tuned!

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Important Notes from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please do not understand this post as a plea for help, for many of you have already done just that. I offer profound thanks for your support, encouragement, and prayers for both me and Pornchai Moontri whom God has entrusted to my care.

An important sequel to this post will appear here next week. My heart was broken, as were many, by recent events in Uvalde, Texas. Twice in two weeks, a lost and deeply troubled and broken 18-year-old committed grave acts of terror in Buffalo, New York and then in Uvalde, Texas. My friend, Pornchai, was also 18 and broken when his offense was committed. Something essential has been lost in our culture and must be faced with bold courage. Pornchai and I both have some thoughts of hope about this that will be a part of our post next week. Meanwhile: please share this post, and please consider reading more through these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Ordeal of Father Gordon MacRae by Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

The Measure By Which You Measure: Prisoners of a Captive Past

The New Hampshire State Prison exit gate.

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Keene New Hampshire sex crimes Detective James McLaughlin developed claims against a Catholic priest while suppressing exculpatory evidence and coercing witnesses.

Editor’s Note: The following guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald is a response to Fr. Gordon MacRae’s recent, “Predator Police: The New Hampshire Laurie List Bombshell.”

January 26, 2022 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Last week, Fr. Gordon MacRae wrote here about the manipulation of facts and witnesses in his 1994 trial on charges brought forward by former Keene, NH Detective James McLaughlin. This manipulation included allegations that he coerced and threatened a witness, Debra Collett, to alter her first-hand testimony because it did not agree with his bias. Another witness, a former accuser of Father MacRae who recanted, alleged that McLaughlin presented him with a proffered bribe to concoct a false claim against MacRae and conspired to attempt perjured testimony before a grand jury.

These are very serious allegations. They were uncovered years after the trial by former FBI Special Agent James Abbott who conducted a three year investigation of this case. Mr. Abbott obtained signed statements from these witnesses and others that became part of a habeas corpus petition seeking to free Father MacRae from an unjust imprisonment.

As MacRae’s post linked above points out, New Hampshire judges at both state and federal levels overlooked these allegations, and declined to allow an evidentiary hearing to permit these witnesses to testify under oath. From a political standpoint, this may be business as usual in New Hampshire. From a justice standpoint, it is most disturbing.

At the start of 2022, advocates for Father MacRae learned that former Detective James McLaughlin appears on a newly published list of police officers with professional misconduct or credibility issues previously held in secret personnel files. The list had been held in secret for years by the NH Attorney General, but a recent legal decision required its public release. Formally called the “Exculpatory Evidence Schedule,” the list is also known as the “Laurie List” for the NH Supreme Court case that initiated it.

It came as no surprise to discover Detective McLaughlin on this list for a 1985 incident of “Falsification of Records.” That was nine years before MacRae’s trial. Over fifty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brady v. Maryland that state and federal prosecutors are required under the Due Process Clause of the U.S. Constitution to reveal to defendants and legal counsel all exculpatory evidence uncovered in the investigation of a case.

The failure of prosecutors to reveal the “falsification of records” charge against Detective McLaughlin was a violation of what is known as the “Brady Rule” that can and should overturn a conviction. As a minimum, it constitutes new evidence that can reopen a case for judicial review of the entire case.

Advocates first learned of this Brady violation from an article published at InDepthNH.org by Damien Fisher entitled, “AG Hides Some ‘Laurie List’ Names Hours After Release.” The article, though largely accurate, contained some misinformation. It described MacRae as a “former” Catholic priest which is not accurate. It also cited that MacRae “claimed that McLaughlin offered to pay cash to one of his accusers.” That claim was not made by MacRae, but by the accuser himself who recanted in a signed statement obtained by former FBI Agent James Abbott.

Politics and Prosecution

The New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, which publishes InDepthNH.org, is continuing its lawsuit seeking full and unredacted disclosure of the “Laurie List” in its entirety. A more recent article by Damien Fisher, “Famed Keene Cop Called Out for Federal Entrapment” (January 11, 2022) detailed a clear case of entrapment by McLaughlin. The article describes the original “Laurie List” charge of “Falsification of Records” by McLaughlin as “Falsification of Evidence.”

Noted Boston lawyers Harvey Silverglate and Alan Dershowitz are long-time associates in the cause of preservation of our civil rights and civil liberties. Mr. Dershowitz wrote the Forward for Silverglate’s acclaimed 2009 book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. The following is an excerpt:

“Our system of investigation and prosecution is unique in the world. We [in America] have politicized the role of prosecutor, not only at the federal level but in all of our states and counties as well. Nowhere else are prosecutors (or judges) elected. Indeed, it is unthinkable in most parts of the world to have prosecutors run for office, make campaign promises and solicit contributions. In the United States, prosecutors are not only elected but the job is a stepping stone to higher office as evidenced by the fact that nearly every congressman or senator who ever practiced law once served as a prosecutor. Winning becomes more important than doing justice.” (p. xxv)

There were two prosecutors at Father Gordon MacRae’s 1994 trial. One inexplicably took his own life several years later after the first articles challenging this case appeared in The Wall Street Journal and were published along with the items in our Documents page at a site that preceded MacRae’s blog. The lead prosecutor was Bruce Elliot Reynolds. At the time of the high profile trial, he used its notoriety to campaign for another Assistant County Attorney in his office who was running to unseat the incumbent. In New Hampshire, a County Attorney is equivalent to a District Attorney in other states.

There was a lot that went on behind the scenes of this trial. The lead prosecutor was reined in by the judge for sensational media statements about the trial which could (and did) taint the jury pool. The trial drew lots of local news coverage. As it got under way, Mr. Reynolds was chastised by Judge Arthur Brennan for wearing his campaign button before news cameras.

On the day after the trial, for reasons unknown, Reynolds was fired by the winner of the election, the incumbent against whom he was campaigning. Sometime later, Reynolds decided to run for County Attorney himself. His campaign cited his “vigorous” prosecution of Father Gordon MacRae as his most significant “tough on crime” career achievement. Mr. Reynolds was then exposed for some sort of tax matter, dropped out of the race, and left the state. He relocated to the State of Wisconsin.

Prior to the trial, Reynolds sent a letter to MacRae’s defense counsel which laid out terms for a strikingly lenient plea deal for a sentence of one to three years in prison if MacRae would simply plead guilty. He refused this offer because he is not guilty. He refused a similar offer in the middle of trial when the offer was reduced to one-to-two years. The prosecutor asked what it would take to get MacRae to take the deal. His lawyer’s answer: “The dismissal of charges because he is innocent.”

It seemed clear throughout pretrial motion hearings and the trial itself that the real prosecution of this case was carried out by Detective James McLaughlin, the sole sex crimes detective among the 25 or so officers in the Keene, NH Police Department. An account of how Detective McLaughlin investigated this matter is laid out in “Wrongful Convictions: the Other Police Misconduct.”

A Conspiracy of Fraud

This trial was a classic example of why the blending of politics and the justice system often defeats justice. The trial was not about arriving at the truth. It was all about winning, at any cost, because political aspirations and careers were at stake. In no other arena but the political could a prosecution accept without question testimony from a grown man who claimed that he was sexually assaulted five times by a Catholic priest a dozen years earlier at age 15, but returned to be assaulted again and again for a total of five times because he repressed all memory of the vicious assaults from week to week.

Only political blindness could deny and obfuscate the fact that a $200,000 settlement from a Catholic diocese is a possible enticement for perjury and fraud. As Alan Dershowitz observed above, “Winning becomes more important than doing justice.” Such an arena requires the work of an unethical crusader to mold and shape a case toward that end. In Detective James McLaughlin, the State had just such a crusader.

At the “Documents” section on this site is a three-part case history which was the result of substantial research. It includes a most telling document entitled, “United States District Court: Gordon J. MacRae v. James F. McLaughlin, et al.” It requires a little background. Prior to the 1994 MacRae trial, the suppression of evidence and one-sided media coverage was so great that Father MacRae felt his only recourse was to file a lawsuit of his own. It lays out the bold but simple truth of this matter. No one refuted even one of its many claims.

The lawsuit was upheld and survived several attempts to have it thrown out, but in the end it had to be dismissed without prejudice — meaning without a judicial ruling — when MacRae was convicted at trial. He could only bring the lawsuit again if the underlying convictions were resolved. This document lays out perhaps the most chilling factual abuse of police power in this or virtually any other case. It is well worth a review.

Prior to this trial MacRae voluntarily took, and conclusively passed, two polygraph examinations with a noted expert. Some of Detective McLaughlin police reports made allusions to the possible creation of child pornography by MacRae. At the time of his sentencing, Judge Arthur Brennan cited this, claiming that “This Court has heard clear and compelling evidence that you created pornography of your victims.” This never surfaced at all during the trial, but the ugly accusation at sentencing was later used for a purely evil endeavor. It was used by SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, to bolster a crimes against humanity charge targetting Pope Benedict XVI at the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Mercifully the effort failed. Eleven years later in 2005 Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal questioned Detective McLaughlin about the nature and substance of that evidence. “There was never any evidence of child pornography,” he admitted. In this entire matter, that was the only time McLaughlin told the truth.

During the trial, two court observers reported spotting a woman in the gallery giving hand signals to Thomas Grover to begin crying during his testimony. It came after he testified that he was unaware of any plan to sue the Catholic Church. He was asked by MacRae’s counsel to reveal to whom he went first with his accusations: the police or a lawyer. At this point, Ms. Pauline Goupil was observed from the gallery signalling Grover to cry. He was riveted upon her for his entire testimony. At that point she was seen placing her fingers below her eye and then down her cheek in a pantomime of crying. In response, 27-year-old Grover wept loudly and at length. The two witnesses who observed it reported it to the defense counsel who then approached the bench. Judge Brennan cleared the jury from the court and called Ms. Goupil to the stand. She identified herself as a therapist retained by Thomas Grover at the behest of his attorney. All treatment records of Mr. Grover were to be reviewed by the defense pretrial, but neither Pauline Goupil’s records nor the fact of her treatment of Grover were revealed.

Hard evidence surfaced pretrial that Detective McLaughlin conducted some of his one-sided investigation, not from his Keene police office, but from 60 miles away in the law office of Robert Upton, the personal injury lawyer who brought a lawsuit on behalf of Thomas Grover and obtained a $200,000 settlement from the Diocese of Manchester. Family members of Grover revealed years later that Grover was coached to “act crazy” before the jury, to appear vulnerable, and to commit perjury in regard to some of his testimony. When asked who did this coaching, their answer was Pauline Goupil and Detective McLaughlin. These family members, the former wife and stepson of Thomas Grover, were also barred from giving testimony under oath. The two people who observed Pauline Goupil’s courtroom witness tampering were also barred from testifying.

A public debt is owed to the NH Center for Public Interest Journalism which publishes InDepthNH.org. The Center continues an open lawsuit contending that the new law that only partially released the “Laurie List” does not protect the public right to know its extent.

In a 2003 Concord Monitor article — now apparently removed from the Internet — fellow Keene, NH officer Sgt. Hal Brown defended McLaughlin’s shady tactics and actions:

“It’s our job to ferret the criminal element out of society.”

I believe Father MacRae would today agree with me that those are very scary words!

Be Wary of Crusaders! The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well

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Editor’s Note: Please share this important post on your social media.

You may also be interested in these related articles:

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest

A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph LaPlante’s Court

Several years after sentencing Father Gordon MacRae to life in prison, Judge Arthur Brennan was arrested in Washington, DC in 2011 during a protest in which he tried to occupy the US Capitol Building.

President Donald Trump’s First Step Act for Prison Reform

Whatever one thinks of President Donald Trump, he brought about a sweeping bipartisan reform for the most alienated citizens of the free world: America’s prisoners.

History sometimes repeats itself in subtle ways. In 587 BC, the Kingdom of Judah fell to Babylonian invaders who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and carried off the people of Judah to exile in Babylon. It is one of the mysteries of Sacred Scripture that, two centuries earlier, the Prophet Isaiah wrote about this, and actually named the person — Cyrus — who would show up two centuries later to fix it:

“Thus says the Lord to his anointed: To Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and ungird the loins of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed.”

— Isaiah 45:1

Two hundred years after that prophecy was set down by Isaiah, a man named Cyrus united the Medes and the Persians to form the great Persian Empire. In 539 BC, fifty years after Babylonians captured Jerusalem, deported the Jews into exile, and destroyed the Temple, Cyrus, and his armies conquered Babylon.

For the Jews in exile, however, Cyrus turned out to be more of a liberator than a conqueror. Though he practiced no faith the Jews could recognize and lived with values deplorable to them, Cyrus carried out exactly what Isaiah had prophesied. He restored the Kingdom of Israel, rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple, and returned the Jews to their promised land. King Cyrus then published a charter of freedom declaring an end to slavery and oppression and the restoration of religious freedom.

The Prophet Isaiah certainly never envisioned anyone like Donald Trump, but there is a curious sort of parallel in his presidency. He is notorious for having lived with a lifestyle and value system that would be anathema to Evangelical Christians, and yet they have come to see him as a Cyrus-like protector of religious liberty.

Devout Catholics might find some of his value system embarrassing, but he has also embraced the right to life and is transforming the federal courts with pro-life judicial nominees who respect religious liberty, the most fundamental freedom in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. American Jews traditionally identify as Democrats, but many might be thinking of King Cyrus right about now in the wake of a stream of anti-semitism from two new Democratic members of Congress who resist correction. Also like King Cyrus, President Trump restored the American Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel’s traditional capitol for three thousand years.

For my part, I don’t know quite what to make of this president. As I write this, a family member sent me an email declaring, “Right now I am committed to despising Donald Trump and waiting for the day he is charged with treason.” My family is still reeling from a photo of me portraying him in “Assassins’ Deed: My Stage Debut as President Donald Trump.” They were horrified

The President’s First Step Act

Most people have heard of the First Step Act initiated by the Trump White House and signed into law after receiving wide bipartisan support. it is the most significant prison reform initiative in decades, but most people do not know that its title is actually an acronym. First Step = the “Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed, Safely Transitioning Every Person.”

This is a bold and very broad initiative that encompasses far more than I could fit into a single TSW post, but as a prisoner, reading the act brought about my own “Cyrus-like” moment. This president, who has been droning on about walls for three years, has set into motion a policy statement for federal prisons that exposes prison walls to some much-needed daylight. Some TSW readers have asked me if this could have an effect on my own imprisonment and over time this is a hopeful notion. For the present, however, the initiative only affects the Federal Bureau of Prisons just as the President’s pardons and commutations power is limited only to federal prisoners.

But this First Step Act is just that, a first step. States often, though sometimes slowly and sometimes begrudgingly, follow what has been adopted by the federal government, however. We can only hope that this president’s bold course of action has a trickle-down effect.

For the moment, the First Step Act is being talked about and implemented in several states, but not yet in the Live Free or Die State where I am in my 25th year of imprisonment. I do not doubt, however, that time will erode that resistance so let’s have a look at what the First Step Act has taken on.

This President has ordered the removal of what prisoners everywhere call “the box” on federal employment applications. Let’s hope this catches on. Mr. Trump has asked that employers in the private sector follow his lead on this. “The Box” is a check-off box on federal job applications that must be checked if a job applicant has ever been convicted of a felony. Even in the best job markets, like the present one, checking “the Box” means a dead end for all but the most menial employment for ex-prisoners.

No matter how long ago an offense had been committed, no matter how much education and rehabilitation the former prisoner has been invested in, no matter that his or her debt to society has been paid in full, checking “the Box” has too often meant chronic unemployment for former prisoners — and even worse, exploitation. Not checking it subjects ex-prisoners to charges of falsifying applications. Its removal is a giant step toward helping former prisoners remain free.

President Trump’s rhetoric on this has also been bold, and against the tide for both Republicans and Democrats. In demanding removal of “the Box” he has stated forcefully that any former prisoner who applies for a job is able to do so because he or she has paid in full a debt to society and their imprisonment has ended.

The First Step Act also funds and implements evidence-based rehabilitation programs to enable prisoners to regain their freedom and to remain free once a sentence is completed. The prejudice in our culture against former prisoners is akin to that against the rights of slaves that I wrote about in “Senator Susan Collins Stokes the Embers of Civil War.” It took a federal edict — Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation — to begin a cascade of events and attitudinal adjustments toward meaningful reforms. “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key” does not reflect a free and enlightened society.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here!

In the current prison system in some states, rehabilitation and restorative justice are dead-ended by laws like New Hampshire’s “Truth in Sentencing.” When that law passed in the early 1980s, it required that a New Hampshire prisoner must serve every single day of his or her imposed prison sentence and nothing a prisoner could do would mitigate that.

The politicians who pushed such a law onto its citizens later justified it by saying that they expected judges to temper their sentences in accord with the new law, but that never happened. Prison became like the “Hotel California.” No one ever leaves, and those who do are so institutionalized by long sentences, and so unprepared for a return to society that they are set up for failure. All incentives for rehabilitation were destroyed, and prisons became mere warehouses of nothing more redemptive than endless punishment.

As a direct result of such laws — and the draconian prison sentences resulting from the Clinton Crime Bill of the 1990s — America’s prison population grew far beyond the capacity of its prisons. The United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners. This nation imprisons more of its citizens than all 28 countries of the European Union combined.

In the 25 years from 1980 to 2005 in New Hampshire, for example, the State population grew just 34% while its prison population grew almost 600% with no commensurate increase in crime rate. This is entirely because of Truth in Sentencing, and the fact that it overcrowded its prisons with long sentences and no avenue or incentive to mitigate them. Currently, only two states — New Hampshire and Iowa — cling to their Truth in Sentencing laws. They also happen to be the two states at the earliest epicenter of every presidential election.

To try to fix this, New Hampshire passed measures like NH-RSA 651:20 that, on paper at least, provides a forum for prisoners to demonstrate their rehabilitation to the court and earn up to a one-third reduction in sentence. Such reductions, however, are rarely if ever granted by the courts. Judges want legislators to fix this while legislators blame judges for not using discretion — or worse, for abusing discretion — that the law affords them.

In the late 1990s, then NH State Representative Maxwell Sargent wrote in a legislative newsletter of his dismay at the attitude of one judge, Judge Arthur Brennan (who also happened to be the judge who presided over my trial and sentencing). Representative Sargent had been encouraging one young prisoner to work doggedly toward his own rehabilitation and release. Over a decade in prison, the man earned both Bachelor and Masters degrees at his own expense and jumped through every possible hoop to redeem himself. In the end, Judge Brennan dismissed his petition with a blithe, “I’m not at all impressed,” and denied his request for a sentence reduction. The message sent was, “Why bother trying?”

The Injustice of Extreme Prison Sentences

Among the many signs of hope that have followed on the heels of President Trump’s First Step Act has been an increasing clamor of voices to revisit the length of the prison sentences imposed on first-time offenders. One such voice is Colorado Judge Morris Hoffman whose commentary in The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 9, 2019) was entitled, “The Injustice of Extreme Prison Sentences.”

Judge Hoffman wrote of how mandatory minimum sentences required him to impose a 146-year prison term on a teenaged armed robber in 1995. The only person injured in the incident was the teenage robber himself who was shot in the foot. Still, his earliest possible parole date is 2065 at the age of 90. Judge Hoffman reflected on this a bit:

“Since I imposed that sentence 23 years ago, that DA has retired, my children have grown up and had their own children, and my black hair is turning gray. The world saw the mapping of the human genome and the rise of the internet. My teenage robber saw the inside of a prison, and has 48 more years to go.”

Judge Hoffman wrote that many people have celebrated the First Step Act, but warned that it does little to address the American epidemic of overly long prison sentences. Some of his statistics are an eye-opener. According to the Justice Policy Institute, the average length for a first-time offender in Canada is four months; in Finland it is 10 months, in Germany it is 12 months; and in “rugged, individualistic Australia” it is 36 months. The United States leads the Western world with an average length of prison sentence for a first-time offender at 63 months.

I should point out here that when I appeared before Judge Arthur Brennan for sentencing on September 23, 1994, I too was a “first-time offender” though I to this day insist that the offense for which I was sentenced never actually occurred at all. I was sentenced to 804 months, nearly 13 times the national average. I was privileged, however, to publish a comment on Judge Hoffman’s article at WSJ.com with the help of a friend. Here it is:

“It is a good and just thing that Judge Hoffman reflects so candidly on the rampant imposition of extreme prison sentences. Other factors, besides those he mentioned, are the injustices of the plea bargain system, the fact that former prosecutors are over-represented on the judges’ bench, and a profession-wide bias against allowing convicted persons to have a voice. I am perhaps an exception to the latter. I was sentenced in 1994 in the Live Free or Die State to serve 67 years in prison after three times refusing a plea deal, proffered in writing, to serve one year. I am now 65-years old in my 25th year in prison for a crime alleged to have occurred when I was 29, but that never actually occurred at all. Why else would someone decline a single year in prison and risk sixty-seven?”

Judge Morris Hoffman makes a critical distinction about the sentencing of offenders in his court. “We have a duty to punish wrongdoers,” he wrote, “but that duty comes with the obligation not to punish them more than they deserve. Much of our criminal justice system has lost that moral grounding and our use of prisons has become extreme.”

I must add a qualifying principle to that. It is not just the offense that is being punished, but also the offender, and that requires evaluation for factors that may mitigate a sentence. Refusing a one-year plea deal offer may be seen as a defendant having no remorse. It may also be the result of actual innocence, something that too many judges simply never consider.

A far more egregious example is that of Pornchai Moontri who has served 27 years in prison for a crime that he did commit. But today every objective observer of that story agrees that his offense at age 18 was the direct result of extreme conditions that were never evaluated. That memorable story was told in “Pornchai Moontri, Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

Pornchai has vastly demonstrated that he is no longer the abused and homeless teenager who committed a desperate act on March 21, 1992. He is to be deported upon completion of his sentence in two more years. His only hope for some relief from that sentence – as is mine – was a political solution. Maine’s Republican Governor Paul LePage is leaving office and had the ability to commute those last two years. In various articles, he has spoken of his concern for the homeless and abused, and for victims of domestic violence. He had no political risk whatsoever in evaluating this story, but he reportedly refused to even look.

The First Step Act is a step in the right direction, but only a step. Justice requires taking it out of the hands of politicians and placing it where it belongs — before judges who are permitted the discretion to do what they are supposed to do: judge.

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Editor’s Note: Please share this important post, but don’t stop here. Learn more about prisons and the potential for restorative justice with these related posts from These Stone Walls:

The Shawshank Redemption and Its Real-World Revision

Prisons for Profit and Other Perversions of Justice

At Play in the Field of the Lord

Cry Freedom: A Prisoner Unlocks Doors from the Inside

A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court

Federal Judge Joseph Laplante dismissed without testimony Fr Gordon MacRae’s recent hope for justice. No U.S. court has allowed this defendant to utter a single word.

June 22, 2016 by Ryan A. MacDonald

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald, author of “The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud.”

I am not here to cast Donald Trump-like aspersions upon a judge whose decision I simply do not like. I have no doubt that Father Gordon MacRae would bar me from publishing here if I did. I am simply here to describe a grievous error that occurred in United States District Court in Concord, New Hampshire, and other facts that continue to trouble me greatly a year after I published an important article on this site: “Judge Joseph Laplante Denies Priest’s Appeal.”

Many people have come to believe that the 1994 prosecution and trial of Father Gordon MacRae, and subsequent appeals, have left an innocent man in prison and a gaping wound on the integrity of the criminal justice system. One issue that I and others simply cannot comprehend is that no one in this system — absolutely no one — has allowed this accused priest to utter a single word in his own defense.

After the prosecution rested its case in 1994 — with lots of theatrics but no evidence — Judge Arthur Brennan addressed MacRae directly, outside the presence of the jury. He cautioned MacRae against testifying in his own defense. If he did so, the judge warned, the door would be opened to allow other claims from Thomas Grover, his brothers, and others to come before the jury and taint its view of this case.

The public defender who minimally handled MacRae’s direct appeal in 1996 said that he was surprised by Judge Brennan’s warning, but could find no legal precedent to cite it as an appeal issue. At one point in the trial, Judge Brennan instructed the jurors to “disregard inconsistencies in Thomas Grover’s testimony.” As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “they had much to disregard” (WSJ, “A Priest’s Story,” April 28, 2005).

In a sentencing hearing weeks after the trial, Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced MacRae to a term of 67 years in prison — more than thirty times the two-year maximum sentence proposed to MacRae pre-trial, deals that the priest rejected citing his innocence of the charges. During the sentencing phase, he was not permitted to say a single word in his own defense while the Judge berated him for observing his Constitutional right to a jury trial.

When sentencing MacRae, Judge Arthur Brennan offered some evidence and testimony of his own: “This court has heard clear and convincing evidence that you created child pornography of your victims.” In the entire trial, not a single word about child pornography was ever raised. Eleven years later, the lead detective in the case admitted to Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal, “There was never any evidence of pornography.”

MacRae, in prison after the trial, was neither present nor represented by counsel as Thomas Grover and his brothers continued the fraud in civil court seeking lucrative settlements from the Catholic Diocese of Manchester. Everyone had a voice and a lawyer except Gordon MacRae.

And he was silenced yet again, not even permitted to be present, in his direct state appeal in 1996 when judges dismissed as “harmless error” the egregious testimony of a psychological expert that should not have been admitted at trial while MacRae’s defense was allowed no expert. As Innocence Project founders, Attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld described in their book, Actual Innocence  (Random House 2000):

“For an innocent person, the two most dangerous words in the language of the law are ‘harmless error.’ These are the magic words that appellate courts use to absolve police officers and prosecutors of misconduct.”

— Actual Innocence, p. 172

“Especially a Catholic Priest”

There was a lot to absolve. As The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz described (see “The Trials of Father MacRae,” May 13, 2013): “Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.” I exposed some concrete examples of those perversions of justice in “The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud.”

It is an inescapable fact of injustice that from 2012 to 2015 three additional judges and courts heard motions to revisit this trial, but dismissed them without permitting a single word of testimony from defendant Gordon MacRae or any of the witnesses who have come forward, some quite courageously.

On March 17, 2015, Judge Joseph Laplante heard oral arguments from attorneys Robert Rosenthal and Cathy Green representing the imprisoned priest, and Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Woodcock for the prosecution. Neither Father MacRae nor any of the newly presented witnesses in this case were present, nor was any of their testimony heard. The arguments took just under two hours, a flash in time compared to the twenty-two years MacRae has thus far spent in wrongful imprisonment. On March 25, 2015, Judge Laplante dismissed the habeas corpus petition from going forward. There was to be no further hearing on testimony, merits or evidence.

Additionally, Judge Laplante declined to grant a Certificate of Appealability to bring this matter to the First Circuit Court of Appeals. This had the effect of forcing MacRae to fund an added appeal of the denial of a Certificate of Appealability. One full year later, in April of 2016, the First Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reverse the decision not to allow a further appeal. I held my pen until that decision was rendered.

I do not want to use limited space here to rehash what I wrote in “Judge Joseph Laplante Denies Priest’s Appeal.” I hope that after reading this article, you will go back to read it for yourselves for it lays out all the reasons why I believe this outcome to be an abuse of judicial discretion. Denying the Certificate of Appeal had the effect of bankrupting the defense of a man who has spent twenty-two years in prison for crimes that most observers today conclude never took place.

The Grievous Error

However, none of that addresses the error that I am here today to address. I have spent considerable time reading a transcript of that hearing and Judge Laplante’s ruling. A significant part of both troubled me greatly, and I know that it troubled Father MacRae as well. It simply did not concur with MacRae’s memory of this case, and his memory, according to Dorothy Rabinowitz, is “encyclopedic.” The error involves a point that was heavily stressed by Judge Laplante in both the transcript and his dismissal order. I will begin with the transcript. The speaker is Judge Laplante:

“Now, leaving [Thomas] Grover’s credibility aside, nothing that [new witnesses] say undermines what seems to be a very important piece of evidence in the underlying criminal trial which is that when [James] McLaughlin, a detective from Keene, confronted MacRae with these accusations, he didn’t deny them. He had a very unusual response, basically quibbling with [Detective] McLaughlin over the proper terminology to apply to a person who is sexually attracted to children under 14 or 15. I don’t even remember the terms right now, but he basically corrected the detective for using the word pedophile. He came up with a more correct term — a more precise term. Whether that was even correct is debatable. But it was a very unusual response. It wasn’t a denial. It wasn’t the type of conduct that one would expect one to undertake when accused in that way. Especially a Catholic priest … MacRae did not react in a manner one would expect of an innocent person.”

— T: 51-52

Now, the excerpt above reflects just two paragraphs of a 70-page court transcript, but it was an extensive part of the reasoning behind Judge Laplante’s two-page decision dismissing the federal habeas petition. What Judge Laplante described above is a claim that Detective McLaughlin confronted Father MacRae about the charges involving Thomas Grover, referred to MacRae as a “pedophile,” and then instead of simply denying it, MacRae supposedly corrected McLaughlin by telling him that the correct term is “hebophile.”

There is just one major problem here. It never happened! Detective James McLaughlin never once “confronted MacRae with these accusations,” nor did any of what Judge Laplante refers to above have any connection with the case at hand. This is an egregious perversion of justice.

When I read this I was very troubled. Father MacRae has been confined in a 96-square-foot cell for twenty-two years with very limited access to documents in this case and no access to online research. As the above scenario surfaced, his lawyers sent him a statement to sign stating that he never made any such admission to Detective McLaughlin, but “told him that someone who might be attracted to someone Grover’s age would be an ‘phebophile,’ not a ‘pedophile.’ “

MacRae was troubled because he has no memory of McLaughlin ever discussing any aspect of the Thomas Grover case with him. He simply assumed that someone (his own lawyers? the prosecutors?) who have access to transcripts, must have found such a reference somewhere.

But they did not. No such reference exists. In the case for which Father MacRae was indicted and faced trial, McLaughlin and the prosecutors brought secret indictments. This priest first learned of the very existence of this case on the night of May 5, 1993, the night that police showed up at his door to arrest him on charges that were then over a decade old. He had no subsequent or even previous discussion about these charges with McLaughlin.

So what is going on here? When I got to the bottom of it, the truth was spine-chilling in its gross manipulation of this defendant, but it had no connection whatsoever with Thomas Grover’s charges or this trial or the appeal of this case. Bear with me, please, for this is indeed a complex account.

Whack-a-Mole Justice Holds Court

In 1988, a full five years before Thomas Grover and his brothers concocted their scheme to accuse Gordon MacRae, Keene, NH sex crimes Detective James McLaughlin targeted a number of Catholic priests who had lived and worked in the Keene area. One of them was Father MacRae who was assigned in Keene from 1983 to 1987. In 1987 and 1988, on a leave from parish ministry, MacRae was Executive Director of a regional chemical dependency treatment center near Keene, and in 1989 he became Director of Admissions for the Servants of the Paraclete facility for troubled priests in Albuquerque, NM.

No one had come to Detective McLaughlin with a complaint about MacRae. He launched an exhaustive investigation based on a letter from state social worker, Sylvia Gale, claiming that MacRae was once a priest in Florida where he “molested two boys, one of whom was murdered and his body mutilated.” Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote about that contrived and slanderous account in “A Priest’s Story” (WSJ, April 27, 2005). The Florida story had no basis in fact. MacRae had never been a priest in Florida nor had such a crime ever occurred there. The social worker’s claimed source was an official of the Diocese of Manchester who later denied it. For Detective McLaughlin, however, it became probable cause to launch a moral panic.

On September 19, 1989, Father MacRae received a telephone call from his sister in the Boston area. Upset and angry, she informed him that she received a call from Detective McLaughlin in Keene who told her that he was investigating MacRae for creating pornographic photographs of Keene youths. She gave her brother the number that McLaughlin left, and of course, knowing there was no truth to the claim, the priest called that number.

This was all set up in advance. That particular telephone line into the Keene Police Department was automatically recorded so McLaughlin was not required to obtain a warrant to call and record the priest. A warrant would require evidence, and there was none. This was a fishing expedition. In this telephone call, McLaughlin accused MacRae of taking pornographic photos of 15-year-old Jon Plankey who was later described by McLaughlin as an employee of his in “a family owned business.” It was also later discovered that McLaughlin and Plankey had made similar claims against three others, one of them Timothy Smith, a local Protestant church choir director who was charged and pled guilty.

MacRae vehemently denied the claim. He did not know he was being recorded, but at some point he invited McLaughlin to search his earthly possessions which were still stored in New Hampshire. McLaughlin declined to search anything, but stated that Plankey’s claims would become part of a lawsuit against the Diocese of Manchester. MacRae insisted that no such photographs were ever taken and do not exist. He asked McLaughlin why he isn’t even interested in searching for them. The detective reportedly replied, “Because I know there will be nothing there. You probably gave them to another priest.”

The detective wrote a report about this telephone conversation. It was report file number 89-12196 dated September 19, 1989. In that report, McLaughlin wrote that he recorded the conversation. His report claimed that he and Jon Plankey listened to the tape together, and that “a transcript will be made of this tape.” MacRae states (above) that McLaughlin said, “You probably gave [the photographs] to another priest.” If true, McLaughlin omitted this from his report, but it would have been present on the tape and transcript. So, where are they? And where are the condemning photographs?

Also in that report, McLaughlin wrote that he asked MacRae if he is a “pedophile.” His report claims that MacRae corrected him saying, “the correct term would be ‘hebophile.’” MacRae says he has never even heard of this word. I have found a reference to that word in only two places: McLaughlin’s 1989 report, and a transcript of a 1988 Geraldo Rivera Show faxed to McLaughlin (described below).

Among the many people McLaughlin approached in 1988-1989 looking for someone to accuse MacRae were members of the Grover family. Their mother, Patricia Grover, was then a social worker for the state agency that investigates child abuse cases, a position in which she interfaced often with Detective McLaughlin and with Sylvia Gale, author of the bogus Florida letter. His 1988 report indicated that Mrs. Grover would interview her three adopted sons, Thomas, David, and Jonathan Grover, all in their early twenties. None voiced a complaint about MacRae. Five years later, when the prospect of money loomed, all three changed their minds at the same time. Demonstrating the role that expectations of money played in this case, there is hard evidence that McLaughlin conducted some of his investigation from the office of Attorney Robert Upton, Thomas Grover’s contingency lawyer.

In 1993, as MacRae prepared for trial in the Thomas Grover case, state prosecutors were required to turn over all police reports related to the priest. MacRae was shocked to learn of a vast 72-page 1988 report and the 1989 report of the taped phone call with the “hebophile” claim.

When Thomas Grover accused MacRae five years later in 1993, prosecutors attempted to introduce into the trial the Plankey claim from 1989 as so-called “404-B” evidence of “other bad acts.” The defense filed a motion to obtain the recordings referred to in McLaughlin’s 1989 report. Judge Arthur Brennan ordered the state to turn over all recordings that McLaughlin claimed in reports to have made. McLaughlin wrote in a sworn statement that the tapes were lost due to having been “recycled.” Judge Brennan also ordered him to turn over the transcript of the 1989 recording. McLaughlin claimed that due to a clerical error the transcript was never made. The 1989 tape recorded conversation detailed herein is well documented (see USDC-NM 1504, §§ 28-32).

I can only conclude today that McLaughlin knew the recording contained his comment, “You probably gave [the lewd photos] to another priest,” a statement that would have unmasked a vile prejudice that would have weighed heavily in the trial. So the recordings disappeared. So did the so called “404-B” evidence.

Eleven years after this trial, after claiming repeatedly and under oath that all the tape recordings of MacRae that McLaughlin referenced in his reports were “recycled” and cannot be produced, the detective mailed one of them to Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal. It contained 45 minutes of Father MacRae sounding bewildered by the lurid accusations aimed at him, and his reference that he should talk to a lawyer, a request McLaughlin claims the priest never made.

This issue of tape recordings is very suspicious and has never been explained. McLaughlin claimed to have taped three phone conversations with MacRae, without his knowledge, and though there was no evidence obtained, McLaughlin attributed remarks to MacRae that the priest says he never made. Then all the tape recordings disappeared. The only witnesses to their existence or content are the detective and the priest. So why do the courts believe one over the other? Further, it seems that it was McLaughlin’s practice to tape record all conversations with accusers, but in this one case he produced not a single tape recording of any interview with the Grover brothers. In every other case of this sort he meticulously created recordings and preserved them as evidence. In some cases, including a claimant against another priest, McLaughlin arranged a polygraph for the accuser. None of this happened in the MacRae case. It should be noted here that MacRae himself underwent two voluntary polygraph examinations and passed them both.

There is more. It seems that the source of the “hebophile” term for which Judge Joseph Laplante dismissed MacRae’s petition may have been McLaughlin himself. Among the discovery obtained from the 1989 report about Jon Plankey’s claims of pornographic photos was a transcript faxed from the Geraldo Rivera Show to the Keene Police Department on November 14, 1988. The pages of the transcript were labeled by prosecutors in the discovery material as E-326 through E-331.

The topic of the “Geraldo” transcript that became part of Detective McLaughlin’s file was “The Church’s Sexual Watergate.” It contains this passage that someone at either Keene Police or the prosecutor’s office underlined and marked with a bold asterisk before sending it in pre-trial discovery in 1994. The transcript has nothing to do with the MacRae case, nor was he ever a part of it. It details a conversation between Geraldo Rivera and “Roland Lewis, Attorney for Church sex abuse victims”:

Geraldo: “Did there come a time, sir, when this priest was recognized to be a pedophile by the church and was taken to St. Luke’s Institute to be treated?”

Mr. Lewis: “They sent him to St. Luke’s Institute. He was kept there 12 weeks. During that time it was determined, according to their medical records, that he was a homosexual. We finally were able to obtain copies of those medical records. We have had them evaluated. They establish without question that he is a pedophile and a hebophile.”

Geraldo: “What’s a hebophile?”

Mr. Lewis: “It’s an abuser of adolescent children.”

Geraldo: “I thought that’s what a pedophile was. Help me.”

Mr. Lewis: “The preadolescent is primarily a pedophile. The adolescent is a hebophile.”

I wrote of this same transcript, and the role it played in the MacRae case, in “Truth in Justice: Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?” It seems that someone has lifted the supposed 1989 telephone conversation between Father MacRae and Detective McLaughlin — mired in suspicions of misconduct over missing tapes and transcripts — implanted it into the unrelated trial involving Thomas Grover, then used it twenty-two years later to deny access to justice in Father MacRae’s appeals. If this is the state of criminal justice, it is only half right. It is criminal. But it isn’t justice.

Saint Thomas More returning the Livery Collar of his office and fealty to King Henry VIII

What Would Saint Thomas More Do?

On September 13, 2012, a full year before MacRae’s habeas corpus petition came before Judge Laplante, the annual “Red Mass” for the legal and law enforcement community took place at Saint Joseph Cathedral up in the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire. It was officiated by The Most Reverend Peter A. Libasci, Bishop of Manchester. Following the Mass, Bishop Libasci was a guest of honor as the New Hampshire Catholic Lawyer’s Guild held its annual awards dinner at the Radisson Hotel to honor the 2012 recipient of the St. Thomas More Award.

According to the Catholic Lawyer’s Guild invitation, the award is bestowed upon a Catholic lawyer or judge “who embodies the spirit of St. Thomas More in courage, dedication, integrity, civility, and compassion toward others.”  On September 13, 2012 the St. Thomas More Award was presented by Bishop Libasci and the Catholic Lawyer’s Guild to The Honorable Joseph N. Laplante.

Saint Thomas More would have heard all sides. He would not, as so many have done, simply assume a priest’s guilt. He would not have made comments like “especially a Catholic priest.” He would not have presumed the existence of evidence he had never seen nor heard for himself. He would have gotten to the truth of the matter before tossing the case off his desk. He would not have allowed the continued judicial railroading of an innocent man.

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ADDENDUM JANUARY 26, 2022:

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

Keene New Hampshire sex crimes detective James McLaughlin developed claims against a Catholic priest while suppressing exculpatory evidence and coercing witnesses.

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For more information on this story, please read these other articles by Ryan A. MacDonald:

The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud

The Prison of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Silence

The Post-Trial Extortion of Father Gordon MacRae

In the Fr Gordon MacRae Case, Whack-a-Mole Justice Holds Court

Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester