Ex-Cop Pivero Argues No Need For Laurie List Placement After NH Supreme Court Win

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org, InDepth NH

CONCORD, NH — After getting a win from the New Hampshire Supreme Court, Anthony Pivero, a whistleblowing former Nashua police officer, argues there’s no need for him to ever be on the Laurie List.

Pivero’s latest motion, filed July 1 in Merrimack County Superior Court, argues that the state Supreme Court’s recent rulings on the Laurie List make it clear the list is meant for actively employed police officers who could be called as witnesses in criminal cases, and not cops who retired decades ago.

“The likelihood that [Pivero] would be required to testify as a former police officer for a criminal case is essentially zero,” his attorney Marc Beaudoin wrote in the latest motion.

Late last month, the Supreme Court gave Pivero the green light to keep fighting his Laurie List placement when it sent his case back to the Superior Court for further fact-finding and due process proceedings. Now, Pivero’s attorney Marc Beaudoin argues the lower court needs to remove Pivero from the list of officers with problematic credibility or criminal records.

The Supreme Court overturned Merrimack County Superior Court Judge Brian Tucker’s dismissal and sent Pivero’s case back so that Tucker can do a review to determine if Pivero deserves the listing. Beaudoin argues any review based on recent Supreme Court rulings is going to find Pivero does not belong on the list.

Since a 2021 change in the law brought about as a compromise in the lawsuit filed by the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, publisher of InDepthNH.org, ACLU-NH and several other news outlets, state courts have been essentially crafting the new ground rules for the Laurie List. The New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism is the only plaintiff that has continued on with the lawsuit against the attorney general to essentially make public all of the names on the list. That case remains before Hillsborough County Superior Court Judge Charles Temple.

The Supreme Court’s rulings in the last year of appeals by officers on the list who lost in Superior Court fighting to have their names removed, make it clear that the purpose of the list is to inform defense attorneys and prosecutors going to trial about police witnesses with potentially exculpatory evidence in their personnel records.

“At its very basic, the EES is a prosecutorial tool used to help quickly identify police officers that may have exculpatory evidence in their police personnel files,” Beaudoin wrote. “However, simply reviewing the EES does not alleviate a prosecutor's due diligence in determining if there is exculpatory evidence in a police witness' personnel file, because further review may be required. Therefore, the EES is just a tool to quickly identify those police officers that have exculpatory evidence in their personnel files. Furthermore, police prosecutors are working with police witnesses that are still active-duty police officers, and very rarely will call a police witness that has either recently resigned or retired. That is why the EES is only effective for active-duty police officers or for those police officers that have recently retired or resigned.”

Pivero’s been fighting his placement on the Laurie List, also known as the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule, since 2022. That’s when the outspoken Nashua officer, who retired in 2002 after being involved in a fatal justified shooting, found out he was on the list for police officers with credibility problems.

Given that Pivero is retired, gave up his police certificate 30 days after he left the Nashua department, and has been out of law enforcement for at least 20 years, it is unlikely he’ll ever be called as a witness. That leaves the possibility that officers like Pivero are getting placed on the list as a way to embarrass them.

“Those officers that have been separated from law enforcement for several years, or decades would essentially never be called to testify in a criminal case as a police witness for the state, and to include a police officer who has been out of the field for over two decades on the EES would simply only serve to embarrass him/her,” Beaudoin wrote.

When Pivero was placed on the list in 2017, he was never informed. He was only able to find out why he got put on the list by taking the City of Nashua and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office to court.

According to court records, Pivero got in trouble with his Nashua superiors in 2001 when he refused to translate for a suspect another officer had detained. The suspect was a native Spanish speaker and Pivero did speak some Spanish.

The Nashua Police Department decided to discipline Pivero for refusing to translate, claiming he lied about having done translation for other officers in the past. Pivero has said he never lied, and refused to do the translation because he was not fluent enough in Spanish to keep up with the suspect.

Pivero ended up suspended for 16 days and demoted in 2002, a punishment he was fighting through the New Hampshire Public Employee Labor Relations Board. Before his case could be heard by the board, Pivero was involved in a September, 2002 fatal shooting of a murder suspect and soon retired on an accidental disability claim. The shooting was deemed legally justified by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

The Supreme Court ruled in its order that Pivero was never given his full due process rights because the PELRB hearing never happened. The court also found Tucker failed to consider the age and relevance of the alleged conduct compared to Pivero’s overall record and history as a police officer, standards that the Supreme Court has used to remove officers from the Laurie List.

Pivero’s career in Nashua is notable for the enemies he made among top department brass and political operators.

Pivero was a young Nashua patrolman in 1994 when he arrested Alan Rudman, the son of former U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman, for aggravated drunk driving. Alan Rudman had a history of drunk driving and prior involvement in a fatal accident.

But Alan Rudman’s charges were reduced to speeding at the last minute. Pivero spoke out publicly about the Rudman case and alerted the press. Soon, newspapers ran stories that revealed Nashua police reduced charges on a disproportionate number of drunk driving arrests. The New Hampshire Union Leader eventually won a state Supreme Court case forcing Nashua police to release the video of Alan Rudman being booked at police headquarters.

Pivero also filed a complaint after he left the department in 2013 against former Nashua Police Chief John Seusing that led to Seusing’s name being placed on the Laurie List before he retired.

“This all goes back to the Seusing complaint,” Pivero told InDepthNH.org of his placement on the list.

In 2013, Pivero accused Seusing of fabricating an arrest report in the mid-1980s related to a bar fight that resulted in a lawsuit.

After investigating, the attorney general said Pivero’s complaint was unfounded. But the same news release said the attorney general found Seusing had lied about the case to his supervisor, adding he was disciplined and had admitted to the lie.

The lie was disclosed in one homicide case in 1993, but the judge rule it inadmissible saying it wouldn’t have made a difference and likely would have confused jurors.

Then it wasn’t disclosed again until after the attorney general’s investigation when three men convicted of homicide were alerted to the opportunity to seek a new trial because the information hadn't been shared with the defense as required after the U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland. Criminal defendants must be told of any evidence that is favorable to them, including when testifying police officers have been disciplined for dishonesty, criminal behavior or excessive force.

Pivero became a union president in the Nashua department and was never shy about filing grievances.

While the 2021 law allowed police officers on the list to file in Superior Court anonymously, Pivero insisted that his name be made public.

He said it has been a long process getting to this point.

"It's exhausting - the process, the aggravation, the money spent, court time, the judicial process. My case like a lot of others came down to due process. The Attorney General's Office, they know what due process is. They should be resolving these matters without court intervention as long as you are getting a fair shake," Pivero said.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.