Clegg evidence suppression hearings underway at Merrimack County Superior Court

CONCORD, NH – Attorneys in the Logan Clegg murder trial are in court this week for another round of hearings on whether evidence that led to Clegg’s arrest can be allowed at his October trial.

Defense attorney Caroline Smith is challenging evidence, including whether Clegg showed “consciousness of guilt,” when he gave Concord police detectives an alias when they were looking for Djeswende and Stephen Reid on April 20, 2022, in the Broken Ground Trail System in northeast Concord.

The Reids were found dead the next day from multiple gunshot wounds.

That issue is just one of several evidence motions in the case being heard this week by Judge John Kissinger. Some of those motions may be postponed and not heard this week, Kissinger said.

This week’s hearing is expected to last three or four days.

Clegg’s trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 2. It was originally scheduled to begin last week, but attorneys said they needed time to review DNA evidence that was still being analyzed as of last month.

Smith is arguing that the state can’t claim consciousness of guilt – that Clegg gave investigators a false name because he had killed the Reids – until they can prove Clegg killed the Reids.

“We are saying the state does not have evidence that Mr. Clegg committing the shooting,” she said.

Clegg, 27, is charged with two counts of knowing second-degree murder, two alternative counts of reckless second-degree murder, four counts of falsifying physical evidence, and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, all related to the Reid killings. The Reids were shot multiple times while they were on a walk through the trail system near their Loudon Road apartment.

After three days of hearings in May, Kissinger denied the defense request to suppress evidence, including the Verizon phone tracking that was used to locate Clegg in Vermont.

A man police believed to be Clegg was seen on the trail near where the Reids were found minutes after a woman walking her dogs heard gunshots. Weeks later, shell casings that matched a gun later found in Clegg’s possession were found near the trail.

On April 20, 2022, after the Reids were reported missing, two Concord police detectives came across Clegg in a tent about a quarter-mile from where the Reid’s’ bodies were later found. He told them that his name was Arthur Kelly, and that he was from Massachusetts, and didn’t know anything about the missing couple.

Smith pointed out this morning that the casings were not found in April 2022 when the Reids body were found, but much later, and said the state did not have evidence to tie Clegg to the homicides. She said all they could prove is that he was in the area at the time the Reids were killed.

She said that Clegg could have also given the false name because he was wanted on a fugitive warrant out of Utah.

Smith is asking that witnesses that supported Concord Police Department’s arrest of Clegg in October be called during this week’s hearing in order to determine how valid the state’s evidence is.

“What you’re really trying to say is you want to try the case,” Kissinger, the judge, said to Smith. He said both the grand jury that indicted Clegg earlier this year, as well as himself, found there was probable cause to try Clegg. He said many of the questions Smith was raising were up to a jury to decide.

But Smith and Clegg’s other defense attorney, Mariana Dominguez, said it was up to Kissinger to decide the probative versus prejudicial value of evidence before the trial.

Prosecution attorney Assistant Attorneys General Danielle Sakowski agreed with Kissinger, that some of the issues were better raised during the trial.

“If for any reason evidence came out differently at trial, the defense could ask to reconsider,” Sakowski said. Assistant Attorney General Joshua Speicher is also part of the prosecution team.

Possible witnesses in the hearing had been subpoenaed and were in the court today. Kissinger said he’d hear more arguments before deciding whether they would testify or not.

Clegg was arrested in October in South Burlington, Vermont.