CONCORD, NH – Logan Clegg, charged with second-degree murder in the shooting deaths of Djeswende and Stephen Reid, of Concord, will be tried in July, a Merrimack County Superior Court judge ruled Monday.
Clegg was in court to be arraigned on eight charges, including two counts of second-degree murder for “knowingly causing the death” of each of the Reids, two alternative second-degree murder charges for “recklessly causing” their deaths, three counts of falsifying physical evidence and one count of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm. His indictment on those charges was announced Jan. 19.
Djsesende, 66, and Stephen Reid, 67, were shot to death while on a walk in the Broken Ground Trail system in northeast Concord on April 18. Their bodies were found three days later about 50 yards off the trail.
Jury selection will be July 10, with the trial beginning July 11, Judge John Kissinger ruled Monday.
Prosecutors told Kissinger they expected an eight- to 10-day trial, but Clegg’s attorneys said the trial would take at least two weeks.
Clegg, wearing prison orange and a facemask, with his hands cuffed and shackled to his waist, didn’t speak during the proceeding. He is being held without bail in Merrimack County Jail. He waived arraignment, and most of Monday’s 15-minute hearing was a sidebar to determine trial scheduling with Kissinger, Clegg’s public defenders Caroline L. Smith and Mariana Dominguez, and prosecutors Joshua Speicher and Danielle Sakowski, from the N.H. attorney general’s office.
Motion to Unseal Arrest Documents
The attorney general’s office, before the hearing, filed a motion asking that documents related to the case be unsealed, including the arrest warrant, search warrants, applications, accompanying affidavits and returns.
The motion said the state originally requested the documents be sealed because they had information that could compromise the investigation “by revealing the identities of witnesses, the officers involved, and investigative information known only to the authorities.”
But since Clegg has been indicted, and that information is public, there is no need for the items to remain sealed, the motion said. An affidavit by South Burlington, Vermont, police that details the case that led New Hampshire law enforcement to tie Clegg to the shootings was released in October, after Clegg’s arrest on Utah fugitive charges. New Hampshire law enforcement officials said at the time that their affidavit supporting his arrest on murder charges is much more detailed.
The prosecutors at Monday’s hearing didn’t speak to the motion, but Smith, Clegg’s attorney, argued in favor of keeping the documents sealed.
She said the arrest affidavit doesn’t have a purpose for the case that’s now being heard. “It’s not a pleading, it’s not a response to anything,” she said. She argued that it is in the case file as part of the investigatory tool to make sure the police met their burden to use the tools that led to the arrest, and are not part of the “adversarial process” of the case going forward.
“This is essentially a one-sided summary of the state’s best case, or law enforcement’s best case,” Smith said. “It is very similar to the grand jury that all of the procedures before filed with this docket were done without any input by the defendant, without any role of the defendant.”
She added, “Although the public has a right to know about this case, this case and what they know should be those things that are part of the adversarial process.”
Kissinger didn’t rule on the motion to unseal, but said he’d take the arguments under advisement.
Clegg was living in the woods in the Broken Trail area of northeast Concord when the Reids were shot in April. He was arrested in Burlington, Vermont, on Oct. 12, on Utah fugitive from justice charges. He had been convicted in August 2020 on theft and other charges, and sentenced to time served and 36-months’ probation, but left Utah before completing probation.
His October arrest came after a lengthy investigation by New Hampshire law enforcement. After he was extradited to New Hampshire, he was charged in the Reids’ deaths.