Verizon rep, Concord detectives to testify as witnesses in re-examination of Logan Clegg’s warrantless cellphone search

State prosecutors plan to call six witnesses in the Logan Clegg double-murder case after the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a warrantless phone search used to track and arrest Clegg violated his constitutional rights and must be re-examined.

Clegg was convicted in the 2022 deaths of Steve and Wendy Reid, a retired couple who was shot and killed while walking on a trail near their Loudon Road home in Concord.

It took investigators six months to apprehend Clegg, a process that relied in part on cellphone location data obtained from Verizon without a warrant. 

Concord police used the data to “ping” Clegg’s location in Vermont, where he was ultimately taken into custody. Authorities argued at the time that he posed an imminent danger to public safety and was a flight risk.

In a Merrimack County Superior Court filing submitted Monday, prosecutors said witness testimony will focus on activities related to search warrants, the process for obtaining those warrants and the searches themselves, including the location of Clegg’s campsite near the trails where the Reids were found dead. 

Witnesses are also expected to address investigative activities conducted in Burlington, Vermont, where Clegg was arrested, as well as information gathered from his cellphone, laptop, backpack and on his person.

The witnesses named include Concord Police Sgt. Wade Brown, Det. Danika Gorham, Det. Brendan Ryder and Det. Garrett Lemoine, along with Marc McGonagle, a former police lieutenant with the department. All five have previously testified in the case during the trial. 

Sarah Ferguson, or another representative from Verizon, is also expected to testify about the company’s procedures for handling search warrant requests for real-time cellphone data.

This comes after Judge John Kissinger said in court Friday that he was inclined to allow the state to present additional evidence to demonstrate that investigators would have ultimately located Clegg through lawful means, even without the warrantless cell phone search that led to his arrest six months later in Vermont.

The state Supreme Court didn’t overturn Clegg’s conviction. Instead, it sent the case back to the trial court to review whether evidence like his phone data should have been suppressed.

“The trial court did not properly weigh the circumstances relevant to the risk of the defendant’s escape or the risk that the defendant would destroy evidence or imminently endanger life or public safety,” the state Supreme Court said in its ruling. “In short, the circumstances did not ‘make it impracticable to obtain a warrant.’”

The Supreme Court has given the lower court until June 15 to reconsider Clegg’s motion to suppress the evidence.

Clegg is currently serving a 100-year prison sentence at the state prison in Berlin.

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