In court, Logan Clegg’s lawyers call Concord police’s warrantless cellphone ping ‘constitutional violation’

Marc McGonagle, a former lieutenant with the Concord Police Department, took about 30 minutes to come to the decision that may have determined whether Logan Clegg, now a convicted murderer, would be taken into custody.

Clegg was suspected of killing a Concord couple, Steve and Wendy Reid, several months prior in April 2022. After being notified by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that Clegg had purchased a one-way flight to Germany, investigators worried that he would flee overseas.

McGonagle testified in court this week that, after consulting with colleagues, he decided to ping Clegg’s device through Verizon to locate him without a warrant. 

McGonagle said investigators proceeded in obtaining Clegg’s cell phone location data from Verizon without a warrant so that “we could apprehend the defendant in this matter before he fled the country, two days later.”

Last month, the New Hampshire Supreme Court directed the lower court to reconsider whether Concord police acted lawfully in executing the warrantless search. The hearing at the Merrimack County Superior Court on Tuesday saw testimony from witnesses for the state, who hammered the sense of urgency investigators felt to detain Clegg.

The alert from DHS came on October 11, 2022, along with a phone number associated with Clegg’s itinerary. Clegg’s ticket from JFK Airport in New York to Berlin, Germany, was dated Oct 14.

Data from the warrantless cellphone pings led to Clegg’s arrest on Oct 12 inside a public library in South Burlington, Vermont.

Jennie Tomalin, a senior analyst from Verizon, and Concord Police Sgt. Wade Brown and Det. Brendan Ryder also took the stand to testify.

Throughout the proceedings, Logan Clegg, dressed in a blood-red jumpsuit, sat beside his lawyers, sometimes looking up or down, at other times writing on a yellow notepad, but rarely exchanging a word with his legal team.

Maya Dominguez, one of Clegg’s attorneys, objected multiple times during the hearing. Clegg’s attorneys did not call any witnesses to testify.

Thomas Bernard, attorney for Clegg, described the Concord police’s method of obtaining Clegg’s cell phone data as a “constitutional violation” of Clegg’s rights.

“The evidence here clearly shows that the police were firmly entrenched in that mistaken belief that if they obtained a warrant, there was no way to get Verizon to respond within a few hours or even the day,” Bernard said.

Police filed for a warrant to deploy a cell site simulator on the same night the phone was pinged, after the U.S. Marshals Service — which would deploy the device — requested one. But police continued pulling ping data from Verizon without a warrant, even the next day.

Attorneys for the state argued that police acted in good faith and contacted Verizon’s exigency hotline out of concern for the urgency of the situation.

“This is not a case where the police, because of that ‘wrongdoing’, are in a better position than they would have been,” said Joshua Speicher, Assistant Attorney General at the state Department of Justice. “It does not place them in a different place, metaphorically speaking, or in possession of knowledge that they otherwise would not have obtained legally.”

Clegg is currently serving a 100-year prison sentence for the Reid murders at the New Hampshire State Prison in Berlin. The Supreme Court has directed Judge John Kissinger to hold additional proceedings and reconsider Clegg’s motion to suppress the evidence by June 15.