The judge who oversaw a landmark trial over abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center won’t reconvene the jury but says he will consider other options to address the disputed $38 million verdict.
David Meehan, who alleged he was repeatedly raped, beaten and held in solitary confinement at the Youth Development Center in the 1990s, was awarded $18 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in enhanced damages on May 3. But the attorney general’s office is seeking to reduce the award under a state law that allows claimants against the state to recover a maximum of $475,000 per “incident.”
Meehan’s lawyers asked Judge Andrew Schulman on Tuesday to reconvene and poll the jury, arguing that multiple emails they received from distraught jurors showed that they misunderstood a question on the verdict form about the number of incidents for which the state was liable. But Schulman said Wednesday that recalling the jury would be inappropriate given that jurors have been exposed to “intense publicity and criticism of their verdict.”
