CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — One of the jurors who awarded a New Hampshire man $38 million in a landmark lawsuit over abuse at the state’s youth detention center says the state is misinterpreting the verdict by capping the payment at $475,000.
Jurors on Friday awarded $18 million in compensatory damages and $20 million in enhanced damages to David Meehan, who alleged that the state’s negligence allowed him to be repeatedly raped, beaten and held in solitary confinement as a teenager at the Youth Development Center in Manchester. But the attorney general’s office said the award would be reduced under a state law that allows claimants against the state to recover a maximum of $475,000 per “incident.”
Jurors were not told of the cap. When asked on a verdict form how many incidents they found Meehan had proven, they wrote “one.” The completed form does not indicate whether they found a single instance of abuse or grouped all of Meehan’s allegations together, but one of the jurors emailed Meehan’s attorney on Sunday to explain their reasoning.
“We wrote on our verdict form that there was 1 incident/injury, being complex PTSD, from the result of 100+ injuries (Sexual, Physical, emotional abuse),” the juror wrote, according to court documents filed Sunday by Meehan's attorneys. “We were never informed of a cap being placed per incident of abuse and that is wrong how the question was worded to us.
“The state is making their own interpretation of the ruling that we made, and that is not right for them to assume our position,” the juror wrote. “David should be entitled to what we awarded him, which was $38 million.”
Meehan’s attorneys have asked the judge in the case to hold an emergency hearing on the matter Monday and have brought in former state Supreme Court Justice Gary Hicks to help make their case.
Attorneys for the state had not responded to the request for a hearing by Sunday evening, and Michael Garrity, spokesman for the attorney general’s office, declined to comment other than pointing to Friday’s statement about the cap.
In their motion, Meehan’s attorneys said the juror's email statement and others sent by the jury foreperson confirm that jurors misunderstood the verdict form. The attorneys said that the finding of only one proven “incident” is “conclusively against the weight of the evidence” and logically inconsistent with the damages awarded.
In such circumstances, the court “not only has broad discretion, but is in fact duty-bound to take corrective action,” they wrote. The attorneys cited past cases in which judges questioned juries and then directed them to reconsider their verdicts.
The jury foreperson emailed one of Meehan’s attorneys Rus Rilee, within hours of the verdict, saying, “I’m absolutely devastated.” The next morning, the foreperson sent a message to attorney David Vicinanzo saying, “My guilt kept me awake for the better part of the night.”
“I was literally sickened and brought to tears in fear of the mistake we made. I still am,” the juror wrote.
Meehan, 42, went to police in 2017 and sued the state three years later. Since then, 11 former state workers have been arrested and more than 1,100 other former residents of the Youth Development Center have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual and emotional abuse spanning six decades.
Meehan’s lawsuit was the first to go to trial. Over the course of four weeks, Meehan’s attorneys contended that the state encouraged a culture of abuse marked by pervasive brutality,corruption and a code of silence.
The state argued it was not liable for the conduct of rogue employees and that Meehan waited too long to sue. In cross-examining Meehan, attorneys for the state portrayed him as a violent child who caused trouble at the youth center — and as a delusional adult who exaggerates or lies to get money.
The case highlighted an unusual dynamic in which the attorney general’s office is both defending the state against the civil lawsuits and prosecuting suspected perpetrators in the criminal cases.
Plaintiff David Meehan, center, leaves the courtroom with his attorney Rus Rilee, right, and victim specialist Joelle Wiggin during Meehan's trial at Rockingham Superior Court in Brentwood, N.H., April 10, 2024. The jury found the state liable for abuse at its youth detention center and awarded the sum to Meehan, a former resident who says he was beaten and raped as a teen. (David Lane/Pool Photo via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hundreds of protesters rallying within sight of the Capitol chanted pro-Palestinian slogans and voiced criticism of the Israeli and American governments as they marked a painful present — the war in Gaza — and past — the exodus of some 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from what is now Israel when the state was created in 1948.
About 400 demonstrators braved steady rains to rally on the National Mall on the 76th anniversary of what is called the Nakba, the Arabic word for catastrophe. In January, thousands of pro-Palestinian activists had gathered in the nation's capital in one of the larger protests in recent memory.
There were calls in support of Palestinian rights and an immediate end to Israeli military operations in Gaza. “No peace on stolen land” and “End the killings, stop the crime/Israel out of Palestine,” echoed through the crowd.
Protesters also focused their anger on President Joe Biden, whom they accuse of feigning concern over the death toll in Gaza.
“Biden Biden, you will see/genocide’s your legacy,” they said. The Democratic president was in Atlanta on Saturday.
Reem Lababdi, a George Washington University sophomore who said she was pepper-sprayed by police last week when they broke up an on-campus protest encampment, acknowledged that the rain seemed to hold down the numbers.
"I’m proud of every single person who turned out in this weather to speak their minds and send their message,” she said.
This year’s commemoration was fueled by anger over the ongoing siege of Gaza. The latest Israel-Hamas war began when Hamas and other militants stormed into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking an additional 250 hostage. Palestinian militants still hold about 100 captives, and Israel’s military has killed more than 35,000 people in Gaza, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
There is widespread anger, too, over the violent crackdown on multiple pro-Palestinian protest camps at universities across the country. In recent weeks, long-term encampments have been broken up by police at more than 60 schools.
In addition to pressing Israel and the Biden administration for an immediate end to hostilities in Gaza, activists have long pushed for the right of return for Palestinian refugees — an Israeli red line in decades of start-and-stop negotiations.
After the Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment, Israel refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian majority within Israel's borders. Instead, they became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in slum-like urban refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In Gaza, the refugees and their descendants make up around three-quarters of the population.
Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
A young man wearing a keffiyeh and a Jewish star necklace, left, holds a banner next to a 7-year-old from Springfield, Va., wearing a traditional outfit on the shoulders of her grandfather, who is Palestinian, during a pro-Palestinian rally, Saturday, May 18, 2024, on the National Mall near the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
A young man wearing a keffiyeh and a Jewish star necklace, left, holds a banner next to a 7-year-old from Springfield, Va., wearing a traditional outfit while on the shoulders of her grandfather, who is Palestinian, during a pro-Palestinian rally, Saturday, May 18, 2024, on the National Mall near the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
A 7-year-old from Springfield, Va., wearing a traditional outfit while being held by her grandfather, who is Palestinian, raises her fist during a chant at a pro-Palestinian rally, Saturday, May 18, 2024, on the National Mall near the Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
A man wearing a keffiyeh looks at the U.S. Capitol during a pro-Palestinian rally, Saturday, May 18, 2024, on the National Mall in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Cody Wolfe, center, of Elizabethtown, Penn., holds his two-year old son on his back wearing a keffiyeh, as he and his children attend a pro-Palestinian rally, Saturday, May 18, 2024, on the National Mall near the Capitol in Washington. "For our family it's the least we can do," says Wolfe, who said he is not of Palestinian descent but has been attending protests, "to show our solidarity. We want the babies to stop dying." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
