Jeffrey Fairbrothers, one of the students charged in connection with the Hanover High School cheating scandal, was acquitted of being an accomplice to trespassing by the Lebanon District Court Wednesday, according to The Valley News. Fairbrothers is the first of the students implicated in the incident to be acquitted of all charges. Nine other students have been charged, four of whom have pled guilty or no contest and two of whom have been convicted.
Fairbrothers was accused of acting as a lookout for the students who broke into Hanover High last June to steal answers to their upcoming math and chemistry exams.
Although Fairbrothers confessed on July 10 to Hanover detective Capt. Frank Moran, Judge Albert Cirone Jr. found insufficient evidence to corroborate this confession, according to The Valley News. Under New Hampshire law, a confession alone is not grounds for a guilty verdict.
"Your confession, I believe, is true," Cirone is quoted as saying in the Valley News, "I believe your involvement shows you were as much a participant as the others that have been convicted."
Fairbrothers' lawyer had filed a motion to suppress the confession, arguing that Fairbrothers and his parents were not aware they were being interviewed in connection with a criminal case. Cirone denied the motion last week, The Valley News reported.
Cirone prevented another witness, Hiroki Podjuban, from testifying because the prosecution did not added him to the witness list within 14 days of the trial. Podjuban had already pled guilty to being an accomplice in the case, The Valley News said.
The prosecution was left with only two witnesses, Moran and Sally Hair, the chemistry teacher whose exam was stolen. Fairbrother's lawyer, Scott McGee, successfully argued that the two witnesses' testimony was not sufficient basis for a conviction because neither witness had provided direct evidence of Fairbrothers' involvement, The Valley News reported.
After rendering his verdict, Cirone told Fairbrothers that he had a "good idea" of what happened the night the exams were taken, but that Fairbrothers had benefitted from being tried separately from the other accused students, according to the Valley News.
