The arraignment for Bill Walker’s perjury case was held on 2009-10-08 at 09:00 at Belknap Superior Court.

Bill D., Cassidy, and I drove up from Manchester to attend the arraignment. I planned on videoing as usual. Interestingly, the bailiffs at the door had no issues with me bringing the camera through, and the court clerk’s office actually knew exactly what to do with the video motion form without any problems or delays.

We all waited around in the court lobby on the second floor waiting for the case to be called. At Superior Court, it seems that they expect people to wait out in the lobby, unlike the district courts where everyone goes into the courtroom and waits through and gets to watch everyone else’s proceedings. We didn’t test whether or not this is required—whether or not people aren’t “allowed” to witness other trials—although all proceedings are supposed to be public, with few exceptions, so this might be interesting to probe next time we’re in Superior Court.

Bill filed two motions: one for bail, and one to dismiss the case on grounds that he had not purposefully failed to disclose his past misdemeanor conviction on the appearance form, as it had not been disclosed to him that the conviction was for a misdemeanor. Bill had consulted with Evan Nappen on this case, and, as Evan works as a contract attorney with the public defender’s office in Belknap County, Bill applied for a public defender and requested Evan specifically.

Sometime after 10:30, a lawyer from the public defender’s office finally came out to talk with Bill, explaining that if he applied for a public defender, he’ll first be assigned a lawyer out of their pool of directly-employed lawyers before they can assign him a private attorney who merely “contracts” with the public defender’s office. Bill was shuffled back and forth between two or three lawyers and/or bureaucrats from the public defender’s office before “his” actual lawyer came out and called him into a conference room to discuss the case.

Bill, Ivy, and I went into the conference room together. The lawyer [didn’t get his name—will add that later] began to explain the case to Bill, letting him know how the procedure works, what he’s been charged with, and so on, noting in particular that he had to meet with Bill alone to discuss any substantive matters of the case, since either Ivy or myself might be called as witnesses. The lawyer was upset that Bill had filed the motion to dismiss, containing statements of fact that he said the State might be able to use against Bill; however, the motion was written up with Evan Nappen’s advice, so no one except the public defender saw this as a concern.

Bill had requested $1,000 personal-recognizance bail; the lawyer received an offer of $5,000 from the State, which Bill agreed to. Bill waived the actual arraignment, entering a not guilty plea via a paper form. Five or six byzantine forms and a dozen signatures later, and everything was done for this stage of the case.

We were out of there by 11:30.

Being a Superior Court case, there are several upcoming court dates scheduled: A dispositional conference is scheduled on 2009-12-04 at 08:30, a final pre-trial conference on 2010-01-20 at 13:30, and jury selection for 2010-02-01 at 09:00. No actual trial date is scheduled yet. All of these court dates are in Belknap Superior Court.