State of New Hampshire v. Richard N. Saunders

THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

SUPREME COURT

In Case No. 2015-0156, State of New Hampshire v. Richard
N. Saunders, the court on February 11, 2016, issued the
following order:

Having considered the briefs and record submitted on appeal, we
conclude that oral argument is unnecessary in this case. See Sup. Ct. R. 18(1).
We affirm.

The defendant, Richard N. Saunders, appeals an order of the Superior
Court (Houran, J.), following a hearing, granting the State’s motion to impose a
suspended prison sentence for failure to comply with a condition of the
sentence. He argues that the evidence compels a finding that he complied with
the relevant condition.

We review the trial court’s decision to impose the suspended sentence for
an unsustainable exercise of discretion. State v. Perry, 166 N.H. 23, 26 (2014).
To establish that the trial court unsustainably exercised its discretion, the
defendant must demonstrate that its ruling is clearly untenable or
unreasonable to the prejudice of his case. Id. We defer to the trial court’s
findings of fact unless they are unsupported by the evidence or clearly
erroneous. Cf. State v. Broadus, 167 N.H. 307, 310 (2015).

In October 2010, the trial court sentenced the defendant, upon his plea
of guilty to a charge of first degree assault, to a term of three-and-one-half to
seven years at the New Hampshire State Prison, all of which it suspended for a
period of five years upon the defendant’s release from prison on a separate
conviction. In October 2013, the State moved to impose the sentence on the
basis that the defendant had violated a “good behavior” condition of the
sentence. Following a hearing, the trial court found that the defendant had
violated the condition.

The trial court did not, however, impose the entire sentence at that time.
Instead, at the defendant’s request, it imposed twelve months of the sentence
to be served at the Strafford County House of Corrections, and suspended the
remainder on the condition that he complete a substance abuse treatment
program offered by the Strafford County House of Corrections known as
“Therapeutic Community” (program). In granting the defendant’s request, the
trial court warned him that in the past, it had found “that a number of people
have had difficulty in the [program] and not made it through,” and that if he
failed to complete the program, it would likely impose the balance of his prison
term. The defendant stated that he understood.

The program requires that its participants be housed in a separate unit
isolated from the general population at the house of corrections. The
participants engage in “treatment activities throughout the day,” and are
required to adhere to “strict behavioral and personal responsibility” standards.
According to the Assistant Superintendent of Education and Programs at the
Strafford County House of Corrections (assistant superintendent), it is
important to isolate participants from the general population in order to limit
“any type of negative influences or . . . typical . . . jailhouse behaviors . . . that
might happen in . . . the general population.” The assistant superintendent
noted, however, that in the ten years that the program had existed, it had
offered an alternative course of treatment to an individual housed in the
general population on four occasions. In each of those instances, either a
conflict of interest existed between the participant and an individual involved in
administering the program, or the participant had cognitive deficits or some
other factor beyond the participant’s control that rendered the participant’s
presence in the program’s unit “more of a detriment to the group as a whole.”

Prior to his completion of the program, the defendant was removed from
it for behavioral issues. Specifically, the defendant had been making “a lot of
kind of problematic and disparaging comments directed at other participants
and other staff people,” behaviors that, according to the assistant
superintendent, “would be destabilizing . . . to the [program’s] milieu if we were
to readmit him.” The assistant superintendent also confiscated a mug
containing stickers with images of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, and naked
women that the defendant would place on the table during program classes.

Following his removal, the defendant made multiple requests to be
readmitted to the program. Based upon his “pretty lengthy history” at the
Strafford County House of Corrections, his treatment team denied the requests,
concluding that he “would be [a] difficult case to . . . treat,” and that his
readmission would not be beneficial to the program’s other participants.
Because the treatment team wanted the defendant to have an opportunity to
receive further treatment, however, and because the defendant’s participation
in treatment within the general population suggested that he was invested in
returning to the program, the team offered to assemble an alternative course of
treatment similar to the alternative courses provided in the four prior cases.
Nevertheless, the assistant superintendent acknowledged that the defendant’s
circumstances were distinguishable from the prior cases because his exclusion
from the program was attributable to behavioral issues within his control. The
assistant superintendent testified that, were the defendant to complete the
alternative treatment, he would receive a certificate of completion “for the
competencies of the therapeutic community – in essence, . . . a separate, but
equal, certificate of completion of the program.”

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 Following the defendant’s removal from the program, the State again
moved to impose the suspended sentence. The trial court granted the motion,
finding that the defendant “has not and will not complete the therapeutic
community as ordered by the [trial court] as a condition of suspension.”
According to the trial court, “[t]he therapeutic community is a defined program
and [the defendant] through his conduct, removed himself from that program
to the point that he is not welcomed back into the program”; the alternative
course of treatment offered the defendant, the trial court found, “is not the
therapeutic community.” On appeal, the defendant argues that “[t]he record
compels the conclusion that [the defendant] was offered an alternative means
of completing the [program], not a different program.” We disagree.

In imposing the program as a condition to the continued suspension of
the sentence, the trial court made clear to the defendant that his termination
from the program would likely result in the sentence being imposed. Although
the assistant superintendent described the alternative treatment offered to the
defendant as “a separate [therapeutic community] curriculum,” the assistant
superintendent also testified that isolation from the general population and
participation in treatment activities with program participants are significant
components of the program. Indeed, in ten years of the program’s history,
alternative courses of treatment for individuals not residing within the
program’s unit had only been provided to four persons for whom circumstances
beyond each of those participant’s control rendered the program unavailable.
Were the defendant to complete the alternative course of treatment, he would
not receive the same certificate of completion as those who had completed the
program, but would receive “a separate, but equal, certificate of completion.”

Based upon the evidence, we conclude that the trial court’s findings that
the defendant did not, and would not, complete the program, and that the
alternative course of treatment was not the program required under the terms
of the defendant’s sentence, were neither unsupported by the evidence nor
clearly erroneous. Accordingly, the trial court’s imposition of the suspended
sentence was neither clearly untenable nor unreasonable to the prejudice of
the defendant’s case. Perry, 166 N.H. at 26.

Affirmed.

Dalianis, C.J., and Conboy and Lynn, JJ., concurred.

Eileen Fox,
Clerk

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