New Hampshire v. Fedor
Annotate this CaseDefendant Lisa Tagalakis Fedor was convicted by jury of knowingly keeping or maintaining a common nuisance. Defendant lived in Manchester with her boyfriend and her two children. In January 2013, the boyfriend approached defendant about allowing Robert Doane to move in with them. Doane was an acquaintance of the boyfriend’s from whom the boyfriend had purchased heroin. Defendant agreed to allow Doane to move into a spare bedroom. Defendant knew that Doane sold drugs and allowed him to continue to do so after he moved in, but asked him not to sell drugs inside the house. After moving in, Doane began selling heroin on the street outside of the residence. Inside the residence, Doane installed a padlock on his bedroom door, but defendant had witnessed Doane in his bedroom, packaging heroin into “individual baggies.” Doane, despite being a convicted felon, also obtained a stolen firearm that he kept in the house. Defendant was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit the sale of a controlled drug and one count of knowingly keeping or maintaining a common nuisance. Defendant moved for JNOV, or, in the alternative, to set aside the verdict. The trial court denied her requests for relief, and this appeal followed. Defendant argued on appeal that: (1) the trial court erred when it denied her motion for JNOV, specifically, that the evidence presented at trial was insufficient to prove that her residence was “used for the selling of the controlled drug heroin” because “drugs were not sold from inside the residence”; and (2) that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding that she “maintained a common nuisance under RSA 318-B:16” because she “did not control or ‘maintain’ Doane’s padlocked room.” The Supreme Court affirmed, concluding that the trial court’s denial of the defendant’s motion to set aside the verdict was supported by the evidence at trial, and did not constitute an unsustainable exercise of discretion.
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