Two justices from the New Hampshire Supreme Court — one now retired, the other the current chief justice — are making headlines: Not for their rulings, but for their actions off the bench.
- Last week, the independent committee that oversees the state’s judges announced ethics charges against former justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi.
- That news comes as Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald remains out on a sudden, unexplained and what appears to be extended medical leave, with no known return date.
- The day-to-day operations of the state’s courts continue, but the status of both justices, moving forward, is uncertain.
NHPR’s Todd Bookman joined All Things Considered host Julia Barnett to talk through these unusual events, and what may come next.
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Transcript
Todd, I want to start with a former Justice Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi. She's been off the Supreme Court since February — that's when she reached the court's mandatory retirement age of 70. But late last week, she was slapped with new ethics charges. And that comes on the heels of her criminal conviction last year. Can you explain what's happening here?
These two things, the criminal charges and the ethics charges, are both tied together.
If we rewind back to the summer of 2024, the court announced that Anna Barbara Hantz Marconi had been placed on administrative leave. She was essentially off the bench with no reason provided. That same summer, a grand jury had been meeting secretly to review allegations involving Hantz Marconi's husband, Geno Marconi. At the time, he was the state ports director.
What would later come out is that Hantz Marconi, in June of that year, had gone and met with Gov. Chris Sununu, and she had a conversation with him. And that conversation was allegedly about both her husband's investigation and the impact the administrative leave was having on the courts. When the New Hampshire attorney general found out about this conversation, prosecutors there concluded that she was trying to influence Sununu, trying to get him to step in in some way and help her husband. And they filed criminal charges against a sitting justice.
And those criminal charges were huge news, obviously — a state Supreme Court justice getting hauled into a courtroom. The case, though, never made it to trial, right?
Right. The felony charges against Hantz Marconi were dropped in exchange for her pleading no contest to a misdemeanor. She paid a fine. That was it. Her law license was restored, and she was back, sitting on the bench for oral arguments. It seemed like this whole thing was just suddenly over.
And then something strange happens. After this long legal case and plea deal, within just a few weeks of returning to the bench, Hantz Marconi announces a reversal. Instead of hearing cases, she would instead only focus on the court's administrative tasks. This went on for three or so months, until she reached the mandatory retirement age of 70, which came in February of this year. She retired, and that was that.
But this whole time, something else was hanging over her. This special committee of lawyers and judges, they're called the Judicial Conduct Committee — they kind of police the state's judges in a way — they had also obviously been aware of and looking into Hantz Marconi.
This ethics case — that's what was announced last week. What's she accused of?
Well, the conduct at issue is the same thing that resulted in the criminal charges. It's all related to the meeting with Sununu and other efforts she may have made involving the investigation into her husband.
The Judicial Conduct Committee is technically accusing her of two different violations. One is pretty straightforward: She broke a criminal statute. Two, she's accused of failing to promote public confidence in the courts with her behavior, this kind of catch-all ethics charge.
Hantz Marconi put out a statement last week saying she admitted to the committee that her actions were “ill advised.” She even said she was willing to accept some form of sanctions. But for reasons we may eventually find out, she wasn't able to reach a negotiated agreement. So now this public hearing is scheduled for her in December.
Even though she's off the bench [and] no longer a judge.
Even though she's off the bench. I'm not sure we've ever seen anything like this. I'm not sure what kind of sanctions she could face. It's all uncharted territory.
There's one other wrinkle in the Hantz Marconi case that's worth mentioning. Back before her plea deal, when it looked like she could be heading to a criminal trial, another name came up: Gordon MacDonald, the state's chief justice. Hantz Marconi told investigators that before she met with Sununu, she actually approached MacDonald for his opinion and that he told her that he believed a meeting with the governor would be appropriate. But when investigators later asked MacDonald directly about that consultation, he denied any knowledge of it. This kind of creates this strange situation, because it appears that one of these judges may not be telling the truth about this conversation.
MacDonald is also making headlines, but for different reasons. The court announced July 31 that he was taking a sudden medical leave of absence. Do we know anything more about that?
Not really. MacDonald is 64 years old. He's an avid runner. Beyond the court, he's also been heavily involved with a national conference of chief justices. Now he's dealing with some sort of medical issue, apparently quite serious. There was a follow up statement sent last week saying MacDonald’s doctors confirmed he's unable to work, but that there's no forecast for his return in his absence. Justice Patrick Donovan is going to assume the chief's duties during his leave.
Before his leave of absence, MacDonald was at the center of some scrutiny. An allegation was made that he helped steer a $50,000 payout to a top ally within the courts. Do we know if the Judicial Conduct Committee is also looking into that?
The committee generally keeps everything it does confidential until it's ready to announce its findings. Take the Hantz Marconi case. The committee did publicly confirm that it was aware of her criminal charges, but its decision to actually pursue those ethics charges wasn't released until the charges were ready and the Judicial Conduct Committee put them out.
With MacDonald and this payout to a top staffer at the courts, there was no criminal case. So if the committee is looking into ethics charges against MacDonald, we, the public, will not know about it until and if they decide to make a formal announcement. It's not really clear how MacDonald's health could factor into anything like that.
This is just a lot of attention on the courts for reasons way beyond their normal course of business. Do you get the sense that this is harming the judicial branch in some way?
I don't know about harming. Maybe people keep reading these headlines and they start to think differently about the courts. The other branches of government are now so overtly political, and therefore often not all that trusted. The courts haven't necessarily fallen down that same slope, at least at the local and state level.
I can tell you that the state courts, though, are concerned about their image. We know that because they've hired an outside political consultant at the cost of $10,000 a month to help with their communication, their messaging. At the individual level, Hantz Marconi's public hearing is going to again put her under the spotlight, but it could also force Gordon MacDonald or former Gov. Sununu to have to testify. And I doubt any of them would look forward to that.
For MacDonald, there's a lot of scrutiny right now on what exactly his health condition is. Of course, public officials are entitled to a level of privacy, I think we can all understand that. But he is the head of an entire branch of New Hampshire government, and he has suddenly kind of vanished, in a way, with no explanation. It's all just a very strange situation.
