Liable Is Not Guilty: The Difference Between a Civil and a Criminal Case in New Hampshire

Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

A New Hampshire jury valued one man’s abuse claim at $38 million. A statute cut it to $475,000, and the criminal trial over the same allegations ended with no verdict at all. Two courtrooms, two sets of rules, and almost nothing crosses between them.

David Meehan has carried the same allegations into two New Hampshire courtrooms. In one, a Rockingham County Superior Court jury put his damages at $38 million. In the other, on September 16, 2026, a Hillsborough County Superior Court judge halted the trial before jurors decided anything, and the former staffer he accused walked out still presumed innocent.

None of that is a contradiction. A civil case and a criminal case are two different machines. Different people start them. They aim at different targets, under different rules about how certain the decider has to be. Most of the confusion comes from assuming one courtroom can do the other’s job.

New Hampshire draws the line hard, and it shows up in small places: the name of the case, who pays for the lawyer, how long you have to file, and what the winner walks out with.

The caption tells you who is driving

Read the name of the case first. When it begins State of New Hampshire v. someone, it is a criminal prosecution and the State is a party. A county attorney or the Attorney General’s office decides whether charges get filed, which charges, whether to offer a plea, and whether to try again after a trial falls apart. The person who was hurt is a witness, not a party.

A civil case carries two private names, or a private name against a government body, and the person who was hurt runs it: whether to sue, whom to sue, what to demand, whether to settle.

Meehan sits on both sides of that line. He sued the State of New Hampshire himself over abuse at the former Youth Development Center, and a jury heard his case in May 2024. The criminal charges against a former YDC staffer belong to the State, and when that trial ended in a mistrial, the Department of Justice said it “retains the option to pursue the charges again.” That call was never his.

That disposes of the most common misunderstanding in New Hampshire courthouses. No private citizen presses charges. You report what happened to police, police investigate and refer, and a prosecutor decides. A victim can be consulted, can object, can testify, and can be ignored. The same person who cannot file a criminal charge can file a civil complaint that afternoon, which is why some people who cannot get a prosecution get a lawsuit instead.

One case can take your money. The other can take your freedom.

New Hampshire sorts offenses by how much liberty is on the table. Under RSA 625:9, a felony carries a possible sentence longer than a year. A class A misdemeanor tops out at a year. A class B misdemeanor carries no jail at all. A violation is not even a crime, and a conviction for one “shall not give rise to any disability or legal disadvantage.” That is the speeding ticket in your glovebox.

A civil court cannot send anyone to prison. It orders money, or it orders someone to act or stop. The vocabulary follows: a criminal defendant is found guilty or not guilty, a civil defendant is found liable or not liable. Reporters and readers mix the two constantly, and it matters, because “liable” carries no sentence, no probation officer, and no criminal record.

The reverse gap is just as real. A criminal conviction follows a person into job applications, housing screenings, and licensing boards. New Hampshire lets some of that be undone: under RSA 651:5, a person can petition to annul a record and afterward be treated “as if he or she had never been arrested, convicted or sentenced,” once a waiting period has run, one year for a violation up to ten for a felony. Nothing annuls a civil judgment. That is a debt, and it can be collected on for years.

How sure the decider has to be

In a criminal trial, New Hampshire jurors are told that “the burden of proving guilt is entirely on the State,” and that a reasonable doubt is a doubt based on reason rather than one that is frivolous or fanciful. The model charge traces to State v. Wentworth, 118 N.H. 832 (1978). If the State fails on any single element, the verdict is not guilty.

A civil plaintiff carries a far lighter load. The ordinary standard is a preponderance of the evidence: show that your version is more likely true than not. New Hampshire writes that idea into statute in places. On an appeal from a records ombudsman’s ruling, RSA 91-A:7-c directs the superior court to weigh “a balance of probabilities on the evidence before it.”

Terminating someone’s parental rights is a civil proceeding, and New Hampshire requires the State to prove grounds for it beyond a reasonable doubt, the same standard it carries in a murder trial. The burden tracks what stands to be lost, not the label on the file.

Who gets a lawyer

Part I, Article 15 of the New Hampshire Constitution gives a person held to answer for an offense “punishable by deprivation of liberty” the right to counsel at the State’s expense if need is shown. Jail exposure is the trigger. Charged with a class A misdemeanor and unable to afford a lawyer, you get one. Charged with a class B misdemeanor or a violation, where no jail is possible, you do not.

Civil court has no equivalent. Sue your landlord, get sued by a debt collector, fight a town over public records, and no one appoints you a lawyer, however much it costs you. The Right-to-Know Law says a records petitioner “may appear with or without counsel,” which is permission to represent yourself, not help with doing it.

Which courthouse, and how long you have

Felonies are tried in Superior Court. Misdemeanors and violations start in the Circuit Court’s district division, which also hears landlord-tenant cases and small claims: under RSA 503:1, disputes up to $10,000 not involving title to real estate. On the civil side the district division shares jurisdiction with Superior Court up to $25,000, and Superior Court holds it exclusively above that.

The right to a civil jury has a price of admission. Part I, Article 20 guarantees a jury in controversies over property and suits between persons, except where “the value in controversy does not exceed $1,500” and no title to real estate is involved. Criminal defendants get a different second chance: under RSA 599:1, someone convicted of a class A misdemeanor in circuit court can appeal to Superior Court and be tried again in front of a jury, start to finish. A civil litigant who loses gets an appeal on the law, not a second trial as of right.

The clocks run at different speeds, and this catches people. A misdemeanor must be prosecuted within one year. Class A and class B felonies carry six. A violation gets three months. Murder can be charged at any time.

The exceptions matter as much as the rule. For a sexual assault offense under RSA 632-A where the victim was under 18 when it happened, New Hampshire allows a prosecution within 22 years of that victim’s eighteenth birthday. It is the reason decades-old conduct at the Youth Development Center can be charged at all. Civil claims for personal injury run three years under RSA 508:4, and that clock can start later if the injury and its cause could not reasonably have been discovered at the time. Check the exception before concluding that anything is too old.

Both tracks can run on the same facts

Double jeopardy does not stop this. Part I, Article 16 bars trying a subject again “after an acquittal, for the same crime or offense.” That protection is criminal, and it says nothing about a lawsuit.

The parties are usually different anyway. Meehan’s civil suit named the State. The criminal cases arising from the YDC name individual former staff: same institution, same era, different defendants.

A verdict for the defense settles one question: whether the State carried its burden. A civil jury weighing the same evidence under a lighter standard can land somewhere else, and both results stand. Meehan’s own case shows the asymmetry: a civil jury set his damages at $38 million, and no jury has returned a verdict on the criminal charges arising from what he says was done to him.

What a civil win is worth on paper

Meehan’s jury returned $38 million and marked its verdict form to show the State liable for a single incident. The Attorney General’s office invoked the cap New Hampshire sets on claims against the State, which limits recovery to “$475,000 per claimant and $3,750,000 per any single incident” and bars punitive damages outright. In November 2024, Judge Andrew Schulman applied it and cut the judgment to $475,000, writing that doing so “will amount to a miscarriage of justice.”

A jury can say what it thinks harm is worth. The legislature decides what the State pays.

Why this matters on the records beat

Every public-records fight in New Hampshire runs on the civil track, and that single design choice explains most of what frustrates people about them.

When a town buries a document, nobody is arrested. Under RSA 91-A:7, a person who has been stonewalled petitions the Superior Court for injunctive relief and may do it without a lawyer. Win, and RSA 91-A:8 lets the court order the records released, invalidate an action taken at an illegal meeting, order fees paid, impose a civil penalty between $250 and $2,000 on an official who acted in bad faith, and require that official to sit through remedial training at their own expense. Fees are not automatic: a court awards them only where the body knew or should have known it was breaking the law.

The chapter turns criminal in exactly one place. Under RSA 91-A:9, a person is guilty of a misdemeanor who knowingly destroys information to keep it from being disclosed in response to a request. Hiding a record is a lawsuit. Shredding one is a crime.

That split is a legislative choice. A civil penalty capped at $2,000 is a cost of doing business for an agency that would rather not hand something over. A misdemeanor charge is a different kind of risk, and it attaches only once the paper is already gone.

So before asking whether anyone in New Hampshire will be held accountable, ask which courtroom the question belongs in. Ask it early. By the time the answer matters, the choice has usually been made for you.

Fact check

Editor’s note. Statutory and constitutional text is quoted from the New Hampshire Revised Statutes Annotated and the New Hampshire Constitution. Jury-instruction language is quoted from the New Hampshire Judicial Branch model charge. Reporting on the 2024 verdict, the damages-cap ruling, and the 2026 mistrial is sourced to New Hampshire Public Radio and InDepthNH as marked in the fact-check table. Jeffrey Buskey has not been convicted of the charges described here, and a mistrial is not a verdict. This article explains how New Hampshire classifies cases; it is not legal advice, and Granite State Report does not practice law. Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.