First Amendment Rights Upheld in New Hampshire Secret Recording Case

In a judicial victory which applies both to secretly videoing police officers as well as undercover reporting, New Hampshire Superior Court Justice Gillian L. Abramson granted Alfredo Valentin’s motion to dismiss “based on the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and insufficiency of the indictment.”

Andrew Quemere of PhotographyIsNotACrime.com explains:

Despite coming up with a novel argument to justify wiretapping charges against Alfredo Valentin, the New Hampshire man arrested in March for recording police as they searched his home, prosecutors were smacked down by a judge in a ruling issued last Wednesday.

“They tried to take the language from Massachusetts law, and they kind of tried to sneak it into New Hampshire law,” said Brandon Ross, Valentin’s attorney.

In an attempt to convict the Manchester man, prosecutors tried to take advantage of the Massachusetts wiretapping law, which is different than New Hampshire’s law.

In Massachusetts, the wiretapping law criminalizes all secret recording of conversations, even those that take place in public.

“If there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy, you can record somebody with a secret camera or a secret microphone [in New Hampshire],” Valitin’s attorney Brandon Ross said, according to PINAC.

Our sister organization, Project Veritas Action Fund, has recently filed suit in Massachusetts to overturn the Massachusetts law, as well.