MARCH 2018.
Just two years into his four-year term, then-President Donald Trump visits Manchester to laud the Safe Station program. A new state prison for women opens in Concord. And COVID-19 is about 21 months away from being first identified in a city in central China.
On the 10th day of March 2018, 21-year-old Tori Kort went to a Derry hospital and reported she had been raped that previous night in a Manchester apartment.
Nurses gathered evidence. She immediately named a suspect. Manchester police launched an investigation, and by the end of the year Hillsborough County prosecutors obtained an indictment in the case.
Then the case landed in the mire and muck of the Hillsborough County justice system.
Eleven times a date has been set to select a jury and begin a trial. And 11 times — including three times this year — jury selection has been canceled.
When the 11th trial date — Jan. 24, 2022 — was yet again canceled, a judge set a new start date for April 2022. But will it finally take place then?
“I don’t have a lot of confidence,” Kort said. “It’s just a really frustrating experience. It feels like it’s very back burner.”
Is this another case of bungling at the Hillsborough County Attorney office? After all, a judge is holding a sanction over the office for habitually missing deadlines.
Not so, said Hillsborough County Attorney John Coughlin.
He said the COVID-19 pandemic created a backlog in the court system, and judges are giving priority to cases involving people who are in jail.
Kort’s alleged assailant — Manchester resident Brandon Boggs, 26 — paid a $5,000 bail after his arrest, which means the trial doesn’t get as high a priority.
In fact, Judge Diane Nicolosi recently refused to schedule an ironclad date for the Boggs trial, citing the priority for incarcerated defendants.
Coughlin’s prosecutors say they need a date certain on the calendar because the trial will involve out-of-state and expert witnesses. The last thing they want to do is bring everyone to Manchester and then postpone the trial at the last minute because someone sitting in Valley Street jail rejects a plea bargain and demands a speedy trial.
“The system in general is hard on victims,” said Shaylen Roberts, one of two prosecutors assigned to the case. “We’re 100% there with (Kort) on that. Their frustration is not unfounded.”
Kort, who reached out to the Union Leader, said the delays are prompting her to speak out.
Her frustration has grown as prosecutors assigned to the case quit and victim-witness advocates are slow to keep her up-to-date on the case.
She’s had Zoom meetings about the case that have included Coughlin, his first assistant and Deputy New Hampshire Attorney General Jane Young.
In September 2020, Young — who was involved in the Attorney General’s Office takeover of the Hillsborough County Attorney office two years ago — wrote Coughlin a polite letter about the Kort case.
Young reminded Coughlin that two years have passed since the arrest, Kort is distressed, and his prosecutor was responsible for one of the delays. She urged Coughlin to prevent further delays.
Shawn Sweeney, the first-assistant in the office, said COVID-19, which prompted a six-month suspension of trials, set the case back as much as 1½ years.
“This case ran into the front of COVID,” Sweeney said. He said the length of the expected trial, 10 days, is another factor.
Prosecutors are responsible for one of the delays; former Assistant County Attorney Amy Manchester once got a delay to attend a training seminar. But defense attorneys have convinced a judge to postpone four times.
They just approved the latest in September when defense attorney Debra DuPont said a personal medical issue prevented her from trying the case in January. Prosecutors wouldn’t sign off on the request, but the judge granted it anyway.
Just last week, prosecutors asked Judge Nicolosi to guarantee a trial date. That request is pending.
Criticisms of the Hillsborough County Attorney’s office are not new. Coughlin is the third county attorney to complain about high caseloads, underfunding and turnover.
Coughlin said his prosecutors still have high caseloads. For example, Roberts has 197 cases; her co-counsel Jonathan Cowal has 201. Meanwhile, public defenders have a cap of 70 cases, according to the New Hampshire Bar Association.
But Coughlin said the Kort case is more about scheduling, not high caseloads. Judges have to get more strict with scheduling, he said.
“It is frustrating for us,” Coughlin said.
Kort thinks Coughlin is responsible for managing the caseloads.
“Early on, I had a lot of confidence with the team,” she said, “now I think the longer it goes on the harder it’s going to be.”
According to court filings, Boggs’ attorneys seem to be focusing on DNA samples and whether the collection was tainted. That means a trial with scientific experts on both sides, hence the need for a lengthy trial.
So Kort waits. She has one thing in her favor — the longer the case stretches on the higher the priority it gets.
Kort doesn’t cry or break down when we talk. She speaks confidently but with a tone of annoyance.
She worries the case will weaken as time goes on, something prosecutors dispute. And the delays mean she can never put the rape behind her. For example, she’s moved three times since that night and held three jobs.
Each time she changes jobs she has to tell a new boss about the attack and that she will eventually need time off work to return to Manchester (she lives on the West Coast) for the trial.
“It’s still,” Kort said, “kind of hanging there.”
