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April 17, 2008 -- Concord Monitor (NH)

Police: Student Lured To Arrest By Principal

17-Year-Old Collared At Brady After Texting

By Annmarie Timmins, Monitor staff

Return to Drug War News: Don't Miss Archive

A Concord High student charged in March with intending to sell marijuana at Bishop Brady High School was lured to Brady by its principal, according to a police report. She arranged the alleged drug deal with 17-year-old John Huckins through text messages while posing as a friend of Huckins's, according to the report.

Principal Jean Barker sent the text messages on a cell phone she had confiscated from a Brady student, the report said. The exchange started when Huckins text messaged his friend's cell phone at Brady, asking, "Yo, need a bag?" the police report said.

What Huckins didn't know was that Barker had confiscated his friend's cell phone and was using it herself.

Barker did not receive permission from the police to arrange the alleged drug deal and called the police only after she set it up, according to the police report.

Huckins of Columbus Avenue, Concord, is charged with possession of a controlled drug with intent to distribute, a felony.

Huckins, a senior, was also suspended from Concord High for 10 days immediately after his arrest. But Concord school officials are also trying to suspend him for the rest of the year because they allege Huckins began the drug transaction over his cell phone while on Concord High property, a violation of drug-free school laws, according to court records.

Huckins's attorney, Mark Howard of Manchester, is challenging that second, longer suspension on several grounds, one of which is that Concord school officials violated Huckins's rights the first time they tried a longer suspension.

Howard declined comment, yet other criminal defense attorneys reached yesterday raised several concerns about Barker's role in the case. Some questioned whether she had violated privacy rights or run afoul of drug laws by setting up a drug buy on school grounds.

"It's bizarre," said Concord attorney Mark Sisti. "It's a created crime."

But in a phone interview yesterday, Barker defended her decision to pose as a student friend of Huckins's to set up an alleged drug buy. Barker argued that Huckins's alleged willingness to bring drugs to Brady, even under false pretenses, put her school at risk.

"Whatever part I play, it is with the intention of making sure all the kids in the building are safe and making good choices," she said. "I would not get on the phone and initiate buying drugs from someone. But when it was obvious that someone was going to involve one of our students in the sale of drugs, . . . I am not going to ignore it."

The Concord police have declined to comment on the case, citing the pending charge against Huckins. But Huckins's arrest and Barker's role in it are detailed in a police arrest report.

Bishop Brady's student handbook forbids students from having a cell phone with them during normal school hours. According to the police report, Barker confiscated the cell phone of a 17-year-old Brady student March 6. The police report does not say how she came to have it.

Once she had the confiscated phone, Barker scrolled through the phone's contact list and began calling the students listed. Her purpose, she told the police, was to find any student who answered her call and reprimand them for having cell phones on school grounds.

Barker also told the police that this is her common practice when she takes a cell phone from a student.

Barker made several calls on the confiscated phone, but no one answered. A short time later, the confiscated cell phone received a text message, the police report said. It was from Huckins, one of the people on the contact list Barker had tried to reach.

Barker opened the text message and saw that it asked, "Yo, need a bag?" the report said. Barker became suspicious that the text message referred to drug activity, so she posed as the cell phone's owner and answered in the affirmative, the police report said.

According to a transcript of the text conversation, Barker arranged the marijuana buy for about 2 p.m., asked for a second bag and said she would wait at the school for the delivery. Barker then called the Concord police to report the pending drug activity, the police report said.

The police responded to Brady. Meanwhile, Barker maintained contact with Huckins while posing as his Brady friend, the report said. Huckins twice expressed concern about bringing the drugs to the school, the report said, but Barker insisted.

"Just meet me at Brady back door," she wrote at 2:11 p.m., the police report said.

"That's so sketchy. Cant you just wait til after school," Huckins texted back.

The back and forth continued. "I can explain when we hook up," Barker reassured Huckins. "dude I don't like that," Huckins responded.

When Huckins arrived near Brady about 2:30 p.m., the Concord police arrested him. He had 1 ounce of marijuana, the police report said.

Later at the police station, Huckins told the police he was not a "dealer" and that "he only smoked marijuana because he had anxiety and did not like taking prescription drugs," the report said.

The next day, Concord High School officials suspended Huckins for 10 days based on his arrest. Huckins did not challenge that suspension. But on March 26, after he returned to school, the superintendent's office notified Huckins that it was suspending him again, this time for the rest of the year.

Howard challenged that suspension because the school district had not followed its own rules, according to a court case he's brought against the Concord School District, Superintendent Chris Rath and high school Principal Gene Connelly.

The district did not notify Huckins in writing of the charges against him before suspending him for the rest of the year, nor did it tell him he could have a lawyer at any hearing on his second suspension, Howard told the court. Howard also argued that Huckins did not violate the drug-free school zone rules of Concord High because his arrest was near his home, in the vicinity of Bishop Brady.

School officials acknowledged this month that they had violated their own rules in the way they handled Huckins's second suspension, according to court records. They rescinded that suspension. But then they immediately initiated the longer suspension again, this time according to district protocol.

In his case against the district, Howard is asking a judge to prevent the school from following through with that suspension. He said the school should not be given a "do-over" just because it violated its own rules the first time.

Howard said Huckins has been accepted by some liberal arts colleges and wants to finish high school so he can pursue a degree in the fall.

The school district's lawyer, John Teague, has filed an objection to Howard's request, and the two sides were in Merrimack County Superior Court this week before Judge Philip Mangones. "The remedy is . . . not to ignore the offense and reinstate the student, but to provide the required due process," Teague wrote in his court filing.

Mangones has not yet ruled.

Local criminal defense lawyers who reviewed the police report for the Monitor yesterday said they'd never seen an arrest like this one.

Michael Iacopino, president of the New Hampshire Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said if it were his case, he'd investigate whether Barker had violated the state's wiretap laws, which forbid people from intercepting communications not intended for them.

He also said soliciting a drug crime, as Barker says she did, is a crime. But her decision, ultimately, to involve the police makes it unlikely she'd be charged, he said.

"I don't know where it fits, but I know in my gut that it's wrong," he said.

Ted Barnes, a Concord defense lawyer, also raised the communication interception. "The second thing that struck me," he said, "was the viciousness of setting this kid up in a way that he can get the maximum trouble."

A more obvious question is whether Barker violate privacy rights by reading a text message not meant for her and using a cell phone that was not hers. Barbara Keshen, staff attorney for the New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that is an open question.

Private schools, she said, do not guarantee the same privacy rights as a public school. Americans are protected from intrusion by the government, and a private school is not the government. The case would be different if it had happened at a public school.

Yesterday, Barker said she has heard some questions about the drug arrest at Brady. "Someone said, 'Isn't this a bad advertisement for Brady?' " Barker said. "I said I thought it was just the opposite. It shows we are not going to ignore this. The message is very clear. We are going to take action."

She hasn't done anything similar before, she said. But she isn't convinced she did anything wrong. "I have an obligation as the leader of the school both educationally and spiritually," she said. "It's one of my jobs to make sure that the kids are in a safe environment. When drugs are involved, it's not a safe environment."

Transcript of the text messages (4/17/2008)

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