During her budget address to the Legislature earlier this month, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte took a detour from spending proposals and revenue projections to highlight another priority.
“What happened in Manchester last Friday night, it's unbelievable,” Ayotte told lawmakers gathered in Representatives Hall.
Ayotte, a former prosecutor, then described an incident from earlier in February when a 25-year-old man repeatedly stabbed another man on Elm Street, in the city’s downtown.
Rather than being held in custody pending trial, the man was arraigned and then released, a decision Ayotte blamed on the state’s bail laws.
“I cannot emphasize this enough: send me legislation to fix this once and for all,” she said.
The “fix” Ayotte is seeking is for a bail system that has been the subject of near constant debate in New Hampshire since it was overhauled in 2018. That’s when a bipartisan group of lawmakers, backed by then-Gov. Chris Sununu, passed a measure that aimed to prevent indigent people from sitting in jail cells awaiting their trial, simply because they didn’t have enough money to make bail.
Opponents, including some in law enforcement, cautioned that the new policies would pose a risk to public safety. The February stabbing in Manchester is fresh evidence of that, they say. But supporters of the reforms point to crime statistics showing a steady reduction in both violent and property crimes since bail reform was enacted.
They also caution that even the Manchester case is more complicated than it may appear in sound bites and headlines.
A ‘revolving door’
Broadly speaking, here’s how bail currently works in New Hampshire: After someone is arrested for an alleged crime, they appear before a bail commissioner, a magistrate or a judge.
Prosecutors have the option of asking the court for preventative detention, and if they do so, they must prove by “clear and convincing” evidence that the defendant is a danger to themselves or to the public, or prove the person is a flight risk.
The judge makes the final decision, but the benefit of the doubt essentially goes to the defendant. Depending on the severity of the alleged crime, that defendant may then be released on personal recognizance bail, meaning there is no cash or bond required.
Critics say that the lack of cash bail, and the speed at which the process now moves, creates a revolving door, with some people committing a fresh crime while out on bail, sometimes on the same day.
They contend that the scale is now tipped too far in favor of release.
In the recent Manchester stabbing case, Mayor Jay Ruais expressed similar outrage to Ayotte after a judicial magistrate initially released the defendant on personal recognizance bail over the objections of prosecutors. The Manchester Police Department, in a press release, called the stabbing an act of “extreme violence and randomness,” and criticized the defendant's release on bail. During the man’s arraignment, two days after the initial bail hearing, city prosecutors did not ask a district court judge to reconsider his release.
This wasn’t the first time police departments and prosecutors have spotlighted individual cases in which a defendant was released pending trial over their objections. And lawmakers have responded, including making several tweaks to the law since it first passed in 2018.
But it is largely the same system in place today.
“We keep slapping these Band-Aids on this thing. And I really just think it's time to like: let's go back from the beginning,” said Rep. Ross Berry, a Republican from Weare.
Even before the Manchester stabbing, he wrote a bill to undo the reforms, and return the bail system to its pre-2018 rules. That bill is now before lawmakers.
Berry said there have been just too many headlines about people out on bail committing, in some cases, violent crimes.
“Let’s try to find the original concept which was: low level crimes, for a person who is indigent,” he said. “We don’t want to just hold them in jail forever because they can’t afford a $10 bond, right?”
Berry’s bill is still making its way through the Legislature, backed by the Republican majority. An amendment supported by Ayotte would give judges more authority to detain defendants, but wouldn’t scrap the entire system adopted in 2018.
Supporters of the original reforms, though, say that while additional tweaks may be beneficial, the overall process is working well. Rep. Buzz Scherr, a Democrat and longtime criminal defense attorney in the state, disputes the allegations made by some that the system allows dangerous people to walk the streets.
“The fundamental problem with the scare tactics being used is, it’s inconsistent with the facts,” he says.
Scherr points to FBI statistics that show violent crimes and property crimes in New Hampshire have continued to decline. Between 2011 and 2023, those crimes are down nearly 58% according to FBI data, with no noticeable uptick following the 2018 bail reforms.
He doesn’t think the state should just scrap the entire system.
“We don’t get out over our skis,” says Scherr. “We find out what actually happened before we start using cases as a poster child for bail reform.”
A slur, a punch
Case in point, Scherr says, is the recent case out of Manchester.
Last week, Kyle Bisson, the defendant accused of stabbing another man on Elm Street, was back in a courtroom for an appeal requested by state prosecutors on his bail status.
A lawyer for the Hillsborough County Attorney’s office walked the judge through the case, including showing surveillance footage from the incident, which took place outside of Bunny’s Convenience story at approximately 7 p.m.
The video shows Bisson and another man — identified in court paperwork by his initials, M.P. — in a prolonged verbal argument.
The men walk away from each other, continue gesturing, then repeatedly come back together and get in each other’s faces.
The surveillance footage doesn’t have sound, but Bisson, who is Black, claims M.P., who is white, used racial slurs including the n-word.
During the confrontation, Bisson tells M.P. that he has a knife, prompting M.P. to also claim he is carrying a knife. Then, M.P. slugs Bisson in the face. There is a brief scuffle on the ground.
In court, county prosecutor Patrick Ives narrated for the judge what happens next.
“Stabs once, stabs twice, stabs a third time, stabs a fourth time, and they’re out of frame,” Ives told the court.
In the video, the men come back into view. They’re on their feet. M.P. backs up, when Bisson lunges and stabs him repeatedly again.
In total, M.P. suffered nine wounds, while Bisson was also stabbed once during the scuffle on the ground.
After the video was shown, Ives asked Judge Michael Klass to label Bisson a public safety risk, and detain him pending trial.
“The question before the court is, are we concerned this could happen again?” asked Ives.
Klass responded that “it has to be more than just ‘something could possibly happen,’ right?” to which Ives agreed.
“It has to be clear and convincing that there is going to be a danger to the public, right?” said Klass, pointing to the legal standard at the heart of the current law.
There was more evidence discussed in court: Bisson has a criminal history. Last year, he pled guilty to criminal threatening for punching a locked door during an altercation with a family member.
Ultimately, the judge, when he made his ruling, said the key facts are that Bisson was punched first by a man who claimed he also had a knife. That was enough to tilt the scale in Bisson’s favor and allow him to walk out of court, free until his trial.
If Bisson is to serve any time in jail for this incident, it will only be if a jury finds him guilty.
As Bisson’s case plays out, New Hampshire’s bail system will face its own trial of sorts, in Concord, where lawmakers are debating whether to scrap it, re-write it or leave it untouched.
