The Subpoena Shell Game: What Nashua Has in Common with the Governor's Office

A companion piece to Doris Hohensee's "When Public Meetings Become Police Operations" — GraniteGrok, May 2026

Doris Hohensee's recent GraniteGrok piece is a must-read account of how nine ordinary New Hampshire citizens were wrongfully arrested at a public Executive Council meeting in October 2021 and then spent the better part of two years navigating a justice system seemingly designed to exhaust them into submission. Charges were dropped at the last possible moment, attorneys were disbarred or blocked from practicing in New Hampshire, and when these citizens finally filed their own pro se federal lawsuit, the Attorney General's office refused to serve the named state troopers with subpoenas and demanded over $1,000 in sheriff's fees to do it.

When public pressure forced the AG's office to reverse course, Hohensee noted it plainly: "Shining a little daylight on misbehavior has a way of embarrassing those perpetrating it."

She's right. And that same dynamic, government using procedural obstruction to raise the cost of accountability, is playing out right here in Nashua.

The Law Is Not Complicated

Before getting into the specifics, it helps to understand what the law actually says, because the City of Nashua is counting on citizens not knowing.

A subpoena does not have to be served by a sheriff. Under applicable court rules, any adult over the age of 18 who is not a party to the case can serve a subpoena. That's the rule. It is accessible, low-cost, and deliberately so because the ability to compel witnesses is a fundamental element of due process, and that right should not depend on how much money a citizen has to spend.

The AG's office in the Hohensee article tried to make subpoena service cost over $1,000 in sheriff's fees. The City of Nashua, in my Right-to-Know case, tried a version of the same play.

Locked Doors and Refused Deliveries

Nashua City Hall is, for most practical purposes, a locked building. Access to most offices requires an appointment. The City Clerk's office, however, is open to the public; it is by design the people's point of contact with their city government.

This matters because this is not the first time subpoena service in the City of Nashua has become its own legal skirmish. In a prior Right-to-Know petition involving the NPAC Arts Center, service became so contentious (the City requested the Court issue a protective order against me for the subpoena service) that the Court ultimately ordered the City to accept subpoenas through counsel. I was able to pull subpoenas sent to the Sheriff’s office to save money. The attorney representing the City in that case was Attorney Hilliard.

In my current Right-to-Know case, once again with Attorney Hilliard as outside counsel for the City, a merits hearing was scheduled for May 8, 2026. The week before the hearing, I reached out to Attorney Hilliard with a simple, good-faith question: could I leave the witness subpoenas at the City Clerk's office? It was the same solution a court had already approved in the NPAC case, with the same attorney on the other side.

His response was not accommodation. He informed me that the City would be filing motions to kill all of my subpoenas, and that the City would not accept service, not through me, not at the Clerk's office.

I proceeded anyway. I formally processed the subpoenas and arranged for service by a person over 18 who was not a party to the case, lawful service, by the rules. The City's legal office, operating through the Clerk's office, refused the delivery.

The implicit message was identical to what those Concord citizens received from the AG: pay for the sheriff, or go without.

The Trap — Sprung Three Days Later

Here is where the parallel to Hohensee's account becomes impossible to ignore.

Three days after the City refused lawful service of my subpoenas, Attorney Hilliard announced he was on extended travel outside of the country and needed to reschedule the May 8 hearing.

Think carefully about that sequence.

Had I followed the City's pressure campaign and paid sheriff's fees to serve the subpoenas through law enforcement, as the City was insisting, I would have lost every dollar of it the moment the continuance was announced. There are no refunds when a hearing gets rescheduled. The fees are gone, and service must start over.

The citizens in Hohensee's case faced the same arithmetic: pay over $1,000 to the same government apparatus that was fighting them in court, or find another way. They tracked down the troopers themselves, a decision that carried genuine physical risk, as Hohensee noted, because all state troopers carry firearms. The AG's position only reversed after they took to Facebook and the pressure became public.

My stakes were lower. But the mechanism was the same: inflate the procedural cost of service, then move the hearing anyway, and let the citizen absorb the loss.

The Court Agreed with Me

I filed a motion asking the Court to approve alternate service and order the City to accept subpoenas at the Clerk's office, the same remedy already granted in the NPAC case involving the same opposing counsel.

The Court agreed and issued the order.

This is not a victory to celebrate. It is an indictment of how this City conducts itself in litigation. A citizen should not need a court order to do something the rules already permit. The fact that this identical procedural battle has now been fought twice, in different cases, years apart, with the same attorney representing the City both times, is not coincidence. It is a pattern.

Just as the AG's reversal came only after public embarrassment made the obstruction untenable, the City of Nashua accepted alternate service only after a judge compelled it.

The Cost Argument, Reversed

The City and its outside counsel have at various points complained about the burden that citizen litigants impose on city resources, the legal fees, the staff time, the cost of Right-to-Know compliance.

Let's examine that claim honestly.

The citizens arrested at the Executive Council meeting invested over $10,000 in an attorney who was subsequently disbarred. Their second attorney was blocked from practicing in New Hampshire. They ended up litigating pro se because, as Hohensee wrote, "that's the way justice works in New Hampshire." The state dropped charges at the last moment, maximizing legal expense and intimidation while avoiding accountability.

In my case: the City refused service that was already legally valid, forced a court motion, required a judicial order, and created a continuance that made all of it temporarily moot. Every dollar of that waste traces directly to decisions made by the City and its outside counsel.

The waste is not coming from citizens pursuing their legal rights. The waste is being manufactured by the attorneys hired to obstruct them.

Sunlight

Hohensee ended her piece with a call for transparency: "We need an awful lot of sunlight in New Hampshire, because there's an awful lot of misbehavior."

The obstruction she documented at the state level, false arrests, disbarred lawyers, refused subpoenas, $1,000 service demands, has its local equivalent in Nashua. The tactics are scaled down. The principle is identical: make accountability procedurally painful enough, and most people will stop.

The AG's office reversed itself when people started watching. The City of Nashua complied when a judge issued an order.

Both are arguments for more watching, more writing, and more court filings, not fewer.