Ex-NH candidate agrees to 45 days electronic monitoring
CONCORD, N.H.—Former congressional candidate Gary Dodds, who was arrested this week for allegedly violating his bail conditions, will be released from jail but subject to 45 days of electronic monitoring while he appeals his conviction stemming from a crash two years ago.
Dodds was convicted in February of falsifying evidence, creating a false public alarm and leaving the scene of an April 2006 crash that prosecutors allege he staged to boost his faltering campaign. He was sentenced to 20 days in jail and a year of home confinement but was out on bail when he was arrested Tuesday morning after his wife reported that he had been acting irrationally, moved out of their Rye home and thrown her to the floor during an argument.
A hearing was scheduled for Thursday to set new bail conditions, but an agreement was reached Wednesday, said defense lawyer J.P. Nadeau.
"It was negotiated. His main concern was for his wife and his children and himself not to have to go through another public spectacle," Nadeau said.
On Tuesday, Nadeau and Strafford County Attorney Thomas Velardi had back-to-back news conferences, with Nadeau arguing that authorities overreacted to Cindy Dodds' call to police and the prosecutor defending the arrest as necessary given that a potential crime had been committed.
The new bail agreement requires Dodds to be monitored with a GPS system and imposes a 10 p.m. curfew for 45 days. Dodds also agreed to undergo a mental health evaluation, Nadeau said.
At his trial, Dodds claimed he hit his head when he crashed into a guardrail in Dover, then nearly drowned in a river before collapsing for 27 hours until he was rescued. He argued that police charged him to cover up bungled efforts to find him, but prosecutors accused him of spending part of the night outside, soaking his feet in cold water to make his story believable.
Dodds, a Democrat, finished third in a four-way race for the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District. Winner Carol Shea-Porter defeated the Republican incumbent.
