NEW HAMPSHIRE
A Ram in the Thicket
By Ryan A. MacDonald
Former New Hampshire Judge Arthur Brennan was arrested at a Washington, DC protest in October 2011. In 1994, he sentenced Fr. Gordon MacRae to die in prison.
I spent some time last month poking around inside These Stone Walls, an extraordinary website that by all odds should not exist. I once wrote of all the random factors that had to coalesce for this story of a Catholic priest falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned to be told. “The Prisoner-Priest Behind These Stone Walls” tells that tale, and hopefully has drawn some fair minded souls to this remarkable site.
Spend just a minute or two at the “About” page at These Stone Walls, and consider its simple math. On September 23, 1994, in Cheshire County Superior Court in Keene, New Hampshire, Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced Catholic priest, Gordon MacRae to consecutive prison terms for a combined sentence of 67 years in prison. The sentence was imposed after a highly problematic jury trial in which MacRae was convicted of having sexually assaulted Thomas Grover during counseling sessions in 1983 when Grover was 15 years old.
The accused priest was between 25 and 30 years old when his “crimes” – now deemed by many to be fictitious – were claimed to have occurred. MacRae was 41 years old when the sentence was imposed. He is now 59 years old and still in prison. Barring the just outcome of a pending new appeal based on new evidence in the case, the priest will be 108 years old when his sentence is fully served and he is free to leave prison. There is no other possible conclusion. Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced Father Gordon MacRae to die in the New Hampshire State Prison.
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