A state representative from New Hampshire, Lars Christiansen (R), is taking his fight to free a convicted child molester to the state house.
According to the Concord Monitor, Christiansen will submit a petition to the newly created Committee to Redress Grievances asking it to look into the case of Timothy Dupont. Dupont was convicted in 2001 of 69 counts of felonious sexual assault on a female relative under age 13.
The committee couldn’t affect Dupont’s sentence (21 to 42 years), according to the Monitor. All it could do is suggest some sort of legislative remedy.
The case “just wasn’t handled right,” Christiansen said. “Our corporate courts are not doing a very good job. We’ll see whether we can straighten them out.”
In 2009, Christiansen involved himself in a trial of another child sex offender. Christiansen’s nephew, Paul, was a juror in the case of a man accused of sexual assault on a child. He was charged with contempt of court for researching the defendant’s past, which the court had ordered jurors not to do. The defendant was already a registered sex offender for a similar crime.
When Paul Christiansen went to court to be charged with contempt, he was accompanied by his uncle, Lars. The two refused to acknowledge the authority of the court, and Paul was thrown in the bailiff’s cell until he would cooperate, according to a 2009 Monitor story.
Dupont, who Christiansen is trying to help now, has attempted many times to get his conviction overturned on a series of different allegations: that the judge took bribes from prosecutors; that he influenced the jury by visiting the deliberation room; that Dupont’s own confession to the crimes shouldn’t have been allowed as evidence, etc.
All — including three that went to the state supreme court and one that went to a federal appeals court — were denied.
Dupont was convicted of assaulting the victim almost nightly while she was between the ages of 6 and 16.
The relationship between Dupont and Christiansen is unclear. Christiansen did not immediately return a request for comment.
