BY DARRELL HALEN
The New Hampshire Supreme Court recently ruled that a former Windham selectman can be tried on a felony charge of assaulting an election worker.
Christopher Doyle wanted the charge dismissed, arguing that Gail Webster was disqualified from acting as an election official at the polls on March 8, 2005, because her name was on the ballot as a candidate for cemetery trustee.
Doyle is charged with striking Webster in the chest after he lost a re-election bid to the Board of Selectmen.
Doyle’s father, Edward, and another man were arguing and Webster wanted to find a police officer when Doyle allegedly struck her in the Golden Brook School gymnasium.
Doyle was 26 and Webster was 61 at the time.
The felony charge that Doyle faces, assaulting a town officer, carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison and a $4,000 fine, if he’s convicted.
Doyle filed an appeal with the state’s highest court after Superior Court Judge Patricia Coffey denied his motion to dismiss the felony indictment.
“While as a matter of law Ms. Webster ought to have been disqualified from acting as a supervisor of the checklist at the Windham election, in reality she was not,” Coffey wrote in her order.
The state Supreme Court held up Coffey’s decision and remanded the case back to Superior Court for a trial.
Doyle, who was a member of the state House of Representatives at the time of the alleged assault, did not run for re-election to the Legislature the following year.
He lost his bid to retain his seat on the Zoning Board of Adjustment in 2006.