Ruling made in sex predator case, but it remains sealed pending attorney arguments

Donald Ray Levier enters a Strafford Superior Courtroom on the first day of this three-day bench trial in September. (Rochester Voice file photo)

DOVER - A Strafford Superior Court judge has issued a ruling in a sexual predator case involving a Somersworth man, but the judge has not announced his decision pending arguments by prosecutors and defense lawyers on whether the ruling should be sealed.
Strafford County Attorney Emily Conant Garod told The Rochester Voice on Thursday that for now the decision by Judge Daniel E. Will remains sealed. Attorneys have until Nov. 10 to submit their arguments.
Will, who presided over the three-day bench trial last month, was charged with determining if Donald Ray Levier, 37, accused of two violent sex assaults in less than a month in 2021 should be classified as a sexual predator.
If he were classified as such, he could be sentenced to a secure psychiatric facility for a specific period of time.
Levier was originally charged criminally with aggravated felonious sexual assault in both cases, but mental competency issues derailed any criminal proceeding.
"The criminal dockets are now closed completely on both cases given that he was not competent and not restorable," said Garod, who served as prosecutor during Levier's bench trial.
If Levier is labeled a sexual predator and incarcerated at a secure mental health facility, it will the second such New Hampshire case to have gone this path in less than a year.
"To my knowledge Amuri Diole is the only other case to have gone this route in the state," Garod told The Rochester Voice in September.
Diole, 28, was accused in the brutal September 2022 hours-long rape of a woman in a Manchester cemetery, but was found incompetent to stand trial.
A civil trial resulted in him being labeled a violent sexual predator in December, but an appeal by the defense has yet to be heard in the state's Supreme Court.
Levier, who during his trial appeared in court handcuffed and in jail garb, is accused of a violent sexual assault on a 41-year-old Somersworth woman during the early morning hours of Sept. 5, 2021.
The victim, who is not being identified by The Rochester Voice, said she and Levier both lived at a Somersworth Mobile Home Park, where she occasionally hung out with Levier's uncle.
She testified that in the early morning hours of Sept. 5 Levier showed up at her door and when she opened it, she expected to see both him and his uncle as she and Levier had never hung out alone together.
She let him in, however, and they sat down on an L-shaped couch she had in her living room where Levier talked with her about a recent trip to Hampton Beach where he'd been offered heroin by "some girls."
After a few minutes she testified that Levier began coming on to her, touching her thigh and groping her.
"I said, 'what are you doing?'" she told Garod.
"What happened then?" Garod asked.
"He kept groping me and saying, 'Let me get that,'" she testified.
The victim said at that point she went to the door and opened it for him to leave, but he slammed it shut and began to strangle her as he pushed her down the hallway toward her bedroom where he flung her face down on her bed.
"He pursued me down the hallway while taking his clothes off, strangling me with one of his hands on my throat," she sobbed.
She said during the struggle she kept screaming "Help" and "no means no" and "get off me" while banging her hands on the trailer's walls to try to alert neighbors that she was being attacked.
She testified that once on the bed, he pinned her on her back with her legs pressed up against her chest and began trying to pull her pants down.
"I was fighting him, I couldn't breathe cause he was on top of me, he kept on choking me," the victim testified.
She said the ordeal came to a quick end when voices at her door yelled, "Somersworth Police" and Levier released her and went into her bathroom as she ran to the door to let two officers in.
She said she suffered a fractured nose and cuts on her throat during the assault.
Defense attorney Katherine Rose Canny opened her questioning by asking the victim if she was aware some people at the mobile home park questioned her "reputation," and was she aware of the talk.
The victim said she was aware of it, "but I'm not that type of girl."
Levier has either been in custody in Strafford County Jail or an unidentified secure psychiatric facility since the second alleged sexual assault occurred in Dover on Sept. 28, 2021, about three weeks after the Somersworth incident.
The Dover case was not part of last month's bench trial. Garod said it will be heard separately and will also be a bench trial.
Levier was facing decades in jail on the two criminal sex assault arrests.
The civil case seeking to have Levier involuntarily committed was filed on May 30. All documents in the case remain sealed.
Prior to Levier's arraignment on Sept. 7, 2021, in the Somersworth incident, Blair Rowlett of Strafford County Community Corrections filed her own assessment concerning Levier's suitability for supervision by SCCC, which evaluates whether suspects charged with crimes can be allowed to remain free - with specific and individualized conditions - while awaiting trial or plea deals.
Her assessment found Levier "Not Acceptable."
"The Defendant has a lengthy and violent criminal record from Louisiana which includes Failures to Appear and Parole violations," she wrote. "There is a 2019 charge in NCIC that does not have a disposition and appears to still be open ... SCCC has concerns with the current allegations, his criminal record, failures to appear, and Parole violations. Supervision is not recommended."
About a week later on Sept. 15, 2021, Levier was returned to Strafford County Jail after he was tracked by GPS in an "exclusion zone," near the domicile of the Somersworth woman he is accused of assaulting on Sept. 5, 2021.
He was released by the court 10 days later, with orders for SCCC to continue to supervise his release on no bail.
Rowlett said at this point her department added an "inclusion zone," which restricts movements from his assigned domicile, but on Sept. 24, 2021, a Friday, Levier told them he was going to stay with a new friend in Dover.
She said the "inclusion zone" for his new domicile couldn't be implemented that night because they had to confer with his new roommate to make sure he was aware of SCCC's monitoring.
Just three days later on Sept. 27, 2021, Levier's "inclusion zone" became a moot point as he removed his GPS bracelet and wound up on New York Street in Dover where he is accused of entering an elderly woman's apartment, climbing into her bed and groping her as she slept.
According to an affidavit written by Dover Det. Andrew Courter, Levier entered her residence around 1:10 a.m. on Sept. 28.
The affidavit notes that the woman uses a CPAP breathing machine and had gone to bed between 10 and 11 p.m. only to awake to feel a hand moving down her back and onto her buttocks in the areas of her vagina and anus.
Startled, she sat up in bed and saw the person whom she described as a thin black male who smelled strongly of alcohol and cigarettes and had an erect penis, the affidavit states.
The man said "Let me get a piece" and "come on, Mommy," according to the affidavit.
The victim said she told him to get out and was ushering him to the front door when he turned and went into her granddaughter's room, tried to exit through a window but then slammed the window down waking up her granddaughter.
The man then went to the front door and finally left after which the victim called police, the affidavit states.
Looking back on what happened that night the elderly Dover woman told The Rochester Voice in October 2021 she still has a hard time talking about it, saying it was like a bizarre, unsettling and disturbing dream she had a hard time describing.
"I woke up to someone touching me inappropriately," she said quietly, adding during the attack his hand and fingers groped her private parts. "It was like I was dreaming, it was very, very strange, scary, I was disoriented, thinking there's someone in my house in my room and doing this ... I had no clue, it's hard to put into words, he had clothing on and I could see through the clothes his erect penis... I felt so violated."
She said she told him to "get out, but he went into my granddaughters room" which was the room he had entered through a window.
"He then slams the window shut he'd come in, and I screamed at him to get out. When I screamed it woke up my (oldest) granddaughter."
She said she finally got him to leave her granddaughter's room, ushered him to the back door and told him to leave.
"As he was leaving he asked, 'Can I have a cigarette' and I yelled, 'Get the hell out of here' and he finally left, she said. "Can you believe that?"
She thinks Levier is likely a serial offender who should be off the streets.
"The way he did it, I felt like I knew he'd done this before," she said.
When she learned that a judge had ordered Levier be released on no bail after the earlier attack at the Somersworth mobile home park and also after he had violated the exclusion zone mandated by Strafford County Community Corrections when he visited the area near the first victim's residence, she became furious.
"I want somebody to pay, to be held accountable," she said angrily her voice rising. "Anybody that does violent crime, you don't let him out. Why would you let him out? I don't understand the thought process of letting a criminal out who has violent tendencies. I shake my head in disbelief."
The judge who ordered Levier twice released is Strafford Superior Court Judge Mark E. Howard.
According to state statute, an individual to be considered for sexual predator status must have either been convicted in a court of law; "adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity of a sexually violent offense; or found incompetent to stand trial on a charge of a sexually violent offense and the court makes the finding required pursuant to RSA 135-E:5."
In the statute a sexually violent predator is defined as any person who has been convicted of a sexually violent offense; and "suffers from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that makes the person likely to engage in acts of sexual violence if not confined in a secure facility for long-term control, care, and treatment."