State's High Court hears arguments for, against tossing Verrill murder case

Timothy Verrill, center, is accused in the killings of Christine Sullivan of Farmington; left, and Jenna Pellegrini of Barrington.(Verrill/police mugshot; Sullivan and Pellegrini/courtesy)

CONCORD - The man accused of killing two women in Farmington in 2017 took his case to the state's Supreme Court on Thursday as he seeks to have his murder charges thrown out over double jeopardy and due process issues associated with his 2019 trial in Strafford Superior Court.
Timothy Verrill, 38, formerly of Belknap Street, Dover, is accused of first-degree murder in the Jan. 27, 2017, deaths of Christine Sullivan, 48, of 979 Meaderboro Road, Farmington, and Jenna Pellegrini, 32, of Barrington, who was staying with Sullivan as a house guest at the time.
The October 2019 trial ended with the defense asking for a mistrial after prosecutors said they had discovered an enormous amount of discovery evidence that had not been furnished to the defense just days after they had been assured the state had provided them all the discovery evidence there was.
Representing Verrill at the 30-minute hearing before the High Court was
Attorney David Rothstein, who asserted that when the state proclaimed on Oct. 31, 2019, that they had found significant additional discovery items, that "it's drugs and it's significant," it was an intentional ploy by the state to "goad" the defense into calling for the mistrial.
"The defendant has the right to a single trial," argued Rothstein, "so if the prosecutions tries to deliberately force a mistrial, that's double jeopardy."
Much of the discovery issues that surfaced midtrial were the result of an independent drug investigation by DEA that began about a year before the killings, an investigation whose findings never made it the state's Major Crimes Unit that was investigating the killings for prosecutors.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley, who represented the state at Thursday's hearing, said his team was unaware of the newly discovered material until Oct. 31, and immediately called the clerk of court to let them know. He also called the defense team, but denied that the state was trying to "goad" them into calling for a mistrial.
"There was nothing nefarious in our intent," he said.
Rothstein argued, however, that it was intentional and willful.
"We had an obligation to inform (defense) counsel," Hinckley countered, adding that there have been sanctions imposed on the state, including that they couldn't use certain evidence that implicates Verrill in the murders.
"We have evidence on bank video that corroborated one of our witnesses and can't use it and two witnesses that said they saw Verrill looking weird and acting paranoid (near the time of the killings) and can't use that," he noted.
Hinckley added that in terms of discovery items, this was the most challenging murder case that the state has ever seen, with some 10,000 discovery items, while a typical murder case involved around 3,000.
Verrill, a longtime friend of thrice-convicted drug trafficker Dean V. Smoronk who formerly owned the Meaderboro Road house where the killings occurred, is accused of bludgeoning and stabbing to death Sullivan, Smoronk's longtime girlfriend, and Pellegrini on Jan. 27, 2017.
Smoronk pleaded guilty to trafficking meth in September 2019 and was sentenced to 42 months. He has never been mentioned as a suspect in the killings. Smoronk was released from a Residential Reentry Management center in Philadelphia around Jan. 9, 2021.
During Verrill's trial his defense team sought to portray Smoronk as one of several alternative suspects in the women's deaths.
Verrill remains held at the Carroll County House of Corrections. He faces life in prison without parole if found guilty. He has been incarcerated since Feb. 6, 2017, when he was arrested as a fugitive from justice in Lawrence, Mass.
The Supreme Court usually takes anywhere from two to six months to render a decision, Hinckley said last fall. He said the court could grant or deny the dismissal, send it back to a lower court or something else.