Awaiting Child Porn Hearing in State Court, NH Lawyer Is Arrested by FBI Agents, Held Without Bail
Things went from bad to worse for Lisa Biron on Friday morning, as the New Hampshire lawyer was awaiting a probable cause hearing on possession of child pornography charges she faces in state court.
FBI agents entered the courtroom in Manchester, told Biron to leave her belongings and took her to a nearby conference room, from which she emerged in handcuffs in a few minutes, the Concord Monitor reports.
Later that day, the 43-year-old attorney was arraigned in federal court in Concord, where she now faces new charges of child pornography possession, sexual exploitation of children and transportation with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. She is accused of taking a teenage girl to Canada and coercing her to allow herself to be filmed in sexual activity with another person, according to the Monitor and the Union Leader.
The newspaper says the federal case resulted from the child porn images allegedly found by police on Biron’s home computer after police were tipped by a man about them in late September. As the state case proceeded, federal authorities apparently investigated the origin of the material and discovered that Biron allegedly had driven the teen from New Hampshire to Ontario, Canada, on May 25.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Landya McCafferty said she didn’t think Biron is a flight risk, but ordered her detained Friday because she allegedly violated many of her bond conditions in the state-court case. The judge hence was concerned that she would comply with federal bail conditions, the Monitor says.
Biron was also admitted in Massachusetts in 2008, the same year in which she became a New Hampshire lawyer. She is associated with a national Christian lawyers group known as the Alliance Defending Freedom and reportedly listed her favorite book as the Bible on a Facebook page that was recently taken down.
Her court-appointed lawyer, Jim Moir, told McCafferty that Biron is not a flight risk but no other comment from him is included in the articles.
Hat tip: The Advocate.
