Sex Offender Owen Labrie, Unlikely To Get Pardon

Owen Labrie

Watch News Center 5 Reports; A recent graduate of an elite New Hampshire prep school who was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old freshman is unlikely to avoid having to register as a sex offender for life given the history of pardons and commutations in the Granite State.
Twenty-year-old Owen Labrie of Tunbridge, Vermont, will be sentenced Thursday for crimes that include a felony conviction for using a computer to lure a minor for sex. It's that conviction that requires him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

He faces a range of punishment from probation to up to 11 years in prison. But lawyer J.W. Carney Jr. has said the sex convictions amount to a "brand, a tattoo" that Labrie will bear for life.
"Owen's future is forever changed," Carney said in August, after the verdicts were announced. Carney declined to comment Friday.
Labrie's case exposed a practice known as "Senior Salute" in which some seniors compete to have sex with underclassmen at St. Paul's School, which has educated some of the nation's elite, including Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, former FBI Director Robert Mueller and current Secretary of State John Kerry.
Labrie was 18 at the time of the encounter. He testified at trial that the two had consensual sexual contact but not intercourse; the jury found otherwise and convicted him of three counts of sexual assault based on the girl being under the legal age of consent.
Though Labrie will be able to petition for removal from the registry many years from now, he faces long odds of gaining relief through a pardon or commutation. New Hampshire has granted only three such requests over the past dozen years.
Audrey Blodgett, a paralegal who tracks pardon petitions for the attorney general's office, said that of 66 pardon petitions processed since Jan. 1, 2011, only two were granted some form of relief