ADA: Grace sign’s location, not text, violated court order

A prosecutor has conceded that signs targeting schools Superintendent Laurie Hunter bore “innocuous political slogans.”

Alleged signmaker John Grace isn’t off the hook: The prosecution still says he committed a crime. 

Police reports describe more than a dozen signs placed last fall with messages like “Fire liar Hunter” and “The hatchet for Hunter.” The superintendent told officers that she felt afraid after the “hatchet” reference, in particular, because it had “an element of violence to it,” per a report.

Grace’s attorney, George King, argues the signs were protected speech that merely called for Hunter’s firing.

Prosecutors have increasingly steered away from the signs’ content and focused on a display on Old Bedford Road, along Hunter’s route to work, in arguing that Grace violated a harassment prevention order that Hunter secured against him. 

Hunter’s order barred Grace from contacting her, Assistant District Attorney Nick Martin said during Grace’s most recent court appearance. The sign on Old Bedford broke that provision, because Grace knew Hunter would drive past it. 

It was the same as Grace “standing on that corner yelling,” Martin told the court.

The violation wasn’t “the innocuous political slogans of ‘Fire liar Hunter’ or ‘The hatchet for Hunter,’” Martin said. “That’s a simple, toothless colloquialism.”

Rather, “It’s the fact that no speech was allowed from Mr. Grace to Ms. Hunter,” he said.

The Old Bedford sign was the kind of direct contact that the harassment prevention order prohibited, Martin said. It said “Fire liar Hunter.” 

Ceding the cellphone 

As they keep up the pressure elsewhere, the prosecution is abandoning a push to get Grace’s cellphone records. 

Police seized Grace’s phone when they searched his house. King wants other evidence from that search tossed from the case because, he argues, police lacked probable cause to comb through his client’s home.

Hunter “doesn’t like to be criticized,” King said in a 45-minute hearing on September 21. “She’s using the police and the courts to limit public participation.”

Some signs were affixed to utility poles. Others appeared on “scarecrows” made of trash bags hung from green stakes.

Police arrested Grace last fall. King has argued that the underlying harassment prevention order is improper.

He’s called this a political matter and said that other people with similar orders don’t get police escorts or search warrants in support of their claims.

Martin said he’s “sympathetic to much of what” King argues about the order’s issuance “and the special protections that it seemed were afforded to Dr. Hunter.” 

But “that’s not what we’re here for,” he said. 

The search warrant showed there was a “reasonable probability” that officers could find evidence related to Grace’s alleged crime, Martin said. 

Investigators found signs and signmaking materials in Grace’s house, per a prior filing. 

‘She can’t fire herself’ 

Grace was acquitted on another misdemeanor charge of threatening to commit a crime in 2024 after a separate alleged incident involving Hunter’s office.

King argues the signs weren’t directed at Hunter. “She can’t fire herself,” he said, meaning the messages were intended for the School Committee.

Prosecutors asked a judge in January to have Grace hand over his cellphone passcode.

King argued in a motion earlier this month that even if the search of Grace’s house was valid, police erred because the phone wasn’t listed on the warrant or in plain sight. Any evidence obtained from the device would be “unconstitutional fruit of a poisonous tree,” he wrote. 

Martin told Judge Hector Zumbado during the hearing that the prosecution was effectively giving up on the phone. He and King started arranging for Grace to retrieve it. 

Zumbado didn’t immediately rule on the larger motion to suppress evidence.

“This case presents some important issues that, perhaps, have some transcendence beyond just this case,” he said. 

Grace is due back in court on October 19.