NASHUA – The trial got underway Wednesday in the state’s latest case against reputed gang leader Sheldon Grant, who is charged with two felony counts of witness tampering for acts he allegedly committed while awaiting a 2014 trial on assault and criminal threatening charges.

Grant, 32, most recently of 7 Broad St., Apt. 5 in Nashua, was eventually acquitted in April of domestic violence-first-degree assault and domestic violence-criminal threatening, charges that stemmed from an October 2013 incident in which he allegedly threatened his wife, then stabbed her with a butcher knife, reportedly over her cellphone bill, police said at the time of Grant’s arrest.

At issue now is whether Grant was involved in an attempt by another man, who prosecutors describe as an associate of Grant’s, to offer Grant’s now former wife $5,000 if she agreed not to testify against Grant at trial.

Grant, according to court documents and Telegraph archives, has a lengthy history with the legal system, dating back more than 10 years and involving terms in state prison and Hillsborough County jail.

In 2007, Grant was sentenced to a year in federal prison for a parole violation, which was added on to a term he was already serving in county jail.

Grant has been free since the April 2014 acquittals, having posted bail following his arrest on the witness tampering charges, on which he was indicted in July.

Grant appeared in court Wednesday with his attorneys, public defenders Amanda Steenhuis and Kara Simard.

The indictments accuse Grant of “acting in concert with (his associate) to try and induce (the witness) not to testify … and that the associate told the witness “that Sheldon Grant would give (her) $5,000 to make everything go away.”

“You don’t say no to Sheldon Grant,” Assistant County Attorney Karinne Brobst, the prosecutor, said at the outset of her opening arguments. “When he gives an order, he means it.”

But the scheme “didn’t work,” Brobst said. She told the jury that Grant’s associate showed up at Grant’s 2014 trial, which frightened the witness and ultimately led to the associate getting arrested outside the courtroom for witness tampering.

The associate soon confessed that he tried to bribe the witness on Grant’s behalf, Brobst said, and pleaded guilty to the charge. He is expected to testify at Grant’s trial “because he was subpoenaed, not because the state offered him anything,” she said.

But Simard, Grant’s attorney, flatly denied that Grant enlisted his associate to try and bribe the witness. “Mr. Grant never authorized (the associate) to give $5,000 to (the witness) to make the case go away,” Simard said. The associate “was lying when he said Sheldon Grant asked him” to offer the witness money.

“Mr. Grant did not even know about it until afterward,” she said.

The only reason the associate implicated Grant, Simard said, was that Nashua police investigators “pressured him to say that Sheldon Grant told him to pay (the witness).”

She said also that the associate “had a very good reason to lie … he couldn’t go back to prison” and had a child on the way.

Brobst, meanwhile, told the jury that police obtained recordings of phone conversations between Grant and the associate that would prove they allegedly talked about bribing the witness.

Simard countered that none of the recordings implicated Grant in the alleged bribery scheme. She said that Nashua police requested the recordings and received them, but “the one where Sheldon Grant told (his associate) to pay (the witness) didn’t exist.”

Nashua police investigators were among witnesses who testified during the trial. The attorneys delivered their closing arguments Thursday morning, and the jury began deliberating shortly before noon.

Dean Shalhoup can be reached at 594-6443, dshalhoup@nashua
telegraph.com or @Telegraph_DeanS.