Rep. Read’s Rules of the Road: Kill Someone, Keep Driving

by Damien Fisher

Donald Trump famously said he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters.

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State Rep. Ellen Read has her own version: She could kill them with her car, and the police couldn’t stop her.

At least, that’s what the Newmarket Democrat claimed under oath while arguing that the state Constitution gave her legislative immunity from a reckless-driving charge.

Read found herself on the fast track to a political spinout last week after it was reported that she tried to use the state Constitution to argue her way out of a 2024 speeding ticket. But her unique take on Live Free or Die legality zooms past traffic-law immunity and all the way to Live Free … and Get Away With Homicide.

Read was stopped on Dec. 2, 2024, for allegedly driving 107 mph on Interstate 93. But Read and her attorney, Dan Hynes, argued the charge should be dropped because it is unconstitutional to prevent state representatives from going to or from the State House to perform their jobs as lawmakers.

“And it’s your position that, as a state representative on her way to work, you can’t be stopped?” prosecutor Kevin Coyle asked.

“It’s not my position. It’s the position of the New Hampshire Constitution that a legislator has — this is a privilege of legislators in the state, according to the Constitution — that on the way to or from the General Court, they can’t be stopped, arrested, detained,” Read responded.

New England drivers will be relieved to know that Read has the law wrong.

The New Hampshire Constitution does protect representatives from being stopped and arrested on their way to perform their official duties as lawmakers. But it does not cover their rushing to get to day jobs unrelated to their elected offices.

NHJournal obtained transcripts from Read’s Aug. 12, 2025, day in court. It began with a hearing on her motion to dismiss the reckless operation charge, then proceeded immediately to trial after Salem District Court Judge Robert Stephen found her argument lacking.

During her trial, Read made her chilling claim of immunity, even in cases involving the loss of life.

“So, if you would hit somebody and killed them and you just kept going on, it would be wrong for the police officer to stop you?” Coyle asked.

Read responded, “According to a plain reading of the Constitution, it would not be wrong, but it would be unconstitutional.”

To be fair to Read, despite several speeding tickets in the past few years, as well as tickets for using her cellphone while driving, she has never been charged with any form of homicide.

Hynes did his best to clean up Read’s answer, explaining that if she hypothetically ran over and killed someone, police could arrest her — just not at that moment. That’s not what the Founding Fathers wanted, he said.

“In regards to what could happen if someone crashes, kills someone, and then drives away, the police — they do have a remedy. Their remedy is to follow that person to their destination and apply for a search warrant or an arrest warrant. That’s what the Founding Fathers wanted because they didn’t want — they wanted this third party, this third branch, the judicial branch, to get involved and not allow officers to just detain people or arrest them when they’re in service of their legislative duties,” Hynes argued.

Read’s claim of legislative immunity is undermined by the fact that on the day she was busted for driving 107 mph, Dec. 2, 2024, the House was not in session and there were no committee meetings scheduled. Read said she still had official state reasons to be at the State House, namely a one-on-one meeting with House Clerk Paul Smith to discuss legislative rules for the upcoming session.

Read is a frequent presence at the State House, logging more time in Concord than some House leaders. That means she is also claiming more miles than other representatives. In the last session, Read claimed close to $20,000 in mileage reimbursements.

Read has no leadership role in the House and does not chair any committee. She has been banned from using the House chamber and anteroom on nonsession days. Read claims she uses the common spaces as a makeshift office.

Smith, who testified for Read, explained that while there was no session on Dec. 2, 2024, Read had proof that she was conducting official business: her mileage claim.

“HYNES: When state reps are in attendance at the State House, they check in, correct?

“SMITH: They do.

“HYNES: And part of that is so that they can get mileage?

“SMITH: Correct. They file an affidavit.

“HYNES: And state reps get mileage whenever they’re there on official duty, correct?

“SMITH: Yes, sir.”

But Smith’s testimony may have helped sink her immunity claim. Smith testified that Read called him during the stop on I-93 South and that he spoke to her when she later arrived at work in Woburn, Mass. She was not going directly home to Newmarket from the State House.

Questions have also been raised about why Read would call the House Clerk rather than an attorney or a family member.

Stephen ruled that even if the Constitution protects lawmakers from being detained while traveling to and from their official duties, it does not protect them when traveling elsewhere.

“I’m going to deny the motion because she wasn’t returning from the [State House]. She was on a detour and frolic to [her bus driver job],” Stephen said. “If you were going home, you would not be on 93 South in Windham.”

At the trial, which began immediately after Stephen’s ruling, the judge found her guilty of speeding but amended the charge to negligent driving. Stephen said most speeding cases in his court result in negligent-driving convictions, which carry a lesser penalty.

Read testified that she was going faster than the speed limit, perhaps as fast as 95 mph, but denied that her Toyota Yaris was exceeding 100 mph. A reckless operation conviction, finding that she was driving faster than 100 mph, could have meant the loss of her commercial driver’s license.

The lead-footed legislator was stopped again in June 2025, also on I-93 South, and ticketed for allegedly driving 92 mph. The outcome of that case is pending.

In her ongoing court fights, Read has turned to Dana Albrecht, an activist who is not a lawyer. Together, they tried and failed to appeal her case to the New Hampshire Supreme Court. Albrecht is currently asking the court to reconsider its decision not to hear the appeal.

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.