Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- June 13, 2023
- Location
- Lake Luzerne, New York
- Arrest Status
- Charged without arrest
- Arresting Authority
- Lake Luzerne Town Court
- Charges
-
-
Harassment
- June 13, 2023: Charges pending
- July 29, 2024: Acquitted
-
Harassment
- Unnecessary use of force?
- No
Arrest/Criminal Charge
![SCREENSHOT](https://media.pressfreedomtracker.us/media/images/Maxam_arrest.width-910.png)
A portion of a criminal summons issued to June Maxam, an investigative reporter and publisher of the North Country Gazette, on June 13, 2023, charging her with second-degree harassment and ordering her to appear in court later that month.
Publisher acquitted of harassment charge involving former New York county supervisor
Investigative reporter June Maxam was acquitted of a second-degree harassment charge on July 29, 2024, according to court records reviewed by the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.
The local court’s ruling resolves the latest in a series of dismissed complaints lodged by a former member of the Warren County Board of Supervisors and her husband against Maxam.
Maxam is the publisher of the North Country Gazette in Chestertown, New York. She wrote in fall 2022 about questions of whether Rachel Seeber Conine, an at-large supervisor, still resided in the town she represented; shortly thereafter, Seeber Conine resigned from her position.
Seeber Conine and her husband, a retired captain in the Glens Falls Police Department and later an investigator in the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, then began filing a succession of complaints against Maxam, the journalist told the Tracker.
The accusations culminated in a May 2023 complaint alleging harassment after Maxam published an editorial in April about Seeber Conine promoting a firearms sale on Instagram. Seeber Conine alleged in a statement to law enforcement that Maxam emailed the editorial to Seeber Conine’s employer, the State University of New York.
Maxam was issued a criminal summons for the harassment charge in June 2023 and entered a not guilty plea in August. In December, according to court records provided to the Tracker by Maxam, she asked prosecutors whether body camera footage existed of an April deposition of Seeber Conine and her husband by the New York State Police. In response, prosecutors sent her the footage, in which Seeber Conine’s husband can be heard saying of Maxam, “I don’t want you to investigate. I want her arrested.”
Warrensburg Town Court Judge Kathleen Ferullo ruled that prosecutors had violated procedural rules by not disclosing the footage in May 2023, when they were notified that it existed. Ferullo also pointed out that the timeline of events laid out by Seeber Conine, which included Maxam allegedly sending her editorial about Seeber Conine to SUNY, did not match documentation produced over the course of the case.
Rather than fitting the definition of harassment, Ferullo explained, Maxam’s editorial had been intended to protect the community, not harass Seeber Conine, and Seeber Conine had alleged but never specified additional acts of harassment by Maxam.
Maxam’s editorial and the views expressed within it, Ferullo ruled, “are protected by freedom of the press set out in both the federal and New York state constitutions.”
“This was an egregious waste of judicial resources and serious violation of my constitutional rights,” Maxam wrote in a statement emailed to the Tracker. “Shame on Warren County for allowing Rachel Seeber to once again improperly and illegally use the system and county tax dollars for her personal gain—weaponizing the county court system for personal and political retribution.”
June Maxam, an investigative reporter and publisher of the North Country Gazette in Chestertown, New York, was charged with second-degree harassment on June 13, 2023, following a complaint filed against her by a former member of the Board of Supervisors in surrounding Warren County.
Maxam told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she reported in fall 2022 about questions of whether At-Large Supervisor Rachel Seeber Conine still resided in the town she represented. Seeber Conine announced her resignation from the position in November, citing her desire to focus on her family and career.
Over the months that followed, Maxam said, Seeber Conine and her husband filed more than a dozen complaints against Maxam, all of which were dismissed for being fundamentally unsound. Seeber Conine filed her latest complaint against Maxam on May 25, 2023, alleging that the journalist was harassing her by continuously engaging in behaviors that caused her “annoyance or alarm.”
In the complaint, Seeber Conine wrote that she had sent Maxam a cease-and-desist letter on Dec. 12, 2022, “and since then June has written articles lying about me, filing false statements with local and state agencies and publishing.” She also alleged that Maxam “sent these false and alarming statements to my place of employment trying to discredit me, embarrass me, and get my employer to fire me.”
In April 2023, Maxam wrote an editorial highlighting that the former supervisor had shared a promotion for a sale on firearms. According to Maxam, Seeber Conine alleged that Maxam then sent a link to the article to Seeber Conine’s employer.
“I didn’t send the email, didn’t write the email, have no knowledge of the email she claims she received and now — a year later — they still can’t produce it because it doesn’t exist,” Maxam said.
Maxam was issued a criminal summons based on Seeber Conine’s complaint, which ordered her to appear before the Justice Court of the Town of Lake Luzerne for arraignment on June 21, 2023. Maxam entered a not guilty plea on Aug. 16, according to court filings reviewed by the Tracker, after which her case was transferred among multiple courts following the recusal of several judges.
In an April 2024 filing, an attorney representing Maxam argued that the charges were an attempt to criminalize speech by a journalist and a newspaper that have served the community for more than 30 years.
“Rachel Seeber does not like articles that June Maxam writes in the North Country Gazette about her,” James Knox wrote. “Rachel Seeber attempted to rely on the influence of her husband — a retired member of Warren County Sheriff’s Department — to secure favorable treatment by New York State police, in getting the charges she wanted filed against a person she does not like, in a jurisdiction she wanted, to prohibit June Maxam from continuing to freely operate her paper.”
The district attorney pursuing the charges, Emily Williams, argued in a filing that the assertion that Seeber Conine had shopped for a jurisdiction that would be favorable to them was unfounded. “Whether or not she personally felt like the Judge would dislike the defendant has no bearing on this case and is also completely irrelevant at this point due to the Town of Chester Judge recusing before a criminal summons was ever issued.”
Williams also dismissed allegations that the complaints were part of a scheme to build a civil case against Maxam, noting, “Most of the time, there are civil remedies for crime victims in addition to criminal liability.”
Maxam told the Tracker that neither Seeber Conine nor her husband have ever requested retractions or corrections from her or the Gazette. She confirmed in May that the charge against her is still pending.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].