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Democrat Jeff Woodburn’s journey from state Senate Minority Leader with his eye on the Corner Office in Concord to convicted petty criminal came to a close Wednesday when the Coos County politician was carted off to jail.

Woodburn appeared before Grafton Superior Court Judge Lawrence MacLeod after the state Supreme Court rejected his last appeal to avoid serving jail time. MacLeod denied defense attorney Mark Sisti’s request to suspend the two 30-day jail terms, and his request to stay the sentence for another appeal. 

MacLeod said the sentences for the two criminal mischief convictions are appropriate based on Woodburn’s violent behavior.

“I’m not going to second guess that,” MacLeod said.

Sisti then tried a last-ditch argument to keep Woodburn out of jail, saying his client had already been punished enough.

“The expense of litigation has been backbreaking, his reputation has been attacked for years, and the impact on him cannot be measured,” Sisti said in his motion for a suspended sentence.

Sending Woodburn to jail is unjust, and serves no purpose, especially in light of the dozens of similar cases Sisti cites that resulted in no incarceration, he argued.

“The real question is: why is Jeff being singled out for incarceration when many others, some as high profile or higher profile than he is, receiving suspended sentences for offenses as bad or worse than his,” Sisti wrote.

Sisti claimed in court on Wednesday that Woodburn is being singled out and given an unfair sentence by prosecutors angry that he went to trial and appealed his domestic violence and simple assault convictions and won.

“You’re looking at the living, breathing personification of a trial penalty. He had the audacity to go to trial,” Sisti said.

But Senior Assistant Attorney General Joshua Speicher rejected that argument, saying it’s Woodburn who is trying to upend justice and get special treatment. Speicher called Sisti’s argument an “11th-hour Hail Mary.”

“Although he claims that he is the victim of unfair punishment, what the defendant actually asks of this court is special treatment that is unavailable to other defendants,” Speicher wrote. “The defendant is not special, and does not deserve special treatment. He stands before this court as a convicted criminal who has been sentenced to serve stand committed time, and has exhausted all rights to appeal.”

Woodburn’s political career crashed in 2018 when he was charged with assaulting his former girlfriend in a domestic abuse case. Woodburn had been grooming the woman to be his first lady when he ran for governor, according to court records.

The case against Woodburn has dragged on for seven years, with the former state senator getting his 2021 convictions for simple assault and domestic abuse overturned by appealing to the state Supreme Court.

A second trial on the assault charges ended with a hung jury earlier this year, and New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella opted to drop the case rather than go for a third trial. That left just the two criminal mischief convictions, which the Supreme Court refused to reconsider. 

According to court records, Woodburn bit the woman during a December 2017 argument as she drove him home from a party. An intoxicated Woodburn demanded to be let out of the car and planned to call a friend for a ride. When the woman reached to take his phone, he allegedly bit her hand, according to the allegations.

Woodburn argued in this year’s second trial that he was acting in self defense when he bit the woman. 

As for the criminal mischief, Woodburn kicked in the door to the woman’s house and she refused to let him inside about a week after the fight in the car, according to court records. Earlier that year, in August 2017, he reportedly kicked her clothes dryer, breaking the appliance, according to court records. 

Amanda Grady Sexton with the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, said today’s hearing represents accountability, finally, for Woodburn.

“Former Senator Woodburn will begin serving his jail sentence today, despite repeated efforts to avoid accountability—even after being found guilty by a jury of his peers. We commend the bravery of the survivor, and hope this outcome brings some sense of closure after nearly 7 years,” Grady Sexton said.