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After all his lies, his cheating, and his criminal convictions, former Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave was still trying to game the system on Monday as he received his 3.5 to 7-year prison sentence.

Brave, who turns 40 later this month, was a rising star in the Democratic Party after becoming both New Hampshire’s youngest sheriff and first elected Black sheriff in 2020. His career crashed and burned after he was caught stealing close to $20,000 in taxpayer money to fund a series of extramarital affairs.

He compounded his crimes by lying to a grand jury about his actions, which led to his prison sentence from Strafford Superior Court Judge Daniel St. Hilaire.

Former Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave enters court for his sentencing at Strafford County Superior Court in Dover, N.H., on May 19, 2025. POOL DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER

Rather than accept his sentencing, however, Brave once again tried to delay the inevitable by telling the judge he needed an extra day to make arrangements for his teenage daughter.

And once again, it didn’t work.

“You should have planned for today,” St. Hilaire said, reminding Brave he had 90 days between his plea hearing in February and Monday’s sentencing to get his life in order.

Brave is now heading to prison to serve his time for one count of felony perjury, with the other perjury sentence of 3.5 to 7 years suspended.

St. Hilaire said the goal of the sentence is not primarily to punish Brave, or to get him rehabilitated, but to deter any other law enforcement officer or elected official from lying as Brave did. But as St. Hilaire said, Brave set a high bar for low behavior.

“Throughout this case, and even prior to you being charged, the court has reviewed a record that is unlike any that has come before it, mainly because of the continuation of crimes that were being committed while the case was proceeding,” St. Hilaire said. “You kept digging a hole for yourself rather than stopping.”

For example, Brave accused his fellow elected Strafford County Democrats of racism for pursuing an investigation into his actions — despite the overwhelming evidence of his wrongdoing.

One of those accused Democrats, County Commissioner George Maglaras, said he supports the prison time St. Hilaire imposed.

“It’s a sad day for Strafford County. I’m sorry we had to go through this. I’m happy to take the days of Mark Brave as sheriff of Strafford County and put them behind us,” Maglaras said.

Superior Court Justice Daniel St. Hilaire speaks at the sentencing hearing for former Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave at Strafford County Superior Court in Dover, N.H., on May 19, 2025. POOL DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER

During the sentencing hearing, Brave told St. Hilaire that being elected sheriff was a dream come true for the one-time reserve police officer in Lawrence, Mass. But soon after his election, his marriage started to fall apart. He began a series of “poor choices” and used his county credit card to pay for his extramarital escapades.

“I stand before you, embarrassed and ashamed of my own conduct,” Brave said.

But St. Hilaire told Brave that if the crimes before him on Monday were just about the money, it is likely he would not be going to prison. Brave lied to investigators who started looking at his suspicious purchases and out-of-state trips. He lied before a grand jury several times. And after he was charged in 2023 and placed on personal recognizance bail, Brave lied to St. Hilaire and prosecutors about his residence and finances in order to get a free, public defender appointed to his case.

“The first few crimes charged, they were wrong, but it’s often the coverup that’s worse than the original crime,” St. Hilaire said.

Before the sentence was imposed, Assistant Attorney General Joe Fincham told St. Hilaire that Brave’s position as a law enforcement officer required a serious sentence.

“The public must know that if a law enforcement officer lies repeatedly, especially under oath, in order to obtain or avoid an indictment, in order to obtain or avoid conviction, there must be punishment for these actions. Because otherwise, there is no line protecting citizens,” Fincham said.

Lief Becker, Brave’s private attorney, asked for a maximum sentence on the two perjury counts, but urged that the sentences be suspended to allow Brave his freedom. Becker agrees that it is a serious breach of trust when a police officer lies, but Brave’s case is nuanced. He wasn’t lying as a police officer for police business. He was lying to cover up his liaisons and thefts.

“The significance of perjury can’t be understated. But Mr. Brave in his falsehoods was acting in his own self-interest as a criminal defendant,” Becker said.

Prosecutor Joe Fincham speaks at the sentencing hearing for Former Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave at Strafford County Superior Court in Dover, N.H., on May 19, 2025.  POOL DAVID LANE/UNION LEADER

During his run as sheriff, Brave maxed out his county credit card, and then maxed the card controlled by Emergency Communications Director Justin Bellin. He created an $80,000 a year job for a female friend, Freezenia Veras, and then he took her to Florida for a fictitious consulting session with another law enforcement agency.

Brave wined and dined another woman, identified in court as “Y.F.,” and he told county officials those trips were either for a law enforcement conference or a charity, depending on who was asking. In front of the grand jury, Brave lied about taking Y.F. on a dinner cruise until confronted with photos of the couple together. When asked her name, Brave was stumped.

“Her name, her name is … um … Let me see, I forget which one this is. I’ve been dating a lot of people,” Brave testified before the grand jury.

He met another woman online, Kenisha Epps-Schmidt, and he traveled to Maryland to see her. Brave made up more fictitious justifications to use his county credit card for those trips as well, even making up a Washington D.C., and meeting with U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas. Eventually, Brave ripped off Epps-Schmidt for more than $2,000 in a used car deal. 

After being charged, Brave lied to St. Hilaire and violated his bail conditions by paying $52,000 on a year’s lease for an apartment in Massachusetts. His bail required that he remain living in New Hampshire, so Brave told the court he was still living in Dover with his ex-wife and that he was broke. He did not mention the apartment in Massachusetts, or the 1968 Porsche he bought. Brave did post photos and a video of the classic car, though. Fincham told the court that Brave also took trips to Florida and Puerto Rico while awaiting trial, again violating court order.

State Rep. Timothy Horrigan (D-Durham) was in court Monday and said afterward he is saddened by the whole saga. Brave was a candidate Horrigan and many others supported and believed in.

“I even had one of his campaign signs on my property,” Horrigan said.

Former Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave earned at least seven years in prison for the multitude of lies he spun out to cover up his thefts and affairs, prosecutors say.

“The truthfulness of law enforcement officers, and the sanctity of their oath to tell the truth in official matters, is central to the concept of ordered liberty in the State of New Hampshire,” Assistant Attorney General Joe Fincham and Assistant Attorney General David Lovejoy wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed Monday.

Brave, New Hampshire’s first elected Black sheriff and a former rising star in the state Democratic Party, torched his career when he was caught stealing taxpayer money to fund multiple extramarital affairs. Brave was given multiple opportunities to show remorse and tell the truth, prosecutors say, but he chose his own path.

“Instead, during the investigation into the defendant’s conduct, the defendant publicly and repeatedly accused the State and other local government officials of conspiring to pervert justice and persecute the defendant without any factual or legal basis – motivated, the defendant claimed, by base political vendettas and racial biases,” Lovejoy and Fincham wrote.

“Throughout the investigation and prosecution, and in an effort to conceal his charged crimes and other frauds he perpetrated upon this Honorable Court, the defendant chose to repeatedly lie to the State, chose to repeatedly lie to the Strafford County Grand Jury, and chose to repeatedly lie to this Honorable Court – all in an effort to avoid and pervert the system of justice that he was sworn to uphold.”

Brave is scheduled to be sentenced this month in Strafford Superior Court on two felony counts of perjury, the only charges in his plea agreement yet to be resolved. Brave pleaded guilty in February to the perjury counts as well as charges of theft by deception, and falsifying physical evidence. 

The plea deal allows Brave to get suspended sentences for the theft and falsifying evidence convictions, but the perjury Brave committed during his testimony before a Grand Jury in 2023 is a different matter. Lovejoy and Fincham argue Brave knew what he was doing when he swore to tell the truth during that testimony.

“The defendant then spent approximately one hour and 45 minutes lying about virtually every aspect of his repeated thefts – sometimes repeating old lies, sometimes telling new ones, and sometimes attempting to reconcile differing lies. A complete accounting of all of the defendant’s material lies to the Grand Jury would be monumental. The aggregated lies in the five perjury indictments in this case provide just a sampling of the contempt for the truth, for the sanctity of the defendant’s oath, and for the authority and solemnity of the Strafford County Grand Jury that so permeated the defendant’s testimony,” they wrote.

Monday’s sentencing memorandum will likely inspire a response from Brave and his attorney, Leif Becker, ahead of the sentencing hearing. The state wants Brave to get 3.5 to 7 years in prison on each perjury conviction, and wants those sentences to run consecutively, not concurrently.

According to Lovejoy and Fincham, Brave is beyond hope of rehabilitation and needs prison to punish his lies, to restore public trust in law enforcement, and to discourage other public officials from following his example.

“The sentence in this case must aid to repair the damage done by the defendant’s crimes to the public perception of the integrity of the criminal justice system and government institutions generally, including assuring the public that law enforcement officials (and other individuals) are sufficiently deterred from undermining the integrity of proceedings by committing Perjury,” the prosecutors wrote.

There were at least three women Brave was romancing with taxpayer funds, according to court records. Monday’s filing makes clear his lies and fraud extended to his paramours. One woman, Kenisha Epp Schmidt, gave Brave $2,300 so he could help her buy a used car. But that deal followed the typical Brave playbook for money and relationships.

“She had given the defendant $2,300.00 to help with purchasing a new car because she trusted him at the time, but the defendant never delivered the car and always had excuses for why there was no car and why he could not give her the money back. Ultimately, Schmidt had to file a police report with the Dover Police Department concerning the defendant’s actions,” Fincham and Lovejoy wrote. 

Jamie Brave, the wife of progressive Strafford County Sheriff Mark Brave, is in trouble with the law after she was arrested this weekend for driving drunk. 

Jamie Brave, 44, was stopped in the early morning hours on Saturday as part of a New Hampshire State Police saturation patrol of the Portsmouth area, according to a State Police release. Jamie Brave was one of 11 people charged during the special operation, and she is charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.

Neither Jamie nor Mark Brave responded to a request for comment.

Mark Brave (D-Dover) became the first Black sheriff elected in New Hampshire’s history when he beat Republican Paul Callaghan in 2020.

As a candidate, Mark Brave told Seacoast Online when he was elected that his top three priorities were “open the dialogue with the community and the social services the office can help provide; increase transparency through things like implementing body-worn cameras for the office’s civil unit, which he’d then use as a community response team to support local school resource officers; and community policing efforts.”

Brave also signed a list of demands created by the Seacoast chapter of Black Lives Matter regarding policing policy. Among the demands are:

• No more school resource police officers.
• Banning the possible use of tear gas.
• Government monitoring of police officers’ personal Facebook, Instagram and other social media accounts for “threatening or potentially violent posts.”
• Ending qualified immunity, stripping police of protection from lawsuits.

However, Brave said he did not support all of the demands on the list. He has said he does not support removing police from schools — he would like the sheriff’s office to help small towns add their first school resource officers — and he only wants qualified immunity “reexamined,” not eliminated.

And the new sheriff did not want to end the controversial practice of transporting people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and holding them at the county jail.

According to the Rochester Voice, the specific location and circumstances of Jaime Brave’s arrest were not disclosed by State Police.

The high-visibility DUI patrols, comprising NHSP Troop A Barracks, the New Hampshire State Police Special Enforcement Unit, and Portsmouth Police Officers, were conducted Friday night into Saturday morning. Such patrols are typically announced to the public and local law enforcement in advance.