There will be no charges filed in the December stabbing death of 23-year-old Jake Seaburg in Jaffrey, the state Attorney General’s office announced Sunday. Seaburg was killed in the early morning hours of Dec. 12, 2020 following a night of drinking and an argument over “COVID-19 fatalities,” the state reported.
“Based upon the investigation conducted into Jake Seaburg’s stabbing death, New Hampshire Deputy Attorney General Jane E. Young has determined that there is insufficient evidence to disprove the asserted claim of accident beyond a reasonable doubt,” the press release stated.
According to the AG’s report, Seaburg died in a Jaffrey apartment on the morning of Dec. 12, 2020 after physically confronting one of the apartment’s tenants, Reilly Lawn, 23, following a night of drinking. Seaburg was friends with Lawn’s roommates, and visited the Peterborough Street apartment along with those friends on Dec. 12 after attending a party in nearby Troy. Around 5 a.m., the state reported, the group was at the kitchen table when “a verbal argument ensued between Reilly Lawn and Mr. Seaburg over COVID-19 fatalities.”
According to eyewitness reports and the investigation, Lawn brandished a knife, Seaburg threw him down, punched him in the face and went to the ground with him, and somewhere in the fracas, Seaburg was stabbed twice in the chest.
An autopsy was conducted later that day which ruled the death a homicide.
Lawn said he thought Seaburg impaled himself on the knife as the two fell to the ground; he also admitted to attempting to stab Seaburg in self-defense when they were on the floor. The eyewitness reports vary, but the state could not rule out the possibility that Seaburg fell on Lawn’s knife accidentally, and the wounds were consistent with that possibility, according to the report.
The state, according the report, was forced to consider two factors during its investigation – the self-defense claim and the possibility of an accidental death.
The state found that Lawn’s use of deadly force was not permissible as self-defense, as he was attempting to stop Seaburg from physically beating him but could not have reasonably believed that Seaburg intended to use “unlawful deadly force.”
“Because at the moment of Reilly Lawn’s use of deadly physical force he by his own admission did not fear the use or imminent use of deadly force against him, he was not legally justified to use his own deadly force,” the report stated.
When it came to the accident defense, the state claimed it would be unable to disprove that Seaburg was killed accidentally.
“In particular, Reilly Lawn’s holding of the knife outward and at his waist would place that weapon in the area of Jake Seaburg’s chest in a tackling-type takedown move, a technique with which Mr. Seaburg, a former competitive wrestler, was well-familiar,” the state reported. “So too could Mr. Seaburg’s act of landing full-force on top of Reilly Lawn on the floor, and then pushing his body upwards and into Reilly Lawn as he lay on the floor, cause the very accidental stabbing that Reilly Lawn believed occurred before he consciously acted in alleged self-defense…Because such a claim would defeat any charges brought by the State, no homicide charges will be brought against Reilly Lawn in connection with the stabbing death of Jake Seaburg.”