More than 300 Vermonters have died of drug overdoses in the past three years. But rarely has a dealer faced criminal charges as a result. A St. Johnsbury woman received a suspended sentence of two to five years for selling a fatal dose of heroin to a Groton man in 2014. Two years ago, a Burlington dealer allegedly sold heroin to his roommate, who took 24 hours to die on the premises. For that, he faced two years in prison.
But Trevor Shepard is looking at a much stiffer penalty — 20 years to life — for allegedly selling the heroin that killed Bennington resident Clark Salmon last month. State prosecutors have charged him with second-degree murder.
Defense attorneys across Vermont were shocked by the severity of the charge — none could recall a drug dealer here ever being convicted of murder. Stephen Saltonstall called it “over the top” and “a bad use of prosecutorial discretion.” The former Vermont defense attorney noted, “You could charge virtually every drug dealer with a crime like that.”
But no one was surprised about which state’s attorney’s office levied the charge.
“I just chalk it up to Bennington,” Defender General Matt Valerio said. “That’s the way it’s always been down there.”
The murder charge against Shepard is the latest example of aggressive prosecution in Bennington County, according to legal observers, where State’s Attorney Erica Marthage and her four deputy prosecutors punish perpetrators to the full extent of the law. Critics say their approach is increasingly out of step in a state determined to reform its criminal justice system and reduce the inmate population.
Bennington County sends almost twice as many defendants to jail as the state average and, though it has never had the highest crime rate, has beat out every other county’s incarceration rates since the Department of Corrections began tracking the data in 2009. Even Rutland County, which police and politicians have portrayed as ground zero in Vermont’s opiate war, generates about 64 percent fewer inmates per capita than Bennington County.
“It’s a different world,” said Fred Bragdon, the head attorney in the Bennington County Public Defender’s Office. “I tell the prosecutors all the time: We could sit down and … figure out one-quarter of defendants from Bennington that could be released right now.”
But Bennington County doesn’t operate any programs to help people to avoid incarceration, while prosecutors and judges in nearly every other Vermont county have “drug court,” “mental health court” and “rapid intervention community court” — all of which are designed to get defendants into treatment instead of jail.
Bennington uses the traditional criminal justice system to seek maximum time for cases ranging from trivial to severe. In recent weeks, county prosecutors launched an investigation of an inmate who was helping other prisoners draft legal documents, in violation, they allege, of an obscure law that is almost never enforced in Vermont. More seriously, last month the Vermont Supreme Court overturned the drug conviction of a 27-year-old man whom Bennington prosecutors had put away for a decade. He had already served two years when the judges ruled, but Marthage and company made Shamel Alexander wait almost another month in jail before releasing him.
“It’s wrong, what’s happening here; it really is,” said one longtime Bennington County defense attorney, who requested anonymity in anticipation of future dealings with Marthage. “Everything is done to the max, in terms of conditions of bail and sentencing. The drug problem in Bennington is as serious as it is in Rutland, Burlington and Windsor, but that’s being used as a cover. The mantra here is punish, punish, punish.”
Marthage said she is simply following through on the promise she made to voters — to keep the community safe. And the Manchester native is no stranger to southwestern Vermont. She was a deputy state’s attorney in Bennington County for four years before she ran for the top prosecutorial job as a Democrat 10 years ago.
Each of Vermont’s 14 state’s attorneys has a different approach, she said: “We’re elected to represent the needs and priorities of the counties.”
But isn’t there an argument to be made for uniform legal treatment across the state? Recent Bennington County cases illustrate a long-held concern about Vermont’s criminal justice system: that defendants may be treated very differently, and receive wildly varied sentences, depending on where they happen to be arrested.
Case 211-02-16
Bennington, a town of 15,700, boasts a walkable downtown and a small liberal-arts college with long list of artsy alumni. But there’s nothing quaint or historic about the Bennington County Superior Court, which is on the edge of town in a state office complex that was built in 2012. With faux wood paneling, a light-filled atrium and gently sloping interior walkways, the building feels more like a hospital wing than a Vermont courthouse.
On a gray Wednesday afternoon in mid-February, Bennington Superior Court Judge David Howard slowly walked to the bench inside courtroom No. 2 and came upon a languid post-lunch scene. The bailiff was chatting up a young female court staffer, lawyers talked quietly, and a local newspaper reporter shuffled in and out.
“Case 211-02-16,” Howard said quietly, calling the number of the first case on the afternoon docket. Case numbers are composed of three separate numbers — the number of cases filed in the county year to date, followed by the month and calendar year.
Howard turned to a court clerk. “It can’t be 211. We can’t have 211 already, do we?” he asked with incredulity.
After a moment’s pause, the clerk confirmed the count was accurate.
“Oh, OK, I guess I lost track of how many cases have been filed,” Howard said.
Case 211-02-16 turned out to be an arraignment. A 34-year-old woman with a string of minor, nonviolent convictions on her record had allegedly assisted a burglar by driving him to the scene of his crime. Lawyers were there to argue whether the accessory should be held in jail, without bail, before her trial.
Alleged murderers and rapists are usually held without bail. People like the woman before Howard, so-called “habitual offenders” who have accumulated a string of lesser convictions, fall into a gray area. That the defendant had family members in the area would normally work in her favor.
But in Bennington County, lawyers say, there is no suspense in these cases: Prosecutors almost always seek hold-without-bail orders, and judges usually comply.
True to form, Deputy Bennington County State’s Attorney Robert Plunkett asked that the woman be held without bail pending her trial — which could be a year or more away — and Howard complied. She was sobbing when court security guards led her away.
“They don’t have that ability to look at a case and say, ‘Just because I can say that person could be held in jail doesn’t mean they should,'” said a veteran attorney who practices throughout southern Vermont. “It’s jail, jail, jail.”
The state’s inmate population has more than doubled since the early 1990s, even as the crime rate in Vermont has fallen. Since 1993, Vermont has had hundreds more inmates than jail cells, necessitating a costly and controversial program of sending Vermonters to private, out-of-state prisons to serve their time.
In recent years, the Vermont Department of Corrections, which has a $130 million budget, has come under increasing pressure from lawmakers and criminal justice reformers to shrink its footprint and bring Vermont prisoners back home.
Efforts to reduce the inmate population have been focused primarily on two areas: Moving defendants out of the criminal justice system and into treatment, and reducing the number of defendants held in jail while their cases are pending.
But the department has little control over that, according to former DOC commissioner Andy Pallito. “Prosecutors have a much more measurable effect on the system than anyone else,” he said, including judges, who tend to rotate to new counties every few years. State’s attorneys choose which cases to bring and how aggressively to push for tough sentences.
Chittenden County incarcerates at a rate of 234 people per 100,000 residents. The incarceration rate is 325 in Rutland and 243 in Franklin. Bennington’s rate is 509 per 100,000, according to 2014 figures from the DOC.
“We take what they give us,” said recently installed DOC Commissioner Lisa Menard.
Marthage said she could not explain Bennington’s high rate. But she implied that the DOC might be manipulating the figures to deflect criticism of the inmate population.
“It’s difficult for me to comment on what the DOC numbers actually mean,” Marthage said. “I have to take it with a grain of salt, because of who is collecting the numbers and what agenda they may have.”
Vermont doesn’t make it easy to analyze criminal activity town by town. The most recent data compiled by the Vermont Department of Public Safety is from 2012. It showed Bennington County with a slightly higher than average crime rate but almost twice the average incarceration rate, according to the DOC.
Former commissioner Pallito confirmed that the county had been an “outlier” since he started there in 1999.
“The main factor has been unreasonable state’s attorneys and their deputies,” said Saltonstall, who retired in 2014 after decades as a defense attorney in Bennington County. Now a resident of Arizona, he leaves water in the desert for migrants crossing the Mexican border. “A lot of these prosecutors don’t have a good understanding of human frailty,” he said.
Hard-Charging
Like their counterparts all over Vermont, Bennington County law enforcement officials have been busy dealing with crime related to Vermont’s opiate crisis. Police in the southern county, which borders both New York and Massachusetts, are uniquely positioned to stop drugs from coming into Vermont from other states.
In 2013, that vigilance ensnared 27-year-old Shamel Alexander, an African American from upstate New York who arrived in town via taxicab. When police pulled him over, they found 11 grams of heroin on him. Even though he was a first-time offender, prosecutors recommended the maximum sentence of 10 years, and they got their way.
Alexander had served more than two of those years — among Vermont’s out-of-state inmates in Michigan — when the Vermont Supreme Court overturned his sentence on February 12. Justices agreed that the police traffic stop and search may have been racially motivated.
So they ruled both inadmissible, threw out the conviction and sent the case back to Bennington County. Valerio and other legal observers expected prosecutors to file a perfunctory court document dropping the charge, which would lead to Alexander’s release.
But weeks after the decision, he remained in the Michigan prison. Alexander’s attorney, Bennington County public defender Jeff Rubin, filed a motion asking a judge to throw out the charge. Finally, late last week, nearly a month after the decision, prosecutors dropped the case.
Why didn’t prosecutors do that after the Supreme Court ruling and free Alexander without instigating a legal fight?
“We have similar questions,” Valerio said.
Marthage said her office was simply performing due diligence on the Alexander case. She also questioned how much Valerio, who as defender general supervises dozens of public defenders across the state, really knows about it.
“I’d love to know what exactly is the last actual involvement Matt Valerio has had in any court,” Marthage said. “His people all file things for him. It’s fascinating to me that it’s so interesting to him, what happens in Bennington, when I’ve literally never seen him.”
Valerio’s office is actively defending another prisoner who has been a target of Marthage’s office. Martin “Serendipity” Morales, who identifies as a woman, has been assisting fellow inmates with legal work at Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland. Most prisons and jails have a resident inmate who knows enough about the legal system to help fellow prisoners navigate it. Every Vermont correctional facility has a law library to facilitate that.
In early January, Bennington County prosecutors sent Lloyd Dean, a detective in the Bennington County Sheriff’s Department, to interview several inmates from Bennington County who acknowledged that they filed appeals with the help of Morales, who is serving time for felony burglary and domestic assault. All three men said they had approached Morales for help and that she not been paid for her services. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the inmates believed she was a licensed attorney.
“She doesn’t take payment for her work,” Dean reported in an affidavit. “It’s what she does. She enjoys it.”
Nonetheless, on February 2, one of Marthage’s deputies filed documents with the Vermont Supreme Court charging Morales with falsely representing herself as a lawyer and engaging in “unlawful practice of the law.”
The same week, the Vermont Attorney General’s Office briefly considered leveling the same charge against environmental activist Annette Smith. It decided not to, as Attorney General Bill Sorrell explained in a prepared statement: “Any definition of the practice of law must recognize the diversity of advocacy before different forums at the state and local levels, should not abridge First Amendment rights, and should ensure that Vermonters have access to justice.”
Marthage declined to discuss the case against Morales in detail, but she did note a spike in the number of “post-conviction relief” petitions, aka PCRs, that Vermont inmates have filed asking for new trials or sentences or other relief.
“I don’t charge people with being a nuisance,” Marthage said. “I charge people with violating the law.”
Same as the Old Boss
Marthage, 45, lives in tony Manchester with her husband and three young children. She was raised there, too, in more challenging circumstances.
“I was an endangered species in Manchester — I grew up poor,” Marthage said. Her carpenter dad struggled with alcoholism, she said. Her mother earned money as a chambermaid — when she could find work. Neither parent had graduated from high school.
The youngest of five, Marthage was a mostly disinterested student at Burr and Burton Academy, which locals attend tuition-free, and occasionally got into trouble for cutting school. But she was determined to go to college and make a better life for herself. She spent her free time as a teenager volunteering at the office of a local attorney and became fascinated with criminal law. After graduating from the University of Vermont and then, in 1999, the University of Connecticut School of Law, Marthage worked as a prosecutor in Hartford, Conn. She left to be a deputy prosecutor in Bennington County, focused on juvenile cases.
In 2006, Marthage ran for state’s attorney, challenging her old boss, former Bennington County state’s attorney Bill Wright. He had a reputation as a tough-on-crime, law-and-order prosecutor. She pledged to be even tougher and decried the “insane” number of people who were placed on probation.
“Bennington County needs to have someone who shows a strong sense of responsibility to the community and instills faith in justice again,” Marthage told the Bennington Banner.
At the same time, Marthage pledged to be “reasonable” and expressed an interest in working with nonprofits to treat addicts instead of incarcerating them. Many local defense attorneys who now criticize her said that’s why they supported her successful 2006 campaign. “My focus as an office is on public safety, victim safety and offender rehab whenever possible,” she said.
Marthage says her humble upbringing makes her sympathetic to many people who run afoul of the law.
“The most satisfaction I get out of what I do is when I get to help people who made a stupid decision on a bad day, something they hadn’t thought about, and they just want to make sure they get a fair shake,” said Marthage.
But Marthage’s critics say she has too often thrown the book at the people she claims to be helping.
Opiate-related threats have come to dominate the agenda of Marthage and her four deputy prosecutors — although one of them, Christina Rainville, had been especially aggressive in pursuing alleged sex crimes before leaving the job last year.
“My only goal is to stop this waterfall,” Marthage said of the opiate problem. “It’s so bad, and so disturbing on so many levels.”
Seven people have overdosed on heroin so far this year in the Bennington area. Salmon was the only fatality. Police quickly zeroed in on Trevor Shepard and his brother William, whom they had long suspected of dealing heroin.
William Shepard told police that he and his brother had brought heroin from Holyoke, Mass., to sell in Bennington, according to court documents.
A 27-year-old woman told police that, on January 31, she overdosed on a bag of heroin, labeled “American Gangster,” that she bought from 26-year-old Trevor Shepard. When she recovered, she called him to complain about the negative effects, according to police affidavits. He warned her that some of the heroin that he was selling could be “laced” with fentanyl, a potent heroin additive that is highly lethal.
Another woman told police that, on February 1, she was with Salmon when he snorted heroin that he had bought from Shepard. Salmon overdosed and was revived with Narcan at a nearby hospital. The next day, Salmon bought more of the same heroin from Shepard. He died from a second overdose.
Marthage said Shepard’s comments to the 27-year-old woman show that he knew the heroin he sold Salmon could be lethal.
“The affidavit lays out a factual scenario where the defendant is informing the potential user of the drug that this is pretty powerful stuff and you better be careful,” Marthage said. “That provides a level of reckless disregard that is beyond a manslaughter charge. This is not just selling drugs.”
But Shepard’s attorney, Chris Montgomery, has asked a judge to dismiss the murder charge, which carries a maximum life sentence. Montgomery said in an interview that, using Marthage’s logic, nearly every drug dealer in Vermont could be charged with murder should a customer die after willingly buying his or her product.
“It is highly unusual, and I’ve been doing this for close to 20 years,” Montgomery said of the decision to file a murder charge. “I have never seen a defendant from our area accused of causing an overdose charged as second-degree murder. A lot of cases could fit in that charge of a person giving someone drugs.”
County Fair?
Vermont has looked at the problem of unpredictable punishment before. In 2005, the legislature created the Vermont Sentencing Commission, a group of lawyers and experts charged with “reducing geographical disparities in sentencing,” according to the law that created the group.
Its first — and only — leader was Michael Kainen, a Hartford attorney and former state representative who recently became a superior court judge.
The commission solicited a few reports about sentencing practices across Vermont and made an occasional presentation to the legislature. But the effort fizzled when the judiciary slashed its budget, and Kainen departed in 2008 for a job in private practice.
Though the commission remains codified in state law, it has not convened in at least four years, attorneys say.
“It never achieved its potential,” said Robert Sand, who serves as Gov. Peter Shumlin’s liaison to criminal justice programs. “I still think, conceptually, it’s a good idea.”
Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, does, too.
He served on the defunct commission. “Should you really have different sentences if you get caught passing a bad check in one county than another?” Sears asked rhetorically.
The longtime Bennington County senator was intent on clarifying two things: His legislative district earned its law-and-order reputation long before Marthage took office; in addition to prosecutors, local police and judges contribute to the culture.
And Sears is no less frustrated than southern Vermont defense attorneys that Bennington County continues to generate more inmates per capita than any other jurisdiction. Without mentioning Marthage by name, he said he hopes local prosecutors will come around to focus more on treatment and less on incarceration.
In the absence of a vocal sentencing commission, or laws that insist on some level of uniformity in charging and sentencing, individual state’s attorneys in Vermont enjoy wide latitude in creating their own mini-criminal justice systems.
Sand, a former Windsor County state’s attorney, should know. In 2007, he effectively decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana in his jurisdiction when he stopped prosecuting those cases in criminal court and instead sent most people arrested for marijuana possession to a court diversion program.
“Every case is a blank slate, and the state’s attorney fills that slate with their sentencing philosophy,” Sand said. “I think it’s reasonable for the legislature to say, ‘We think there should be some greater measure of consistency.'”
Sand is now tasked with helping to establish treatment and diversion programs in all 14 counties, in hopes of reducing the inmate population and moving the state away from a traditional crime-and-punishment approach.
It’s been slow going.
In 2014, after Shumlin devoted his entire State of the State address to Vermont’s battle with opiate addiction, the governor and lawmakers set out to replicate Chittenden County’s Rapid Intervention Criminal Court in Vermont’s other 13 counties.
Created by Chittenden County State’s Attorney T.J. Donovan, RICC sends repeat, nonviolent criminals with substance abuse or mental health problems to treatment, not court. If the defendants progress, Donovan never brings a case against them. Independent studies suggest that RICC has kept several hundred people out of prison in the past three years and reduced criminal recidivism in Chittenden County.
But programs such as RICC can only exist if the individually elected state’s attorneys want them. To prod the prosecutors into action, the legislature pays for screeners — caseworkers who would interview defendants to assess their eligibility for a pre-charge program like RICC — in every county.
The response: State’s attorneys in Addison, Lamoille, Washington, Rutland, Essex, Windsor and Orange counties created pre-charge programs.
In Bennington County, the screener is in place, reviewing cases and talking to defendants about their struggles. But there is no RICC-style program to refer them to. Regardless of what the screener finds, defendants go into the criminal justice system, as they always have.
Marthage says she supports the concept of a pre-charge program — in theory — but isn’t sold on what’s out there. She also worries that there aren’t enough treatment options and counselors in Bennington County to support eligible defendants. “The tools in our toolbox are so limited,” she said.
Local attorneys say the pre-charge programs don’t exist because Marthage’s office isn’t interested in having them. For evidence, they point to the recent demise of the only alternative court program that ever got off the ground in Bennington County.
In 2007, the county launched a so-called “domestic violence court” that aimed to stop the cycle of spousal abuse. It forced defendants to undergo counseling and kept temporary restraining orders in place. By completing a treatment program, an offender could skip prison for probation, thereby accelerating the reunification process.
A study by the Vermont Center for Justice Research showed that the program cut Bennington County’s domestic violence recidivism by about 50 percent, while reducing incarceration during the same period — between 2007 and 2010.
In 2015, the man who spearheaded the program — Bennington County Superior Court Judge David Suntag — retired. And the domestic violence court went with him.
Marthage pinned blame for the demise of the domestic violence court on the Department of Corrections, whose probation officers, she said, became increasingly rigid about allowing defendants charged with domestic violence the freedoms necessary to engage in treatment.
In lieu of a domestic violence court, Marthage said she has been aggressive in pursuing domestic abusers who fail to live up to the terms of their probation.
More specifically, her office files a minor criminal charge, “violating conditions of release,” every time a defendant fails to check in with a probation officer, contacts the alleged victim, violates a curfew or runs afoul of any of the numerous regulations placed upon them by probation officers.
In a few instances, Bennington County prosecutors have filed more than 100 VCR charges against a single defendant. The county files VCRs at nearly double the state average, the Vermont Center for Justice Research found.
Each charge can lead to fines, revocation of probation and jail time.
“In other counties you wouldn’t bring 138 charges,” Valerio said. “Prosecutors would bring two and have an arrest warrant and go from there. Bennington has a love of that kind of stuff.”
Marthage is unapologetic: “The idea that I’m somehow seeking out all these jail sentences— What am I, twisting the judge’s arm? These are not things I accomplish by fiat.” On her desk, she said, are “stacks of files” of cases she has elected not to pursue.
She said that doesn’t sit well with her constituents, who want just the opposite: tougher justice than one of Vermont’s toughest prosecutors is already meting out.
The original print version of this article was headlined “The Prosecution Never Rests”
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This article appears in Mar 9-15, 2016.
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This blows my mind after working as a defense attorney in Chittenden county for three years. While I do not always agree with the decisions of our local State’s Attorney’s Office, I have nothing but respect for T.J. and his team. I am also the first to applaud the sincerity his office has shown in implementing and supporting progressive and effective methods of crime reduction. It seems to me like Mrs. Marthage wants to blame everyone and everything else: DOC, judges, lack of resources, the Defender General, etc. for her own antiquated ideas concerning criminal justice. The fact that you cannot “arrest away” criminal behavior seems to escape her. How are the recidivism numbers in Bennington County? How about any of the other metrics which would indicate a successful State’s Attorney’s office? Maybe it’s time for the people of Bennington County to decide if antiquated and ineffective methods of crime reduction are really what they want in their county. One has to ask: “Tough on Crime”? Or utterly ignorant of modern and effective criminal justice practices?
But she is totally fair if you are a DCF employee dealing to “clients” in the parking lot. Follow the money. It’s there somewhere.
I’m not sure if this is the place to be with my situation. As I found the court system in Bennington to be some what fair in most criminal cases. When it come to a civil case, if your poor you have no where to turn, because you can not defend your self nor can you get help from a public defender. And yes I did hire a lawyer that cost 3,200 dollars to fight a case for me. And when he took care of the criminal part of the case,and not the civil. Now it rest in the states hands. Being I couldn’t afford to hire another civil lawyer to help me. I had some requirements to meet , in order to get my license back.At this point it was like fighting city Hall, so I do whet the state has asked me to do, met all of the requirements, and all paper work signed by all state officials. When it comes time to get my license back, I’m told because the paper work never landed on the desk of the registry. And now I would have to start all requirements all over again. That means another 2,000 dollars that I just paid and took me three yrs to pay back. And that I would need another 1,000 to start again.I find this very unfair. How does the system expect people, to get out of a system. When a situation like this happens. And the money you have already paid for. They expect you to pay for it all again..I find this very unfair….
I agree w Erika Marthage, shes doing a great job! They should be punished to the full extent of the law or no one is ever going to learn. We need to be tough on drugs!
I think each case is different. I don’t think Mr. Shepard should be charged with murder but the fact that he has been in and out of jail his entire adulthood and repeatedly chooses to walk this road, he should certainly be charged with the max penalty. We also need to start looking in to rehabilitating the first time offenders instead of putting them in jail.
Not fair and very bias. You can’t charge someone with stealing if you sell what you sold. The DCF worker that was released is appaulling. Why is that addict walking the streets selling more drugs? Making an example of this man is not the answer. How about long-term health care reform treatment. Getting alternative medicine is a must for these addicts. If you put them all in jail we will have more jails then schools.
Stop looking for excuses. People engage in illegal activities need to stand on their own two feet and take responsibility for their behavior Selling drugs to someone that dies from those drugs is the same as putting a gun to that persons head and pulling the trigger. Why are we trying to find excuses for them??? These are not our model citizens. We are always looking for ways to sell our community to outsiders. Being tough on crime is one of the best selling points we could use to people looking to move here. The police work diligently to keep our community safe. Their work goes unrewarded when we start taking the results too lightly. We should be asking stiffer sentences. I worked in the criminal justice system 34 years. Its erosion over the part 15 years is shameful. The tail is wagging the dog. Keep up the good work Erica. You won’t make many friends but I bet you will sleep well
What I find disheartening is how prosecutors and judges do not seem to feel a responsibility to read the best research on what works. If they did, they would realize two important things: 1) incarceration’s potential deterrent effect only applies to the swiftness and certainty of punishment, NOT the severity; 2) incarceration itself has a criminogenic effect, which means it increases the likelihood one will reoffend. Therefore, it is clear that we should reserve it only for the truly dangerous.
How is it that Erica claims to help someone who made one bad choice on a bad day and turned there life around for the better yet she is ready to make them a life time felon and not even a chance to get there record expunged after 3 years of good probation unflawrd! I don’t know I’ve just watched her so many times in court just pushing harder n harder for jail when se didn’t push for that when her good old buddy kacey from the child support office got busted selling drugs to her clients and being an addict herself! So the message I got was if your her friend u can use bit if u sell a couple of bags one time cause your an addict n need help then u change and get healthy for over a year your still going to get a felony and locked up!!!???!!! The woman blows my mind!
all i have to say about the shepard case its unjustified . reason is the decease OD already once during earlier that day and was saved… went to court and after court went right back to the drug and did it again….enough said
What a great article. It’s maddening that there are no pre-trial programming for drug offenders. I understand her wanting to set an example in the hopes that the stern punishments will steer people clear of offending in the first place, but let’s get real here. Addiction doesn’t care what the consequences of any illegal activities are while it’s running rampid.
I have been looking into opening a manufacturing plant in Bennington. After reading this article, I conclude that a Town run by Mrs. Marthage and Mr. Howard is not a town that I can operate in. Is Mrs. Marthage suffering from some form of emotional disturbance? Hard to tell; let the psychiatrists that would treat her conclude that. What I can say is that any Judge that accepts a recommendation from a prosecutor to toss the Constitutional requirement that reasonable bail “shall not be denied” out the window when some ridiculous, needy, immature woman who goes and drives the getaway car for a ridiculous druggie burglar moron shows up in Court as a co-defendant, is not someone that I want to be in the same Town with. I shudder to think of how he would deal with a civil controversy.
Look, there are certain basics in our legal system. Defendants are entitled to reasonable bail; that is bedrock Constitutional law. You don’t get to flout that just because you went to UConn Law School. What is wrong with this woman? And why does this Judge put up with this disturbed behavior?
This woman has just cost you 400 new jobs. Plus some twenty million in tax revenue.
This isn’t the only corruption in Bennington Vermont. Nor is it the only cover up either. There is a few of us that have actual evidence to prove things going on. It is devastating and it is very disturbing Pownal Rescue, Bennington Paramedic’s and SVMC all covering up mistakes made by Pownal rescue personnel. Another person has a huge file with proof of lies and cover ups made by other parts of corruption and cover ups on an even bigger scale. how can we get help when it seems everyone here in town that could help us WILL NOT! Or they can’t. People have no clue.. It is WAY bigger then this article. And Why won’t the State’s Attorney’s office release why Rainville was fired, let go, after being placed on administrative leave..I would dare guess because it would uncover more then anyone wants to know. The corruption and cover ups run deep in this town and I know people that can prove it. and I know it is even bigger than that.. BUT who is going to listen to a nobody. Christina Rainvilles cases should all be reviewed by an independent investigator. (NOT FROM BENNINGTON OR VERMONT FOR THAT MATTER). Because we have some innocent people sitting in jail.. Can Someone please point me in the direction to someone that can help us?
Just a glimpse into
People have been laid back for way too long.. with the oh well attitude.. Look around you.. Where has that gotten us? Let me tell you..
Lying officials who line their pockets. Getting convictions with lies.
deputy prosecutor Christina Rainville who was placed on administrative leave in December 2015 will not be returning to the Bennington County State’s Attorney’s Office. And no one is saying why.. If it has anything to do with the link below, Then all her cases should have to be reopened and reviews.
I know of 3 cases where men are standing falsely accused of crimes they didn’t do.
Has anyone ever heard of getting release conditions from court never entering a courtroom. never being arraigned or arrested, Not even received a citation. just a release of condition order with crimes accused of.. not even charged with.. I do.. and they are running the kid through the ringer.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20150418/THISJUSTIN/704189935
Christina Rainville is gone because she “aggressively” pursued sexual assault charges. She broke the law over and over, she had police rough people up, she intimidated, she framed, she ignored evidence that exonerated, she grossly inflated charges to frighten her victims, she boasted when she knowingly put innocent men in jail. She is a criminal, and the police who pressure, intimidate, harm and invent logic to support the prosecutors are criminal as well. I am willing to bet that that entire office is filled with criminal people, who do more to destroy the peace of our communities than create safety. The Government is criminal stealing money from the people through fees, licenses taxation and coercion, and creating an economic boom for themselves while boxing the people in. The police routinely assault and injure people, and if those people shake the charges, they do not go after the police, guess why – because these are the criminals, and unstable at that, and with guns!! They kidnap people and hold them hostage.Christina Rainville is a serious criminal. But it looks like she has plenty of company in Bennington.
I sat in a Westminster select board meeting earlier this year and watched while they went over their budget, they lamented that the policeman wasn’t bringing in the same amount of revenue as in years past, from traffic tickets. It was explained that the sherif was new, and just getting to know the town. The Town Manager said that he would talk with the police ( sherif?) to make certain that he stepped up his efforts to get the town revenue through tickets. This is recorded on film. This is government ordering the police to fill a quota, and the police will deny up and down that they have a quota. But the legislature depends on the money stolen in fines and makes their budget on it. That is just one level of crime.
The fact is, people use heroin because the government is corrupt. We don’t have fairness, or peace or a clean environment, or a fair monetary system, or good health, because of the corrupt idea behind the existence of Government that people should dominate others, that some people are morally equipped to govern and rule others, but they are just as bad as those they dominate. When the lawmaking system encourages them to behave in a superior way, when in fact they are not superior in any moral manner, corruption spreads rampant as it is now.
The law is an excuse so that some can be the dominant class, the dominant class will look out for themselves, bend the ‘law’ for themselves, and break the law for themselves and invent the law for those they are threatened by.
Jail does not work to make us safer. It actually increases the instability of society. Remember the police are the least emotionally stable of all. They suffer from PTSD.
It appears fairly obvious that Bennington County needs a house cleaning which includes the States Attorney and all her staff, Mary, the head Administrator for the court, Judge Howard, probably the side judges and definitely Chief of Police Doucette and his traffic ticket money machine. Stu Hurd should just retire and move on. Where do we start?
Just like in Family Court arrest the Dad put Him in JAIL ,Now how does He Pay Child Support? makes No Sense to Me …Put Him on a Work Related site with Pay and then The Mother will get her Money.something like PINS Program but for Adults.
The Bennington DOC is the most corrupt unfair agency I have had the displeasure to have to deal with. They have no rules to follow and are given the discretion to do what they want to you for as long as they want to with no consequences to them whatsoever. If they don’t like you it matters not if your charge was a misdemeanor. They have kept my three year old from access to her father for over two and a half years for no explainable reason with no end in sight. Years of begging for mercy and trying to find help did nothing but make things worse. If it’s so known what they do why haven’t they been stopped?
What they don’t mention is that police departments and Sheriff’s get paid for keeping the correctional facility full. They get fines for not filling beds.
It’s easy to look at the the socioeconomic situation, where the population is largely trained to do factory or assembly work and 95% of those jobs have gone out of state or country.
Non-violent drug offenders are easy catches and then in a county like Bennington where there is already enormous competition for jobs, you are at a disadvantage.
Jailing people takes a breadwinner from a family and puts the entire unit at risk from abuse from the community or system. The rise of for-profit prisons has destroyed the family unit through poverty.
The economic strain on the county has been the catalyst for much of this, add the heroin, and since the 1960’s the CIA is responsible for 90% of the heroin distribution worldwide. The Mexican cartels work for the CIA. The war in Afghanistan is about heroin. The doctors in Vermont were giving it out freely in the pill form, and it got people hooked. The street drugs are cheaper, and dirtier. When people are out of work they are depressed. When people are poor, they get depressed. Then they get hurt doing odd jobs or physical work they are less used to, and the doctor gives you opiates for pain. This has been the set up for thousands of falls, not just in Bennington, but all over the country. The script pad gets them initiated and then the CIA makes sure the population has a steady supply.
It keeps your for-profit prisons full, CPS (another money maker) full, and your police and lawyers and their masonic friends fat and happy.
First of all one can get drugs in jail too.So a lot of people continue the cycle in than out of jail. Treatment options is needed here. they can put a dealer in jail but someone is going to pop up in their place. Supply and demand. If we can help the people stop using there will be less selling.Things change, people change, and drugs change, so the way we deal with drugs has to change too. The closed minded way of Marthage’s way of just throwing people in jail is obliviously not working. This is a pattern I have seen growing up in Bennington we re-elect the same people though results are poor or minimal. Bennington didn’t want growth or new people coming in, we taxed business to high heaven now look there’s no jobs left. Now Bennington is in a panic, there’s no money coming in and with an aging population what are we to do? really? nobody saw this coming? maybe if there were jobs people wouldn’t have so much time on their hands to do drugs in the first place.
I believe if you break the law you should be punished but Erica goes over board my son got a aggravated assault and he never hit anyone he just threatened someone over the computer and got hit with 3 years for a threat shes only about jail jail jail no help theres supposed to be program’s to help but no dont get them the help they need just throw them in jail she feels sympathetic cause of her child hood ya ok thats why bennington has the highest jail rate
The “lock them up and throw away the keys” approach has been tried, and it has failed. As a Bennington resident, I see no effect of Marthage’s policies. I sat on a jury last year, and, after hearing one case, we all agreed that we couldn’t believe that it had been brought to trial and very quickly sent the person home. It was a waste of our time and the taxpayer’s money. I got the impression that her technique is to try everything and see what sticks. This is an inefficient and expensive view of law enforcement. We need a drug court, we need expanded treatment options for addicts, and, most of all, we need a new philosophy leading the way.