Federal prosecutors charged Veronica Lewis with firearms violations Tuesday, a week after Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George dropped attempted murder charges over doubts the state could prove Lewis was sane when she shot a firearms instructor in 2015.
Lewis was charged with illegally possessing a gun after being adjudicated as mentally ill, and possessing a stolen weapon. She appeared Wednesday in federal court in Burlington, where Magistrate Judge John Conroy delayed until Monday a hearing on whether Lewis should be imprisoned before trial.
George faced swift criticism in political quarters for her decision last week to drop murder and attempted murder charges in three high-profile cases, including Lewis’. Gov. Phil Scott said he was “at a loss as to the logic” of George’s actions, and asked Vermont Attorney General T.J. Donovan to independently review the case files.
A timeline included in federal charging documents shows that U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan’s office began pursuing firearms charges almost immediately after Scott spoke out.
Prosecutors said Lewis shot Darryl Montague three times during a beginner course at his gun range in Westford and then fled with one of his guns. Having been adjudicated mentally incapacitated in a 2013 criminal case in New York, Lewis could not legally handle firearms.
Montague told Seven Days he had urged George’s office to include gun charges in its earlier case against Lewis.
“I’ve been asking for three years now, ‘How come no charges were brought for stealing the gun?’” he said. “I never got a good answer, or what I would consider an acceptable answer … The answer I got was, that was not the major issue.”
George told Seven Days on Thursday that similar firearms charges do not exist under state law, but that the state’s attorney’s office had discussed federal charges with the U.S. Attorney in 2015, before George and Nolan held their respective current posts.
“We were given the impression that those charges were not an option in this case, so that is the information we relied on and what we told Mr. Montague,” George said.
Nolan said her office hadn’t wanted to waste resources on a weapons case when Lewis was being held on more serious state charges. Nolan said she’d never discussed the prospect of a federal case with George until Tuesday, when she called the state’s attorney seeking information about where Lewis was being held.
Montague said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the federal case might hold Lewis accountable for the injuries that continue to affect his life. Two of the three bullets that struck him remain lodged in his skull, he said.
Nolan suggested an insanity defense would be less likely to prevail in the weapons case because Lewis is alleged to have broken the law during the entire period she possessed Montague’s gun, not just when she pulled the trigger.
In a Thursday press release, George agreed that Lewis’ insanity defense faced a higher burden in federal court. She also said that it would be a mistake to prosecute and re-incarcerate Lewis “simply because we find limitations in our mental health system that are not being addressed.”
Lewis will remain in the custody of U.S. Marshals until Monday’s hearing.
Her public defender, Michael Desautels, could be heard trying to reassure Lewis after her initial appearance before Conroy.
“I’m hoping that on Monday he lets you go back to your hospital,” Desautels said.
Related Stories
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
At least it sounds like the Fed’s are doing something and the States attorney just gave up! They should take over the other 2 murder cases if they can!
At least the Fed’s are doing something about this case and the States attorney just gave up! Maybe justice will be served with them taking over and hopefully they can take over the other 2 murder cases seeing as though she doesn’t seem to want to…
Frankly, this is pathetic reporting. This is not a political issue, it is a legal issue. Making it political without understanding or adequately explaining the legal issue allows the kind of anger at the prosecutor that she does not deserve in this case.
She has a legal and ethical duty not to try a case when she cannot prove (has no evidence to support) a material element of her case. In all three cases, she literally could not prove that the defendant was legally sane at the time of the commission of the crime. Sure, she could waste time and resources if she wanted to, and be ethically challenged by the judge, or could she do what the law requires her to do. I applaud her doing the right thing, as difficult as it was, but the press is doing everyone a disservice with this dog-and-pony show ginning up anger and fear.
“[Lewis’s] public defender, Michael Desautels, could be heard trying to reassure Lewis after her initial appearance before Conroy. Im hoping that on Monday he lets you go back to your hospital, Desautels said.”
So she’s sane enough to know she’d rather be in her hospital than in jail.
In the Burgoin case, the state’s attorney’s own psychologist agreed with Burgoin’s psychologist that Burgoin was insane at the time he drove the wrong way on I-89 and killed five teens. So what did the state’s attorney do? She went out and found another psychologist who said that Burgoin was sane, and she tried the case against Burgoin and got a conviction. Obviously, the state’s attorney either didn’t believe her own original psychologist’s opinion, or wanted to prosecute Burgoin no matter what. Fair enough.
But in these three cases she doesn’t question the psychologist’s opinions of insanity? She chooses not to go out and find a shrink who will say that these three defendants were sane? She chooses not to do exactly what she did in the Burgoin case?
Another case of over emphasizing the big bad firearm.
Doesnt matter where the crime was committed, just another jab at gun ‘control” in the same article
So you think George just decided to let 3 psychotic murderers off the hook why?
And for you gun rights nuts who are so extreme you can’t even think things through for yourselves, its Donny J Trump going after Lewis on Gun Violations.
Personally, I don’t know all the details of the case George does and I’m inclined to think she doesn’t get her kicks by sharing the streets with psycho murderers and that she had no case to dispute their insanity pleas. Probably because they are certifiably insane.
And I appreciate the fact that she isn’t tying up the Courts with cases she can’t win and wasting taxpayer money too. Maybe we can use those funds to hire some mental healthcare workers for the state.
George as a lawyer is trivial and feckless