Editor’s note: This article by Jordan Cuddemi was published in the Valley News on March 1, 2017.
[W]HITE RIVER JUNCTION — Emily Perkins has had years to consider what she might say, if given the chance, to the woman she shot and left for dead in a Bethel trailer in 2011.
On Wednesday, at her sentencing hearing for the shooting, Perkins was to have her chance, but her victim, Emma Jozefiak, would have none of it.
The moment Perkins turned from the judge to address the gallery, Jozefiak beelined out of the courtroom. Her mother, Cyndi Belouin, followed close behind.
Following the hearing that ultimately saw Perkins sentenced to a minimum of 26 years in prison, Jozefiak, who still has a bullet lodged in her brain, said she had no interest in a dramatic face-to-face apology from her assailant.
“I don’t need to listen to anything that she has to say,” Jozefiak said.
Perkins shot and killed 48-year-old Scott Hill during what police have said was a drug deal gone bad. Jozefiak, then 19, had been living off-and-on with Hill and was there that day. She was shot in the head but survived and was found three days later.
Last March, a jury convicted Perkins of attempted second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter. On Wednesday, she learned her penalty.
“No sentence this court imposes can change the events of Nov. 8, 2011,” Judge Theresa DiMauro said in Windsor Superior Court on Wednesday, prior to formally sentencing Perkins.
DiMauro said she weighed several factors in calculating a sentence, including that Perkins took one life, “intended” to take another and hasn’t accepted responsibility for her actions.
The judge noted that Hill’s children will always live without their father and that Jozefiak lives with cognitive delays that make it hard for her to perform certain tasks.
The 26-year sentence DiMauro ordered fit within the parameters that prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to last month. As part of the deal, Perkins agreed not to appeal the conviction or the sentence.
Because she has one year of pretrial credit, Perkins will be eligible to go before the Vermont Parole Board when she is about 55 years old. There is no guarantee she will get out at that time. The sentence wrapped in several other unrelated offenses Perkins pleaded guilty to on Wednesday.
In a victim impact statement to the court, the now 24-year-old Jozefiak described months of frustrating rehabilitation where she had to relearn how to walk, talk, tie her shoes and brush her teeth. The former high school soccer and basketball standout suffers from delays related to a traumatic brain injury and nerve damage caused by the shooting. She also has a loss of peripheral vision and no feeling in her right leg, two things that will prevent her from playing the sports she loved.
“I struggle to explain to people how I am feeling,” said Jozefiak, who stumbled over her words at times. “Before this, I was good at everything; I was smart in school. Today, I am in college taking one class at a time because I get too overwhelmed.”
She advocated for a lengthy sentence.
“Every single day is a struggle for me,” Jozefiak said. “(Perkins) gave me a life sentence and that is something I have been dealing with for over five years already and will deal with for the rest of my life. I feel it is only fair that Emily Perkins gets the same.”
Belouin, Jozefiak’s mother, also addressed the court and told of the day police found her daughter clinging to life on the floor. Belouin said she is still traumatized by that day and will forever remember the anguish of believing her daughter was dead.
The image of Jozefiak on a gurney with blood soaked hair, her eyes just “empty black holes,” haunts her when she closes her eyes at night, Belouin said.
“If Emma hadn’t found the strength to survive during those four days, this whole case would have been about a double homicide,” Belouin said. “I look at her today and I see so many bonuses, but not one of those bonuses came easy to her.”
Through a statement read by his uncle, Scott Hill’s youngest son, Drake, told the court he has lived in fear since his father’s death. The teenager said since the shooting he has had trouble sleeping, frequent nightmares and trust issues.
“It makes me angry that you tried to deny what you did,” Drake wrote to Perkins. “It doesn’t seem like you have any remorse for me or my family or anyone who suffered because of what you chose to do. No matter what your sentence is, I will be at your parole hearing to say my piece.”
Before DiMauro sentenced Perkins, Windsor County State’s Attorney David Cahill had argued for closer to 30 years, while lead defense attorney Devin McLaughlin argued for 20 years.
Cahill presented DiMauro with a series of factors he felt she should consider when drafting a sentence, including that Perkins left Jozefiak for dead and blamed Jozefiak and her late husband, Michael Perkins, for the shootings through a web of lies.
Cahill also picked apart the letter Perkins wrote to DiMauro ahead of her sentencing hearing. In the letter, Perkins shied away from fully accepting responsibility for her actions.
Cahill accused her of being “a master” of the “passive voice.”
“She is a master of writing in a manner that does not convey who the actor is,” he said. “(She) appears to assert that drugs are responsible for her extreme behavior, but the reality is that drugs did not pull the trigger.”
Cahill acknowledged that Perkins has showed some remorse — but said it’s been for the wrong things.
“She is remorseful for her current circumstances,” Cahill said, including the impact on her two young daughters.
He said Perkins’ case is “not a story of addiction,” but a “story about evil.”
“(Perkins) made a series of evil decisions,” he said.
In his argument to DiMauro, McLaughlin, Perkins’ attorney, accused Cahill of contradicting the former prosecutor, Christopher Moll, who McLaughlin said centered the case on addiction.
“Without the opiate addiction, this never would have happened,” McLaughlin said. “Emily has beaten her opiate addiction.”
He urged DiMauro to not let one factor of sentencing outweigh others, and to keep in mind that Perkins has two young children, something Perkins’ mother, Peggy Ainsworth, and Michael Perkins’ mother, Sherri Perkins, noted in presentencing testimony on Wednesday.
The act of shooting someone doesn’t match Perkins’ character, Ainsworth said. She noted her daughter has some mental health issues, which she is now medicated for.
Both Cahill and McLaughlin talked about the presumptive sentence for second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder, which both amount to 20 years. Because Jozefiak survived, McLaughlin said Perkins should receive some sort of leniency. Perkins also didn’t have a prior criminal record, he said.
DiMauro didn’t see it that way.
“The defendant is not entitled to anything because of the fact that Emma survived,” she said.
Asked after the hearing, Cahill said he felt the judge handed down an appropriate sentence.
“It is never a happy moment to have the court sentence someone to what will likely be a substantial portion of their life in prison,” Cahill said, “but we think it was something that needed to be done.”
McLaughlin said he thinks DiMauro missed the mark.
“The sentence was greater than necessary to meet the legitimate goals of sentencing,” McLaughlin said. “There is a real difference between attempted second-degree murder and actual murder. That said, the sentence was within the agreed upon range, and cannot be attacked as unreasonable.”
Although Jozefiak and her mother chose to step out when Perkins turned to address her victims at the hearing, the 30-year-old continued to speak to Hill’s family.
Hill’s 26-year-old son, Josh, and his wife, Nikki, were also in attendance.
“I, in no way, can fully understand what all of you are going through,” Perkins said, her feet shackled. “If I could take it all away … and still take this sentence, I would. It breaks my heart that I can’t. If it gives you comfort to know that I will bear this grief my whole life, be comforted. I am so sorry.”
