Christopher Lopez resigned from the Burlington Police Department in February after it emerged that video captured by his body camera during a traffic stop contradicted his statements in a sworn affidavit that he smelled marijuana coming from the car.
The incident led the Chittenden County state’s attorney to drop 14 cases that relied on Lopez’s testimony.
Lopez was sentenced to one year of probation and 40 hours of community service and was fined $500 under a plea agreement approved by Chittenden County Superior Court Judge Kevin Griffin, according to Lopez’s attorney Lisa Shelkrot.
At Lopez’s arraignment in September, Judge Alison Arms rejected as too lenient a plea agreement that would have imposed 80 hours of community service and a $1,000 fine along with one year of probation.
Arms sought to direct a portion of that community service toward having Lopez speak to police across Vermont about the consequences of making false statements and how it had affected his life. She also wanted him to write an apology to the two men who were in the car during the traffic stop.
Lopez rejected that amended plea agreement, and new hearing date was set. Vermont’s rotating bench meant it was before a different judge.
Prosecutors said the plea agreement will achieve their primary goal of securing a conviction, which is likely to keep Lopez from working in law enforcement. They said that outcome would not be guaranteed were the case to go to trial.
Lopez has maintained that he did not lie in his affidavit but simply made a drafting error that he was not given the opportunity to correct. Shelkrot read a statement on his behalf in court Wednesday explaining that Lopez is pleading no contest to put the incident behind him and move on.
“I was never given a chance to fix my mistake. To the contrary, I was
summarily dismissed from my employment and smeared in the press by the state’s attorney and the chief of police,” Lopez said in the statement.
Lopez added that it was true he did not smell marijuana at the time when he can be heard in the body camera footage telling a fellow officer that he did. However, he maintains that he did detect the scent later in the stop.
“In writing the affidavit, I mistakenly made it appear that I had smelled it earlier than I actually did,” Lopez wrote, adding that when he searched the car he discovered a small amount of marijuana.
Michael Mullen, the man Lopez stopped in 2016, spent several months in prison after being charged with possessing cocaine, which Lopez also discovered during the search.
That charge was dropped after Mullen’s public defender discovered the inconsistencies between Lopez’s statements in the affidavit and those captured by his body camera. Mullen sued Burlington, and the case was settled for $100,000.
