Editor’s note: This story was updated at 6 a.m. Nov. 15.
[B]ARRE — A judge has rejected a bid from Jody Herring’s lawyer to have Washington County State’s Attorney Scott Williams testify at her sentencing hearing on four murder convictions.
Williams, one of the first people on the scene of the slaying in downtown Barre, is on leave from his office, with a source telling VTDigger on Tuesday evening that he is currently receiving care at the Brattleboro Retreat.
It is not clear why Williams is at The Retreat. According to its website, the facility in Windham County provides inpatient and outpatient mental health and addiction treatment for children, adolescents and adults.
A spokesperson from the Vermont attorney general’s office confirmed to VTDigger Tuesday evening that the AG’s office has been asked to assist with Washington County cases, but wouldn’t comment on Williams’ status.
Attempts to reach John Campbell, executive director of the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs, were not successful Tuesday evening.
In a VTDigger story published Aug. 7, 2016, a year after the shooting, Williams talked about seeking mental health support after the shooting.
“I was fortunate to be able to plug immediately back in with my therapist,” he said at that time.
Williams, as a witness in the shooting in the Barre parking lot, recused himself from the case, which is being prosecuted by the Vermont attorney general’s office.
Williams also talked about the days and weeks after the shooting experiencing an array of physical and psychiatric symptoms, including always being a state of agitation as well as having difficulty sleeping.
In court Tuesday, Judge John Pacht granted a request by Williams’ lawyer to quash a subpoena for the state’s attorney to testify.
David Sleigh, Herring’s lawyer, was seeking to have Williams testify about closed-door juvenile court proceedings that took place more than two years ago involving Herring’s daughter.
Herring pleaded guilty in July to killing three of her relatives and a social worker in August 2015. According to court filings, she had been angry over the roles she believed they played in her loss of custody of her 9-year-old daughter.
Herring’s sentencing hearing is taking place this week in Washington Superior Court.
“I think there are aspects about the way that the (family court) hearing was conducted that were flawed in a very profound way,” Sleigh said Tuesday of his reason for wanting Williams to testify.
Sleigh said it was Williams who handled the juvenile court proceeding, following protocol.
A transcript of the proceeding was entered into evidence at Herring’s sentencing hearing Tuesday under seal, meaning the judge will review the documents but the public will not be able to see them.
Sleigh said after the hearing Tuesday that juvenile records are by state statute considered confidential, but the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution allows for a “fair and fully public” trial.
“That being said, your Sixth Amendment rights at sentencing aren’t quite as fully fleshed out as they are at the trial itself, so we’ll do some legal research and file a motion to publish those transcripts so people can see what happened,” the defense attorney said.
The judge on Tuesday allowed Sleigh to file such a motion Wednesday morning.
The Vermont attorney general’s office, which is prosecuting Herring’s criminal case, has objected to the public release of the transcripts from those juvenile proceedings.
Lawyer Bradley Stetler, representing Williams, requested Tuesday that the judge quash the subpoena for the state’s attorney.
Stetler made his request after the parties emerged from a brief meeting in the judge’s chambers. Williams did not appear Tuesday in the courtroom.
“For reasons stated in chambers, which implicate privacy and confidentiality concerns, so I won’t state them yet on the record, subject to further briefing either party wants to do, the court will, at least temporarily, grant the motion to quash,” Pacht said.
Williams became the top prosecutor in Washington County in 2015. Questions have been raised about his actions at the scene in the downtown Barre parking lot where Herring fatally shot Lara Sobel, a social worker with the state Department for Children and Families.
A witness to the shooting testified Monday that afterward she saw Herring put down the rifle. However, earlier reports from authorities had indicated Williams disarmed Herring immediately after the shooting.
Seven Days also reported last week on the matter involving the rifle and whether Williams disarmed Herring.
In yet another twist in the case, police Tuesday arrested Herring’s 22-year-old daughter, Desiree Herring, at the Cumberland Farms in Montpelier.
She had several outstanding warrants and was on escape status from the Department of Corrections. She was held without bail at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility after her arrest.
Last year, Desiree Herring triggered a security alert at state offices when she went missing from custody within days of the anniversary of the killings her mother committed. That time she was arrested about a week after she went missing.
Jody Herring’s sentencing hearing began Monday and is expected to conclude Wednesday with victim impact statements as well as the handing down of the sentence.
As part of a plea deal, Jody Herring avoided a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Prosecutors are seeking that sentence; her attorney is arguing for “something less.”
She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the deaths of three of her relatives — her cousins Rhonda Herring and Regina Herring, as well as her aunt Julie Falzarano — at their Berlin home on Aug. 7, 2015.
She pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting death later that day of Sobel, who oversaw Herring’s child custody case. That shooting occurred outside Sobel’s office at Barre City Place.
On Tuesday, a psychiatrist who examined Herring said she suffers from a severe anxiety disorder that worsened due to increasing stress in her life.
“It is my opinion that the history of stressors and the repeated exposures to stressors in the months preceding the shootings made it much more difficult for Ms. Herring to cope or manage,” Dr. Renee Sorrentino testified on behalf of the defense.
“(Herring’s) anxiety symptoms intensified and she became, in essence, dysfunctional,” Sorrentino added.
Sorrentino testified that Herring’s anxiety disorder fueled her “suspiciousness” and “distrust” of others.
The psychiatrist spoke of a period of Herring’s life in October 2014 when she became unemployed and homeless. At that time, according to Sorrentino, Herring reported that she was being followed, contacting CNN and ABC news outlets as well as law enforcement and government agencies, including the FBI, seeking help.
Herring got no response from those parties she contacted, Sorrentino testified.
“Ms. Herring has a long history of contacting various government agencies in her attempt to get help,” the psychiatrist testified. “However, Ms. Herring experienced the response from the police and various government agencies to be unhelpful.”
Also, Herring was abusing alcohol and substances she had been prescribed in the time leading up to the fatal shootings, Sorrentino testified. Those substances, Sorrentino added, included opiates Herring had been taking with much greater frequency than prescribed to deal with headaches.
“Her active symptoms of anxiety as well as her active symptoms of substance abuse impaired Ms. Herring’s perception on the day of the incident offenses,” Sorrentino testified.
Dr. Thomas Powell, a clinical psychologist called to the stand Tuesday by the defense, said a test he administered to Herring revealed she scored high on a scale for the “perception of persecution.”
Powell said that was consistent with Herring’s “ongoing views that various forces in the world have been working against her.”
Powell also talked of how Herring has adjusted to her time at the women’s jail in South Burlington. He said Herring works there cleaning the booking area, adding that is “a trusted” position.
He also called her well-liked at the jail, saying, “She is not getting caught up in all of the maelstrom you see at the Chittenden facility.”
Assistant Attorney General Evan Meenan asked Powell if he knew Herring had received six disciplinary reports, or “DRs,” in the two years she has been jailed. Some of those DRs, Meenan added, were considered major.
“I think they go back a ways,” Powell responded, adding there are a lot of ways such disciplinary actions can come about in jail. “I’d need to know the circumstances.”
Powell also testified that Herring was “the product of multiple generations of adverse experiences” and trauma.
“Can you testify with any certainty as to when this trauma can be adequately treated so that she no longer presents” a danger to the public? Meenan asked.
“I cannot make that statement,” Powell replied.
Michelle Chambers, a friend of Jody Herring’s since the time they were in elementary school together, also took the stand Tuesday. Herring, according to Chambers, loved her daughter and didn’t want to lose custody of her.
Chambers said “the only thing that kept (Herring) grounded” was her young daughter.
Among the other witnesses the defense called Tuesday, Dwayne Herring, Jody Herring’s brother, described the close relationship he had with his younger sister.
He talked about the tough upbringing they had following their father’s death in 1979.
Jody Herring, who was 5, had a particularly difficult time dealing with that loss, her brother testified, as well as physical and mental abuse she suffered throughout her childhood.
On the day of the fatal shootings in August 2015, Dwayne Herring testified, his sister repeatedly called him, but he was working and didn’t pick up the phone.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew Levine asked Dwayne Herring about a police report regarding those calIs and messages Jody Herring left for him, beginning just before 5 a.m.
Dwayne Herring, speaking to police a day after the fatal shootings, talked about the messages, including one that told him to watch the news.
Levine, reading from the police report, said Dwayne Herring told detectives at that time, “She sounded like a crazed killer.”
“Absolutely, she was hysterical,” Dwayne Herring said Tuesday of his sister’s messages, adding that she was desperate to talk to him. “If I had answered my phone we wouldn’t be here today.”
(VTDigger’s Mark Johnson contributed to this article.)
