[A] defense lawyer is challenging Washington County State’s Attorney Scott Williams’ explanation about how a charge against his client was dismissed.
Williams’ version of events is stated in a letter to the state’s Professional Responsibility Board’s disciplinary counsel, which is investigating the prosecutor’s handling of that case and others.
Defense attorney Colin Seaman said what the prosecutor wrote in that letter is not accurate.
The Times-Argus first reported that the state’s Professional Responsibility Board, which oversees the conduct of Vermont attorneys, is investigating allegations that Williams took contributions in exchange for dismissing charges against people he was prosecuting as state’s attorney. The contributions were for the Washington County Victim Assistance Emergency Fund, a nonprofit that doesn’t exist.
Williams, in an Aug. 16 written response to the board’s disciplinary counsel, Sarah Katz, wrote that none of that money has ever been spent, and he denies any wrongdoing.
In the letter, Williams describes the case of Christopher Duprey, who in 2016 was charged with misdemeanor petty larceny over allegations of stolen tires stemming from an ongoing dispute with a neighbor.
Seaman said this week that Duprey, his client, paid $200 to a fund Williams suggested, in exchange for dismissing the case in June 2017.
The prosecutor, in his letter to disciplinary counsel Katz, said Seaman proposed that his client make a donation to the fund.
“The contribution to the fund was suggested by Mr. Duprey’s attorney and I agreed, separate from the plea agreement,” Williams wrote.
Williams also wrote that the reason the case was dismissed was because “Mr. Duprey did that which state required” and returned the tires in question to the owner.
However, Seaman told VTDigger a different version events. “I wouldn’t even have known it existed,” Seaman said of the fund. “I did not come up with the idea.”
Seaman said he has an obligation to present offers to settle cases to his clients. “This was an offer that if (my client) came up with the money to pay this within a period of time the case would dismissed,” the defense attorney said. “That’s an offer that I have to relay to my client and I did and my client jumped on it.” Seaman told Seven Days a similar version of events in a story that was published earlier this week.
The defense attorney told VTDigger he was taken aback by Williams’ statement. “The resolution was that (Duprey) had to pay a couple hundred dollars to the state’s attorney’s office and the case would be dismissed,” Seaman said. “Scott made the offer.”
Asked about the importance of the distinction over who made the offer first, Seaman replied, “As an officer of the court, and as an attorney, we have an obligation to be honest and forthright, and we have to do that in all of our dealings, public and private, that’s part of the ethics.”
Seaman said for more than 10 years he’s worked as a contract attorney for the state’s public defender’s office, representing clients when conflicts arise between a client and public defenders. He couldn’t recall another similar case in that time, adding he handles more than 100 cases a year.
“As far as I know I think this is the only one,” he said. “I think I would remember if there were another one that had this issue.”
Williams wrote to the Professional Responsibility Board’s disciplinary counsel that concerns about issuing dismissals of cases in exchange for donations to his office are a “mischaracterization of the situation.”
Williams, elected state’s attorney in 2014, wrote that in the winter of 2016 he learned about a fund for assisting victims had been created and was overseen by a board of directors that has been inactive for years.
That board had dissolved and the fund was no longer formally in existence, Williams wrote. When the bank said it could no longer hold a check that had been associated with that fund in its safe, it made a check out for more than $70,000 out to the Washington County State’s Attorney’s office, which Williams said came to his office in February 2017. Williams wrote that he has kept that check in a “separate locked drawer,” where it still remains.
The Washington County Victim Assistance Emergency Fund, which had listed the Washington County State’s Attorney’s Office address in Barre, is first listed in the Secretary of State’s database in 1998. Its status is currently listed as “terminated.”
A search on Guidestar, a service tracking nonprofit organizations, for “Washington County Victim Assistance Emergency Fund,” yielded no responses under that name, or several different variations of the name.
Williams said he eventually planned to start a new fund called the Washington County Community Support Fund, which would be started with the $70,000 check from the previous fund.
However, Williams wrote, he had been so busy, he never had the time to get the initiative off the ground.
“So, in short, the check is in a holding pattern until I can corral a proper volunteer board of directors, coordinate the time to create the non-profit corporation that will administer it, and then turn full authority over the administration of the fund to said board, thereby removing myself from all dealings with the monies and providing an opportunity for the County Community to access funds that were effectively lost for years,” Williams wrote.
Williams envisioned the new community support fund collecting contributions from “a variety of sources.” Through a board of directors, cash awards would be made to groups in the county involved with “either direct intervention or collateral support of harm-reduction and crime-intervention strategies.” Money from the fund could help people in the treatment court program obtain dentures, for example. About 30 percent of the graduates of the program have such poor dental health that they are in need of dentures, which, “in most circumstances,” Medicaid won’t cover.
He added, “There have been no donations to my office. no plea or dismissal has been conditioned on such a contribution; obviously not to my office; but not to any other cause either. There are no plea agreements, while have been State’s Attorney, that included any type of donation or contribution other than those authorized or required by Statute.”
There are cases, though, he wrote, “where the facts and circumstances of an individual and the crimes alleged warrant consideration, if proposed by the defendant or their counsel, of a
contribution to an appropriate cause.”
The prosecutor also wrote that in more than 900 cases this year there have been four with contributions to the Washington County Community Support Fund and six to other programs. He wrote that he accepted the four contributions to the community support fund as “seed money” to promote more fundraising once the fund is formally established.
Williams has been on family medical leave from the office since last month, with his office receiving support from the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs and prosecutors from other counties in Vermont.
The Vermont Supreme Court has since suspended his law license, writing, “Disciplinary Counsel and (Williams) have filed with the Court a stipulation to transfer (Williams) to disability inactive status due to a medical condition that currently incapacitates respondent from practicing law.”
VTDigger filed a public records request with the Vermont Professional Responsibility Board seeking that stipulation, which was denied citing a Supreme Court rule that deems the document confidential.
Katz, the Professional Responsibility Board’s disciplinary counsel, could not be reached Friday for comment.
Williams was excused from testifying at a sentencing hearing last month, after he filed a motion to quash a subpoena. That sentencing was in the case of Jody Herring, who killed four people in 2015, including three relatives and social worker Lara Sobel.
Williams, who has previously said he had post-traumatic stress disorder that predated the Herring murder case, was at the Brattleboro Retreat receiving care around the time he was excused from testifying at Herring’s sentencing.
Witnesses who testified at that sentencing said they saw Herring put down the rifle after shooting a social worker in downtown Barre. That contradicted earlier reports in which Williams said he disarmed Herring immediately after the shooting.
Herring was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Her attorney, David Sleigh, said Friday the ruling by the judge to quash that subpoena excusing Williams from testifying will be grounds for an appeal in the case.
