[R]UTLAND — Attorneys in the Jack Sawyer case are tentatively preparing for a Nov. 1 trial on two charges still facing the accused school shooting plotter.
Court action in the case of the former Fair Haven Union High School student, who was arrested in February for what police described as a foiled plot to shoot up his former high school, has slowed. A recently filed pretrial schedule proposal offers a glimpse of what’s happening.
The case is still heading toward a trial, at least at this point.
According to the proposed schedule, submitted by Kelly Green, Sawyer’s public defender, the goal is to have the case “trial ready” by Nov. 1.
The proposed deadline in the filing for pretrial motions is Oct. 15.
At the last hearing in the case in June, Judge Thomas Zonay gave both sides until the end of June to submit a proposed pretrial schedule.
Green submitted that schedule, and wrote in it that she emailed a copy to Rutland County State’s Attorney Rose Kennedy, who is prosecuting the case, but did not receive a response by the time it was filed.
Sawyer, 18, of Poultney, has been free on bail of $10,000 since a few days after the last court hearing in the case in late April. At that time, he was reportedly receiving inpatient psychiatric care at the Brattleboro Retreat.
The charges that remain pending against Sawyer are criminal threatening and carrying a dangerous weapon with the avowed purpose to commit serious injury or death.
If convicted of both offenses, Sawyer faces a maximum penalty of three years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.
The more serious offenses against Sawyer, including the attempted murder charges, were dropped by the prosecutor after a Vermont Supreme Court decision that, the prosecutor said, made continuing the case as originally charged “untenable.”
The high court ruled that merely preparing to commit a crime did not rise to the level of an attempt under Vermont case law.
Neither Green, the defense attorney, nor Kennedy, the prosecutor, could be reached Monday for comment.
Vermont Defender General Matthew Valerio, whose office is defending Sawyer, declined late Monday afternoon to comment specifically on the case.
However, he did say that in general, a proposed pretrial schedule in a case involving only misdemeanor offenses is a “soft schedule.” That’s mainly because other cases for those facing felonies and held in jail for lack of bail take priority, he said.
“It is very much of a wish list,” he said of a proposed pretrial schedule in a case for a defendant facing misdemeanors and not jailed for lack of bail.
The Sawyer case inspired historic changes in the state’s gun laws this past legislative session. His arrest in February came on the heels of a mass shooting at a Florida high school that left 17 students and teachers dead.
Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican who previously said he didn’t see a need for changes to the state’s gun laws, said details of the police investigation into the Sawyer case “jolted” him into supporting gun restrictions. He signed those restrictions into law in April after the Legislature passed a series of bills.
