A crime that was “out of a horror movie” appears to be headed to the Vermont Supreme Court, where the case could set a precedent for the new youthful offender law.
Speaking publicly about the event for the first time, Lucy Remington described through tears in court on Friday how Tyreke Morton, 19, knocked on her bedroom door and, as soon as she opened it, stabbed her in the chest with a steak knife.
Remington then said Morton began to try to kill her 3-year-old son, but she was able to pick him up and escape through a window after pulling the knife out of her chest.
“The whole time he was yelling ‘I have to kill you, I have to kill you, I have to kill Zion,’” Remington said.
“It was out of a horror movie,” she added.
Morton was taken into custody and charged with two counts of attempted second degree murder — he has been awaiting trial without bail at Northern State Correctional facility in Newport. He has pleaded not guilty.
The court hearing in Barre was supposed to be about a bail review process for Morton, but it turned into a referendum on the youthful offender law and a demonstration of the Washington County state’s attorney’s unhappiness with the legislation.
Defense attorney Dawn Seibert, of the Defender General’s Office, said State’s Attorney Rory Thibault was leading a “crusade in this case, and generally, to roll back the changes to the youthful offender statute” that went into effect this year.
This status allows anyone 21 or younger charged with a crime in Vermont to be placed on probation and supervised by the Department of Corrections and the Department for Children and Families.
If the person charged with a crime successfully completes probation, their case could be sealed and their record erased—without those documents being made public.
The Morton case was in criminal court for eight months before being transferred to family division court after defense attorneys sought youthful offender status, according to Thibault.
On Friday, Thibault argued that criminal court had no jurisdiction over the case because it had been transferred to family court and “this docket cannot exist in two different places at once.”
Thibault said under the current law, the only mechanism Morton has to request a bail hearing is to withdraw his youthful offender petition and move the case back to the criminal court division, because family court judges do not have the purview to conduct bail hearings.
Thibault argued that only after these steps were taken could Morton seek a bail review.
Continuing to voice his displeasure with the youthful offender law, Thibault said “there have been more youthful offender petitions filed in Washington County than anywhere else” in the state and that with the current legal wording someone with a record of violent crime “will suffer no consequences” as soon as they turn 22 years old.
Seibert of the Defender General’s Office said Thibault’s discontent with the youthful offender statute is not what is on trial and that his “crusade is a problem, but it’s particularly a problem here because it’s causing a certain blindness to the bigger picture in this case.”
Seibert said the state’s attorney has turned a blind eye to any of the positive aspects of Morton’s life and have instead only focused on the worst incident.
Judge Kirstin Schoonover was not swayed by Thibault’s arguments and said both family court and criminal court had jurisdiction over different aspects of the case.
Thibault then filed a motion to appeal to the Supreme Court, which was accepted by Schoonover, who still continued with the bail review proceedings.
Schoonover scheduled the continuation of the bail review hearing for Tuesday, the same day in which Thibault plans to file his appeal with the Supreme Court.
