[B]URLINGTON — Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George did not coordinate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office about new federal firearms charges filed against the suspect in a recently dropped attempted murder case.
Last week, George announced that she was dropping the attempted murder charge against Veronica Lewis, who is accussed of shooting her firearms instructor in Westford in 2015. George said she was unable to rebut Lewis’ planned insanity defense.
U.S. Attorney Christian Nolan filed new charges against Lewis in federal court on Wednesday.
“I was not informed of the USAO’s decision to charge Ms. Lewis until after the decision was made so there was certainly no coordination between our offices with regards to their decision to charge, what to charge, or the timing of the charges,” George said in a statement Thursday.
George was sharply critical of Gov. Phil Scott last week after he asked Attorney General T.J. Donovan to review her dismissal of Lewis’s case and two other murder cases, in all of which defendants were using the insanity defense.
In a muted response to the new federal charges, George said Thursday that since she is not a federal prosecutor and the charges Nolan brought against Lewis are not available in state court, she could not comment on Nolan’s decision.
George’s statement also pointedly mentions that communications with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 2015 did not lead to any federal charges. Nolan said Wednesday her office wanted to avoid an inefficient use of resources when Lewis was facing more serious charges at the state level.
There is also a higher standard for the insanity defense in federal court than in state court, George said.
“If the USAO believes, in good faith, that charging and re-incarcerating Ms. Lewis serves the interest of justice, then they have the same prosecutorial discretion as I do to bring such charges,” George said. “As prosecutors, we all want to ensure that our community is safe, and it is imperative that we not continue to use our criminal justice system, including jails, simply because we find limitations in our mental health system that are not being addressed.”
Darryl Montague, the man Lewis shot, said Thursday that he received a call from Nolan on Wednesday morning telling him that Lewis would be facing federal charges in connection with the shooting.
“Basically, I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said. “Obviously, I’m happy that’s there something.”
Last week, Montague said he was “frustrated beyond words” with George’s decision to drop the state case. However, he said this week that he is still curious why federal authorities can’t also bring charges similar to attempted murder in addition to the firearms charges.
“At least I slept a little better last night knowing she was not going to be let out,” he said of Lewis. “That’s a little reassuring.”
Montague said federal investigators spoke to him earlier this week as they were gathering evidence in the case.
Donovan announced Tuesday that he would review the three cases George dismissed. George dismissed murder charges against Louis Fortier, charged with a murder on Church Street in Burlington in March 2017 and Aita Gurung, charged for murdering his wife in October 2017 with a meat cleaver in Burlington.
Scott wrote that he was “at a loss as to the logic or strategy” on George’s decision to drop the charges when he asked Donovan to review the charges.
“The top priority of government is public safety, and I certainly don’t take this obligation lightly,” Scott wrote. “A civil society cannot function properly when a heinous violent crime is not properly adjudicated, and the public is put at risk.”
George responded by slamming the governor on Twitter, where she said that she had never made any decisions based on politics and was not going to start now.
“To believe that I would not have considered EVERY SINGLE alternative and LEGAL option before making my final decision, is insulting to myself, all of the attorneys involved in this process, and to the victims and their families,” she wrote.
Alan Keays contributing reporting.
