This story by Jordan Cuddemi was published by the Valley News on Oct. 14.
WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Windsor County State’s Attorney David Cahill will swap out his suit and tie for a more relaxed outfit come January when he steps down from his post to become a stay-at-home dad.
The 40-year-old father of two, who will have served in the lead prosecutorial role in the county for four years, notified Gov. Phil Scott of his plans on Friday. His last day will be Jan. 12; he won’t complete his term, which runs through 2022.
“It is very important to me to do my best job possible, both as a state’s attorney and a parent,” Cahill said on Monday. In order to do both to the necessary caliber, “I would have to choose, and I don’t want to have to make that choice.”
So, Cahill, who has been a prosecutor in Vermont for 15 years, will focus on his two daughters — ages 3 years old and 9 months — for the foreseeable future. Cahill and his wife Janet Saint Germain, a certified financial planner, live in Thetford.
Former Windsor County State’s Attorney Bobby Sand, who hired Cahill, said he has the “utmost respect” for his decision.
“It takes a certain amount of courage, I think, to do what he is doing, and I salute him and I celebrate his decision,” said Sand, who referred to himself as a “biased observer” of Cahill’s “impressive” work.
“Recognizing that lens, I think he has done an extraordinary job as state’s attorney,” Sand said. “I think he has a very strong, balanced sense of what is justice.”
Windsor County Democratic Committee Chairman Bill Kuch also spoke highly of Cahill’s tenure, saying he is a “progressive” state’s attorney.
“He believes in the same philosophies that his predecessors did,” Kuch said. “The solution to a lot of things is not necessarily incarceration.”
As of Monday morning, Kuch said he knew of one other attorney, Ward Goodenough, who is currently in the Windsor County State’s Attorney’s Office who would be seeking an endorsement from the committee. Goodenough confirmed that on Monday.
Deputy State’s Attorneys Heidi Remick and Karen Oelschlaeger also said they are planning bids for the post. Glenn Barnes said he hasn’t yet made a final decision.
Cahill skirted a question about who he would like to see fill the role.
“I am happy to speak (with) the governor about the strengths that each candidate would bring to the office,” Cahill said.
When a state’s attorney steps down in the middle of a term, the governor appoints a successor to the position, which in Windsor County will pay $116,500 next year. Peter Shumlin, a former governor, appointed Cahill state’s attorney in January 2016, when Shumlin appointed then-state’s attorney Michael Kainen a judge.
The 2001 Dartmouth College graduate doesn’t plan to sell his suits just yet. He said he plans to make himself available as a resource in the office for the prosecution of pending serious felony cases.
“I do not want to leave anyone hanging,” Cahill said. “It has been an absolute pleasure to work with the men and women of law enforcement, the Department of Corrections, the Department for Children and Families and to serve the people of the state of Vermont. I will greatly miss all of those things, but I also feel comfortable that I am leaving this office in a good place. I wish my successor the same job satisfaction that I have had.”
Cahill held the position through the height of the opioid epidemic, which forced him in part to rethink the role of a prosecutor, he said in 2017.
Working on crime-reduction initiatives was a goal of his and others in Windsor County. An example of that, he said previously, was the 2016 launch of the Windsor Rapid Accountability Program, which works to connect nonviolent drug offenders with resources to help prevent re-offending, instead of prosecuting them.
Although his full-time job will be “Mr. Dad” while his children are young, he said he also hopes to play a role in developing new risk and needs assessment tools in the state, which help judges and prosecutors “make decisions regarding the pretrial release or detention of criminal defendants, as well as the sentence structure for defendants who are found guilty.”
“Existing tools show promise but have been criticized as faceless algorithms that perpetuate society’s biases or that simply don’t do a good job of flagging escalation of dangerous behavior,” Cahill said.
