This article was updated at 8:15 on Oct. 23.
ST. ALBANS – More than four years and four trials after his arrest outside the Vermont Statehouse, Norman McAllister walked out of a Franklin Courthouse on Wednesday with no convictions on his record in a sex scandal that cost him his state Senate seat.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, left the same building at nearly the same time offering no comments as they carried away cardboard boxes overflowing with paperwork accumulated from years of litigation against McAllister that ended in only dismissals or acquittals.
“I think the old saying was, ‘Where do I go to get my reputation back,’ Robert Katims, McAllister’s attorney, said Wednesday outside a criminal courtroom in St. Albans. “I think that’s really where Mr. McAllister stands now.”
The defense attorney then said of McAllister, “He’s lost a lot, not just financial, obviously he lost his Senate seat because of it.”
It’s a legal saga that has spanned a total of four trials for McAllister as well as an estimated $270,000 he said it cost him to defend himself against the sex allegations.
In the final pending case against McAllister that played out Wednesday in a Franklin County courtroom, a jury acquitted him of a misdemeanor charge that he prostituted a tenant living and working on his farm.
The 12-member jury reached its not guilty verdict after a half-day trial and one hour of deliberations.
More serious charges filed against him of sexual assault have either been dropped or ended in acquittals after jury trials over the years since 2015 arrest.
“Relief,” McAllister said outside the courtroom Wednesday of his reaction to the verdict delivered moments earlier on the charge alleging he prostituted a tenant in 2013 living and working on his Highgate farm to cover a $70 utility debt.
“This has been an ongoing nightmare,” McAllister said, adding, “I guess the system works, if you have patience and you have enough money to get through it.”
Franklin County Deputy State’s Attorneys John Lavoie and Diane Wheeler, who prosecuted the case, both left the courthouse Wednesday after the verdict with no comment.
Katims, McAllister’s attorney, questioned those prosecutors for bringing the case to trial for the third time on the misdemeanor prohibited act charge.
“This case comes down to, I think very clearly, whether or not the complaining witness could be believed or not,” the defense attorney said after the verdict.
“I think it was very clear that she wasn’t a truthful witness. She hadn’t been in the past. She admitted she hadn’t been in the past,” Katims said. “We think the state should have made that determination before they even brought these charges.”
In total, McAllister was accused in 2015 in sex cases involving three women, including one who died after the charges were brought and another who gave conflicting testimony prompting prosecutors to dismiss that case.
During the trial Wednesday, the prosecutor described McAllister’s actions akin to a pimp while the ex-lawmaker’s attorney called him an innocent man facing an accuser who needed someone to blame to keep her ex-husband from getting angry at her.
Previous trials on the prohibited acts charges against McAllister dating back as far as 2017 resulted in a conviction later overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court, as well as another that ended in a mistrial earlier this year.
Lavoie told jurors as the trial kicked off in St. Albans that McAllister prostituted a tenant living on his Highgate Farm to a friend to cover a utility bill debt she owed him.
“What he said was he has this friend who is going through a divorce,” Lavoie said McAllister told the woman. “I could send him to you, you could have sex with him, and that would pay for the bill.”
The woman, he added, who had no income coming in, and facing few options to repay that debt, agreed, and she met McAllister’s friend for sex and that debt was covered.
“Mr. McAllister suggests this could continue, she doesn’t want it to,” the prosecutor told the jurors. “It leads to only one instance.”
Katims, McAllister’s attorney, said in his opening statement to the jury that the woman’s allegation against McAllister stemmed from her desire to appease her ex-husband, who would be more upset with her if she engaged in prostitution without coercion.
“There was no way she could admit to engaging in prostitution,” Katims said of the woman. “She lied and said Norm set it all up, it was his idea.”
Lavoie, during his opening statement to the jurors, played a portion of a recorded phone call between the woman and McAllister.
The woman, in that call, spoke with McAllister of plans the two had previously discussed to prostitute her to migrant farmworkers to make money, with the pair dividing any money they took in.
“Like you did with that guy that one time?” McAllister responded to the woman in the call.
Lavoie told the jurors McAllister is the person who arranged the meeting in 2013 between the woman and “that guy” referenced in the phone call.
No meetings with the migrant farmworkers occurred. Instead, the charge brought against McAllister relates to the allegation he “procured” the woman to have sex with “that guy,” the prosecutor said.
The woman, called to the stand by Lavoie as the first witness in the case, testified that she had responded to a Craigslist ad for a job caring for goats as part of a milking operation on McAllister’s farm in 2012.
For that job, she said, she was paid $600 a month, with no taxes taken out, plus she was allowed to stay at a nearby trailer McAllister had on his property, and she was responsible for making the utility payments.
McAllister pulled the plug on the goat-milking operation a few months later, she said, leaving her with little income to cover those utilities bills. Soon after, she said, the power was shut off at her trailer, and McAllister paid to get it back it on.
Then a short time later, the woman testified, McAllister suggested prostituting her to one of his friends. She agreed and met that man at her trailer.
The woman testified she didn’t know the man by name and police have not been able to find him. The woman described the man as short, balding and “kind of overweight.”
After they had sex, she said, they both put back on their clothes. “He said thank you very much,” the woman added, “and he left.”
Later, the woman said, McAllister told her that man reported that he “really enjoyed himself and wanted to have it happen again.”
The woman said she told McAllister, “I was definitely not comfortable with that.”
Lavoie, the prosecutor, then asked the woman if she had had any further discussion with McAllister about the utility bill.
“No,” the woman responded.
“Was it considered paid?” the prosecutor asked.
“As far as I knew,” she replied.
During cross examination of the woman, defense attorney Katims zeroed in on a 2012 domestic violence case involving her and her ex-husband at the time.
Through the questioning, Katims drew out allegations from court filings and sworn police statements the woman made against her ex-husband in that case.
Katims pressed the woman about conflicting accounts in the past about that case, including as recently as earlier this year during a previous trial involving McAllister that ended in a mistrial.
“In April of this year do you remember testifying in this court about this that you lied in those statements?” Katims asked her.
“It was my perspective at the time,” the woman replied.
“Now you’re saying you didn’t lie at all,” the attorney later followed up.
“Correct,” she replied.
“So you’re saying you were lying then about lying before,” Katims asked.
“I had a different perspective at the time and I have been through a lot of therapy,” she replied.
In addition to the woman, the only witness in the case was Vermont State Police Detective Sgt. Benjamin Katz. He testified about how the recorded phone call between the woman and McAllister took place, with a judge issuing a warrant approving the taping.
Katz also testified about reasons why a woman may recant previous statements in domestic violence cases, including financial concerns, ongoing fear and family dynamics.
McAllister did not testify during the trial. He had testified at one of the earlier trials that resulted in a conviction on the prohibited acts charge that was later overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court. He did not testify in the retrial in April that ended in a mistrial.
Lavoie, in his arguments Wednesday to the jury, spoke about the time spent by the defense on a 2012 domestic violence case involving the woman and her ex-husband a “sideshow.”
The prosecutor added, “That is just not this case, this case is about procuring (the woman) for prostituion.”
Lavoie, in his final plea to the jury, played the recorded phone call one last time.
The prosecutor then told the jurors the woman is no longer with her ex-husband so there is no motivation for her to lie about McAllister.
“If this was a lie, she didn’t need to stick with it,” Lavoie said. “Why would she subject herself to this, why would she stick with this story if it were not true.”
Katims told jurors in his closing argument that the 2012 case goes to the motivation of the woman to accuse his client, and whether she was a truthful person.
The defense attorney said the only evidence the prosecution had against his client came from the woman’s testimony, which could not be relied on for convicting his client beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Not even close,” Katims said. “Norm McAllister is not guilty.”
Heath McAllister, Norman McAllister’s son, said after the verdict that his father was offered a plea deal in the case that called for a $500 fine.
The son said that was an agreement his father couldn’t make because it included a provision that his father would have to admit guilt, which he wouldn’t and couldn’t do.
