This article by Anna Merriman was published by the Valley News on May 18.
BURLINGTON — The trial for a 42-year-old Vermont felon accused of kidnapping a New Hampshire woman and raping her in a White River Junction hotel early last year has been delayed again due to the outbreak of Covid-19.
Judge William Sessions ordered that the trial be rescheduled to the second week of September during a status conference Monday for Everett Simpson, 42, who faces two counts of kidnapping related to the January 2019 incident.
During the conference, Simpson’s attorneys argued that they had lost three months of time that could have been used to prepare for Simpson’s trial because of restrictions related to the pandemic.
The attorneys, Mark Kaplan and Natasha Sen, took over from Simpson’s previous attorneys in January, meaning they only had a little over a month on the case before the Covid-19 outbreak, Kaplan argued Monday.
Federal prosecutor Matthew Lasher argued against pushing the trial back to the fall, saying that he hopes it could be over in June or July.
In his decision, Sessions sided with defense attorneys, saying it’s unclear when jury trials will resume and that hoping for a trial in early summer is unrealistic.
Simpson’s trial was originally planned for late March. He allegedly left the Valley Vista substance-abuse treatment facility in Bradford, Vermont, and drove to Manchester where he’s accused of kidnapping Celia Roessler, then 23, and her 4-year-old son outside the Mall of New Hampshire. Roessler told police Simpson drove her across state lines and raped her in a hotel in White River Junction before fleeing. The rape charge will be prosecuted in Vermont Superior Court in White River Junction following the federal case, according to state prosecutors.
Roessler and her son in December received $400,000 from Vermont to settle a lawsuit she filed accusing State Police of negligence in the case.
