Veronica Lewis, accused of shooting and wounding her firearms instructor, avoided trial when a prosecutor dropped the attempted murder charge against her.
But Vermont’s attorney general brought a new charge against her, and she entered a guilty plea on Thursday.
Under a plea deal, Lewis faces up to 10 years in prison. A sentencing date has not yet been set.
The case against Lewis — who was previously declared insane at the time of the crime — has been working its way in and out of the legal system for more than five years.
Lewis, 36, entered her guilty plea Thursday during a video hearing in Chittenden County Superior criminal court in Burlington. The felony charged alleged she committed attempted second-degree murder in shooting Darryl Montague during a lesson in 2015 in Westford.
“While the defendant was at the range, she took hold of a gun, and she shot Mr. Montague in the face and the abdomen on three separate occasions,” Assistant Attorney General Ultan Doyle, the prosecutor, told Judge Martin Maley during the hearing.
“So how would the state prove that this was intentional rather than accidentally shooting someone at the firing range who happened to, for example, walk in the line of fire?” the judge asked.
Doyle replied that Montague was giving Lewis shooting instructions when she shot him three times at point-blank range, and there were no indications of self-defense.
The plea deal calls for Lewis to serve a sentence of 20 years to life in prison, with all but 10 years of that prison term suspended. Lewis would be on probation for 40 years after she got out of prison, with several conditions, including a requirement for mental health treatment if she needs it.
Maley explained the many rights Lewis was giving up by agreeing to plead guilty.
“You don’t have to enter a guilty plea, you understand that?” Maley asked Lewis.
“Yes, your honor,” Lewis replied.
Montague, the firearms instructor, operated Vermont Target Sports in Westford. He was shot twice in the face and once in the abdomen. He spent a year at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, healing from his injuries. He is now disabled and has problems with his balance and memory.
Montague could not immediately be reached Thursday for comment. Last month, in an interview about the plea deals, he said he didn’t want to make a public statement until all the agreements had been finalized.
Doyle said he expects Montague to deliver a victim’s impact statement when Lewis is sentenced.
Maley asked Doyle if Montague agreed to the plea agreement.
Doyle said Montague understands the terms of the plea deal, and “I don’t feel it would be accurate to say that he is fully supportive of the agreement.”
Before deciding whether to accept the plea agreement, Maley is ordering a pre-sentence investigation to obtain more background information.
Neither Doyle nor Jessica Brown, a public defender representing Lewis, objected.
Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George had asked the court to dismiss a charge of attempted first-degree murder against Lewis in June 2019, saying she could not rebut a defense claim that Lewis was insane at the time of the shooting.
According to George, her office had received information about Lewis’ extended mental diagnoses and psychiatric hospitalizations. Lewis’ lawyer had submitted opinions from psychiatrists, who believed she was insane when the shooting took place.
Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan then reviewed the case, as well as two unrelated murder cases George had dropped for similar reasons. Donovan took a new look at the urging of Gov. Phil Scott to look at three dismissed cases.
The attorney general has since made a rare move to step in one of those murder cases and then revived the attempted murder charge against Lewis.
It is unusual for an attorney general to step into a case handled by a county state’s attorney, leading to claims that the actions were politically motivated. However, federal prosecutors had jumped into Lewis’ case before Donovan did, filing their own criminal firearms charge against her. Lewis pleaded guilty earlier this week to that federal firearms charge, stemming from taking Montague’s gun and ammunition at the time of the shooting. Sentencing in that case is scheduled for May 28. In a plea deal in that case, Lewis faces six years in prison, which she would serve simultaneously with the 10-year sentence on the state attempted murder charge.
Also, as part of that deal, as outlined by Judge Christina Reiss during the hearing this week, while the prosecution acknowledged that Lewis is suffering from a “severe mental disease,” she agreed to waive raising an insanity defense.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ophardt told the judge that a forensic psychologist from the federal Bureau of Prisons had examined Lewis and determined that she was suffering from a “mental disease” at the time of the offense. However, Ophardt said the psychologist also found that the disease “did not impair her ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct at the time.”
Doyle told the court Thursday that the plea agreements are “reflective” of Lewis’ mental health history. The intent of the plea deals, he said, is for Lewis to serve most, if not all, of her minimum prison terms in both cases in federal custody, taking into account time she has already served.
George, reached Thursday, reiterated comments she made last month when the plea deals became public. George said she was not surprised that Lewis would feel an “incredible amount of pressure” to resolve the federal and state cases, rather than risk pleading guilty in the federal one and have the state-level state attempted murder charge “looming over” her forever.
“She likely faced a choice between the lesser of two evils,” George said. “This is exactly how our system typically plays out.”
