Charges brought against a Montpelier resident who was arrested after he refused to stop speaking at a city council meeting have been dropped, Washington County State’s Attorney Michelle Donnelly said on Wednesday.
The move comes one month after the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont called for the dismissal of criminal charges against Stephen Whitaker in the case.
Whitaker, a frequent critic of Montpelier’s city council members and its mayor, was arrested at the meeting on June 8, 2022, after being repeatedly warned to stop talking when he went beyond the city’s imposed two-minute limit.
He was removed from the chambers by police and charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and unlawful trespassing, and an additional charge of violating previous conditions of release.
At the meeting, Whitaker raised concerns about street sweeping, river pollution and public records requests, among other topics, according to the ACLU’s friend-of-the-court brief filed last month in Washington Superior Court’s criminal division.
“Criminally prosecuting a resident for extended public comments undermines the central purpose of public meetings and offends democratic values,” ACLU-VT staff attorney Harrison Stark said in a statement at the time.
In an interview Wednesday evening, Donnelly, who was sworn in as state’s attorney last month, said she had “reviewed the footage from the meeting” to reach her decision to drop the charges, coming to the conclusion that “Mr. Whitaker did not commit a crime.”
State statute, she said, requires that a “substantial disruption of the meeting” take place, and because the council was able to resume its meeting, the incident “didn’t meet an essential element of the crime.”
Whitaker’s attorney, Avi Springer, filed a motion to dismiss.
Whitaker, in an email in response to questions on Wednesday, suggested Donnelly dismissed the charges “to avoid judicial oversight.”
“The two minutes time limit is illegal and unreasonable and is still used to suppress public comment and avoid accountability,” he wrote. “A judicial decision would have informed legislative discussion on amending and clarifying the law.”
He called the charges an “abuse of process” brought against him for exercising his “constitutional rights.”
In an email on Wednesday, Bill Fraser, Montpelier’s city manager, wrote that the “Mayor and City Council followed their adopted policy.”
“I suspect all public bodies would welcome clarity about removal of individuals who are disrupting meetings or failing to comply with meeting (standards),” he wrote.
Following its involvement on behalf of Whitaker, ACLU-VT later pointed to what it called a “troubling pattern” of Vermonters being barred from public spaces and forums.
On Jan. 10, the organization filed a lawsuit on behalf of Andrew Cappello, a former Newport city employee who was issued a “no trespass” order in 2021 and barred from city property for a year.
ACLU-VT also previously worked on behalf of Jason Ploof, who was forbidden from visiting City Hall Park in Burlington for 90 days after he allegedly had an open container in the park on two different occasions.
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the timing of the ACLU’s involvement in Whitaker’s case.
