Vermont Superior Court Judge A. Gregory Rainville came under fire at a Statehouse hearing Wednesday night, with some lawmakers arguing that his “gruff” style in the courtroom — and even in that hearing — had gone too far.
Rainville, who was appointed in 2006, was taking part in a meeting of the Joint Committee on Judicial Retention, which reviews the performance of state judges every six years. In most cases the process tends to be largely pro forma. But during Rainville’s hearing, some lawmakers expressed displeasure with the veteran judge’s demeanor.
During his opening remarks to the committee, Rainville noted that “I’m known as a bail judge. I set a lot of bail.” He then asserted that Chittenden County has “serious problems” with violent crime and described some of the out-of-state offenders with long criminal records that he sees in court.
“I have no compunction about setting heavy bail on a person like that and, in Chittenden County, it’s a very different attitude,” he said. “The violent crimes, yes, they, they sit on those pretty hard, but the other crimes they don’t. And it’s a philosophy. It’s an approach. It’s not what I agree with, but state’s attorney has their own powers.”
Rainville was apparently referring to Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George, who has faced criticism for her support of bail reform.
Toward the end of Rainville’s remarks, Rep. Chip Troiano, D-Stannard, revisited Rainville’s bail comments.
“I think the piece that you went off on, on conditions of release, was a little over the top,” Troiano said. “You know, I understand your position. I don’t even argue it in some cases, but to just pour it out on us may have been not the right approach.”
Another committee member, Sen. Dick McCormack, D-Windsor, noted that survey results and comments the committee received about Rainville said he can be “gruff.”
Rainville responded that he was familiar with such a characterization.
“I’ve had people say this to me before, ‘You’re very authoritarian,’” Rainville said. “And I don’t really mean to be that way, but I’m fairly intense, my voice carries, I’m a fairly sizable guy, and so you put all that together, yeah. So I have to be careful with that.”
Later, Rep. Angela Arsenault, D-Williston, followed up along those lines. Arsenault told Rainville that she thought “words matter.”
Based on comments from surveys and his remarks that night, she asked Rainville if he “might be making decisions about people before you’ve heard from them, based on your experience — extensive as it is — and unconscious bias that you may not be aware of. And I worry about how that affects outcomes of cases that are brought before you.”
Rainville jumped in to dispute that, saying, “It’s not so much about pre-judgment as it is being willing to accept and listen to what’s being presented to you.”
Arsenault continued, pointing out a survey comment in which an attorney said Rainville “regularly berates those in front of him.” Arsenault also asked about Rainville’s letter to the retention committee, in which he joked about “not being the judge in my marriage, the most difficult task.”
Arsenault said she saw that as disparaging his spouse.
Rainville again jumped in, saying he should have rethought the joke.
“There’s no greater advocate for women than the guy you’re looking at,” he told committee members.
Later, Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, said she was not only “highly disturbed” by some of the survey comments, but that it was also “unacceptable for someone in your position to be so dismissive and display such a lack of ability to listen.”
Hardy then read through several of the survey comments from attorneys, which were written anonymously. One described Rainville as “particularly gruff with women and people of color.” Another lawyer said that they “lost sleep over my first appearance before Judge Rainville, he was rude and dismissive and wouldn’t let me speak. I wasn’t sure if it was my young age or the fact that I was a woman, but it was completely inappropriate.”
But other comments in that survey and a separate set of results from court staff and non-attorneys were positive. Some comments described Rainville as being “very fair to everyone, of all backgrounds,” and as being “very kind and he works exceptionally well with difficult defendants.”
During Wednesday’s hearing, Hardy acknowledged the positive survey comments and said she had a lot of respect for him as a result of those, but also sought to connect some of the negative feedback to Rainville’s conduct during the hearing.
Hardy said that she wanted to see some self-reflection on Rainville’s part on how he is viewed in the court.
“And when my colleague was trying to discuss this with you, you were flippant and dismissive of her efforts and interrupted her while she was talking,” Hardy said, apparently referring to the judge’s exchange with Arsenault. “So you just demonstrated in front of me exactly what these comments say.”
After hearing from Rainville, committee members went into executive session. When they emerged, they scheduled another meeting on Rainville’s retention for next Wednesday.
Reached by phone on Friday, Rainville said, “I will say that I did a poor job of representing myself.”
One of the reasons for that, he said, was out of “frustration” that the committee is “relying upon anonymous statements. People don’t identify themselves. They are unverified statements. They’re not under oath. There’s no scrutiny given to them and no context.”
On Thursday evening, the joint committee held a public hearing to solicit feedback on all 13 judges up for retention. Of the nine people who spoke during the hearing, five spoke positively of Rainville. None spoke negatively of him.
In an email Friday, George, the Chittenden County prosecutor, declined to respond to Rainville’s comments directly but said, “my office does our best to make our positions on things like bail very clear for judges, while respecting that that decision is ultimately entirely up to them. We maintain a professional and respectful relationship regardless of how they may feel about our policies.”
Rainville has come under scrutiny before.
In 2014, he was reprimanded by the Judicial Conduct Board over allegations that he placed inaccurate information into the file of a divorce case and used that to justify a dismissal. That divorce ruling was later overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court, and Rainville was ordered to participate in a mentoring program with another judge for one year. A follow-up report noted that Rainville “met or exceeded” the plan and was discharged.
The judicial retention process started in the 1970s after a change to the state constitution put state-appointed judges on six-year terms, according to Robert Paolini, executive director of the Vermont Bar Association.
The last time a judge was denied retention was in 1993, when Superior Court Judge Arthur O’Dea lost his seat in a joint House-Senate assembly following criticisms of his demeanor. The vote was 87-86.
In 2011, the joint retention committee voted against retaining Judge Mark Keller, but Keller withdrew his request for retention before the joint assembly could vote on the matter.
The committee will make recommendations on each judge before a joint assembly of the House and Senate conducts a final vote before the judges’ terms expire at the end of March.