A former St. Albans police officer pleaded guilty Monday to a simple assault charge for pepper-spraying a teenager in the face while he was in custody in a holding cell in 2017.
The sentencing for Joel Daugreilh, 37, was deferred for six months and he was placed on probation by Judge Martin Maley in Franklin County Superior criminal court in St. Albans. He was also ordered to complete 40 hours of community service. If Daugreilh abides by the conditions of his probation, the charge would be cleared from his record.
Misdemeanor simple assault carries a maximum penalty of a year in prison.
Daugreilh, a former corporal in the St. Albans Police Department, was charged with pepper-spraying 18-year-old Nathan Willey of St. Albans while Willey was handcuffed inside the police station in November 2017.
Daugreilh has since resigned from the department.
Both Assistant Attorney General Sophie Stratton, the prosecutor in the case, and Jessica Burke, Daugreilh’s defense attorney, told the judge Monday that they supported a deferred sentence.
“I think this was a difficult case both factually and procedurally,” Stratton said, adding Daugreilh had violated the “public’s trust” by his action.
Burke told the judge that her client should have had better training on how to respond to situations such as the one that took place in November 2017.
“He has always acknowledged that he does wish that this has gone down differently,” Burke said of Daughreil. “He wishes that he had more resources available to him.”
Daugreilh also spoke, echoing his attorney’s comments on the need for better training.
“I regret that it happened in the first place,” he said.
Maley told the attorneys that given the time that has passed since the incident leading to the charge and Daugreihl’s otherwise clean record, a “relatively” short period for a deferred sentence was warranted.
“It appears to the court this was more of a training issue, if you could call it, or lack thereof,” the judge said, later adding, “This is the type of case that is really designed to have some amount of community service but otherwise, I think, relatively short period of a deferred to allow for that to occur.”
The case has been working its way through the legal system for years, delayed by the prosecution taking a long time to decide to bring the charge followed by a court slowdown as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In the summer of 2018, then-Attorney General TJ Donovan opted not to prosecute Daugreilh. Then, in January 2020, he said he was reopening the case shortly after Vermont Public Radio made a public records request seeking records related to the decision to not bring charges against Daugreilh.
Reopening the case put the brakes on the records request as the matter remained under investigation.
A second use-of-force expert in the Daugreilh matter, Donovan said at the time, determined that the officer’s actions were not a reasonable use of force, prompting the attorney general to file the simple assault charge against the officer.
An affidavit filed in support of the charge stated that Daugreilh reported to investigators that on Nov. 26, 2017, Willey, who had been taken into custody following a domestic disturbance, had been disruptive at the station. At one point, according to the affidavit, a video shows the officer hurrying back to the cell.
At the cell, the door was open and Willey, handcuffed, was shown sitting on a bench. He appeared not to be resisting as the officer approached him, the affidavit stated.
“In the video, Willey dropped his head and turned his head to the right, away from Daugreilh’s position,” according to the affidavit. “Daugreilh then uses his left hand to grab Willey’s head by his forehead or hair and forcibly pushes Willey’s head back against the cell wall.”
“Daugreilh then stated, ‘Do not kick my door,’ and administered his OC spray into Willey’s eyes from a close distance. Willey then started to cry and Daugreilh exited the cell,” the affidavit stated.
Daugreilh did not appear to give any verbal commands or warning to Willey before pepper spraying him, according to the affidavit.
The criminal case brought against Daugreilh in 2020 was among a string of probes and resignations around that time in the St. Albans police department.
Among them, Jason Lawton, a former St. Albans officer, was sentenced by Maley in December 2022 to three months in jail for punching a handcuffed woman in the face while she was in custody at the police station in 2019, when Lawton was a police officer.
Also, WCAX reported earlier this year that Mark Schwartz, a former St. Albans police officer, was acquitted of a simple assault charge following a trial in which he was accused of using a stun gun while an officer to incapacitate a vandalism suspect in 2019.
