In a convoluted back-and-forth, the Vermont Supreme Court has granted the lower environmental court permission to decide whether to reissue an arrest warrant for Daniel Banyai.
All five supreme court justices signed a one-paragraph order on Thursday that allows the environmental court to reissue the warrant “and determine if its provisions should be modified to ensure its execution.”
In response, the environmental court wrote that it “intends to issue its ruling” after Nov. 17.
The town of Pawlet has for years asked the environmental court to require Banyai to remove buildings from his property, Slate Ridge, a gun range used for paramilitary weapons training.
In July, Thomas Durkin, the environmental court judge overseeing the case, issued an arrest warrant, declaring that Banyai was in contempt of a March 2021 court order to dismantle unpermitted structures on his property.
Banyai later contended he had complied with the court’s requirements, though he had not allowed Pawlet officials to inspect his property. Meanwhile, he appealed the case to the state supreme court, and his arrest warrant expired without Vermont State Police or the Rutland County Sheriff’s Department executing it within the 60-day period that it remained active.
Following the warrant’s expiration, Merrill Bent, the town of Pawlet’s attorney, requested that it be extended.
Durkin initially declined the town’s request, siding with Banyai’s attorney, Robert Kaplan, in finding that the state supreme court now had jurisdiction. Later, Durkin told both parties he would reconsider the warrant if the supreme court gave him permission to do so.
In an email Friday, Bent, Pawlet’s attorney, wrote, “The Town has not been allowed to inspect in order to verify the claim that the unpermitted structures have been removed in accordance with court directives.”
“If, as Mr. Banyai has asserted, the property already is in compliance, it will not take long to verify that,” the attorney wrote.
Kaplan, Banyai’s attorney, wrote in an email Friday: “Since the Vermont Supreme Court remanded the Writ of Mittimus to the Environmental Division without offering any reasoning, rationale or even explanation, Mr. Banyai is unable to comment on this development.”
Both parties have until Nov. 17 to submit any final information for the environmental court to consider before ruling on the warrant.
