An 81-year-old double murder suspect who has been in custody since his arrest more than a year ago has been placed on home detention at the medical facility where corrections staff have had to monitor him for months.
The move by Judge Cortland Corsones to approve home detention for Michael Louise, who cannot stand or walk on his own, at an acute rehabilitation facility at Mt. Ascutney Hospital in Windsor means that he will now be subject to electronic monitoring by an ankle bracelet.
As a result, the Vermont Department of Corrections will no longer be required to have staff watch over him 24 hours a day, as it has done since the end of July when Louise was placed in a medical facility due to his failing health.
That level of monitoring for Louise, who had been in custody for lack of $20,000 bail, has cost the corrections department $298,466 as of Dec. 22, according to Haley Sommer, a corrections department spokesperson.
The corrections department requested the hearing to consider home detention for Louise, which took place last week in Rutland County Superior criminal court.
“The court finds that placing the defendant on home detention will reasonably assure his appearance in court when required and the proposed residence is appropriate for home detention,” Corsones wrote in his decision issued Wednesday.
Bennington Deputy State’s Attorney Jared Bianchi, the prosecutor in the case, said during the hearing that he was “not supporting” home detention for Louise. Dan Sedon, Louise’s attorney, told the judge that he was “fairly agnostic” on placing his client on home detention.
Louise, of Liverpool, New York, was charged in October 2022 with two counts of murder in the stabbing deaths of his wife’s parents, Catherine and George Peacock, in Danby in 1989. They were 73 and 76 years old.
Louise has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has been held in custody since his arrest for lack of bail. A judge last month reduced Louise’s $200,000 bail to $20,000, but even the smaller amount has not been posted.
In charging Louise more than three decades after the Danby couple were fatally stabbed, prosecutors cited advances in DNA technology that had resulted in new evidence identifying Louise as the alleged killer.
Sedon, Louise’s attorney, is seeking to have the case against his client thrown out, arguing investigators were “overzealous” in their pursuit to blame the murders on Louise.
