Federal prosecutors have formally put a former Stowe man charged in the 2023 fatal shootings of two Massachusetts men in Vermont on notice that they are seeking the death penalty against him.
The prosecutors had said during a hearing in Theodore Bland’s case last month in federal court in Burlington that they had received approval from U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi to pursue the death penalty.
On Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont formally filed their notice in court that they would be seeking Bland’s execution, if he were to be convicted of the capital crimes he is facing.
The three-page filing alleged that Bland, 30, committed each of the killings “in an especially heinous, cruel, or depraved manner in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse to the victim.” Charging documents also stated that Bland carried out the killings during drug trafficking crimes.
The filing comes a little more than two years after authorities found the bodies of Jahim Solomon and Eric White in the woods of Eden, about a mile apart, on Oct 25, 2023. Both men had been shot in the head.
The last time an execution took place in Vermont was in 1954. The state has since done away with its death penalty statute but Bland’s case was brought under federal law, which permits capital punishment for certain crimes.
The families of Solomon, 21, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and White, 21, of Chicopee, Massachusetts, had reported them missing days earlier saying they had traveled to Vermont.
Prosecutors in Bland’s federal case alleged that the killings occurred Oct. 12, 2023, when “Bland’s firearm discharges caused the deaths” of both men “in relation to a drug trafficking crime.”
Attorneys Bruce Koffsky and David Sleigh, who both represent Bland, declined comment Wednesday on the latest filing by prosecutors.
Bland’s is the second case in which federal prosecutors in Vermont are seeking the death penalty against a defendant since President Donald Trump took office in January and lifted a moratorium on the death penalty in federal cases. In August, federal prosecutors in Vermont filed capital charges against 21-year-old Teresa Youngblut, formerly of Washington state, who has been charged in the shooting of a border patrol agent in northern Vermont in January.
Both Youngblut and Bland are in custody as the cases against them are pending.
