A former Stowe man charged in the 2023 fatal shootings of two Massachusetts men in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom has reached a plea deal that will take the death penalty off the table as a possible sentence.
Theodore Bland, 30, is set to plead guilty later this month in federal court in Burlington to several charges, including ones accusing him of firing the shots that killed the two men in a drug-related dispute, according to court records.
In exchange for the guilty pleas, prosecutors will seek two life sentences for Bland, a plea agreement filed this week stated.
“There was a deal made where Theo agreed to essentially a life without parole sentence if the attorney general withdrew the recommendation for the death penalty, and that’s where we find ourselves,” David Sleigh, one of Bland’s attorneys, said Friday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Turner, a prosecutor, signed off on the deal Thursday.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Vermont, through a spokesperson, declined comment Friday.
The plea deal comes more than two years after police found the bodies of Jahim Solomon and Eric White in the woods of Eden on Oct. 25, 2023.
The medical examiner said both men had died from gunshot wounds to their heads, charging documents stated. According to the documents, Bland shot the two men about 10 days earlier in a dispute over illegal drugs.
Solomon, 21, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and White, 21, of Chicopee, Massachusetts had been reported missing by their families days before their bodies were found.
Bland was arraigned in December, when federal prosecutors filed charges against him that carried the possibility of the death penalty.
Vermont got rid of its death penalty statute in the 1970s. However, Bland’s case was brought under federal law, which allows for capital punishment for certain crimes. The last execution in Vermont took place in 1954.
President Donald Trump lifted a moratorium on the federal death penalty shortly after taking office in January.
In addition to admitting to causing the deaths of Solomon and White, Bland will plead guilty to other drug and firearms offenses, including conspiring to distribute cocaine and fentanyl, the agreement stated.
Judge William K. Sessions III, who presides in the case, still must approve the agreement. A hearing is set for April 27.
Sessions also presided over the last death penalty case that went to trial in federal court in Vermont. In that case, Donald Fell was sentenced to death in 2006 after a jury returned a verdict a year earlier on charges of carjacking and murder.
Fell’s conviction was later overturned due to juror misconduct, and his case was resolved in 2018 with a plea deal that resulted in a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of release.
Federal prosecutors in Vermont last year brought death penalty charges against Teresa Youngblut, formerly of Washington state. Youngblut has been charged in the January 2025 fatal shooting of a border patrol agent in northern Vermont. The case remains pending.
