Category Archives: justice and corrections

Who is this “Norm McAllister” of whom you speak?

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It was a real pigpile in the Statehouse today, as every politician rushed to give their two cents’ on Sen. Norm McAllister. And while Friday’s reaction was shock and surprise and even a smidge of sympathy for Good Ol’ Norm, today it was the ultimate game of Hot Potato, starring McAllister as the spud in question.

But he was more than just a hot potato; he was more like a potato baked in the hot zone of a nuclear reactor, marinated in snake venom, glazed with a hobo-puke reduction and liberally sprinkled with powdered essence of skunk. Such was the unseemly haste with which Our Leaders sought to distance themselves from McAllister and his [alleged] crimes.

There were universal calls for his resignation, as if the presumption of innocence had withered and died under the sheer ick factor of the [alleged] offenses. And, quick as a bunny, Lt. Gov. Phil Scott announced that McAllister would resign within 24 hours.

The news of his coming resignation elicited barely-concealed sighs of relief and metaphorical mopping of brows all around. But there was one small problem: Nobody told Good Ol’ Norm.

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All of a sudden, the Senate needs an ethics committee

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Less than two weeks ago, Seven Days‘ Paul Heintz revealed that Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell had gotten a job with the Windsor County State’s Attorney under what can only be called questionable circumstances.

Last year, Campbell actively lobbied for the job on behalf of the SA, who happens to be a neighbor of his. After the job went through, Campbell inquired about it, and was hired without any search process.

In the story, Heintz raised the issue of creating a Senate Ethics Committee, which currently does not exist. Campbell, sounding a lot like Bill Sorrell attesting to Bill Sorrell’s innocence:

“We really haven’t talked about it,” Senate President Pro Tem John Campbell (D-Windsor) said earlier this year. “I can’t remember the last time there was something that even came close to a question of someone’s ethics.”

Well, you can file that one in the Ron Ziegler Memorial “Inoperative” File. What’s changed?

Good Ol’ Norm, that’s what.

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Fill up the dunk tank with Purell, please. I need to feel clean again

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Update: Seven Days has just posted a story with more unsavory details. See below.

Things are not looking bright for Good Ol’ Norm. More details came out Friday on the criminal charges against Sen. Norm McAllister; and if you’re not completely skeeved out by them, well, your Skeeve-O-Meter needs a tuneup.

The case against G.O.N. “suggest[s] that McAllister for years used his power over vulnerable women,” reports Seven Days’ Mark Davis:

In December 2012, a woman moved into a trailer home McAllister owned in Franklin and began working at his farm. From the beginning, he asked her for sexual favors in exchange for allowing her to keep her job and home, affidavits say.

Reminder: McAllister’s late wife was still alive when this got started. Extra bonus skeeve points.

There’s a whole parade of horrors in the police documents, with three women alleging nonconsensual sex with McAllister — oral, vaginal, and anal, on dozens and dozens of occasions, sometimes causing pain. And, according to a Sunday evening report on Seven Days, one of his victims may have been below the age of legal consent when the assaults began.

But the low point, IMO, was this:

McAllister also proposed transporting her to area farms so she could perform sex acts on “Mexican” farmhands. He proposed they split the proceeds. She refused.

Eeeeeeeuuuuuuuucccccch. And this is a guy who was an aggressive moralist in his politics.

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Good ol’ Norm, maybe not so good

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When a prominent figure is charged with a crime, as with Sen. Norm McAllister being accused of sexual assault and trafficking, it might turn out to be a well-concealed aspect of his personality. Everybody has secrets, and some do a really good job of compartmentalizing.

On the other hand, maybe the dam bursts and you start hearing stories. Like this, from former State Rep. Rachel Weston:

Weston/McAllister

Oh boy.

Is this the first of many “Norm the perv” stories to be told? If so, I have to say the Senate did an awful job of policing members’ behavior. Need any more reason to set up an ethics panel, Mr. Campbell?

A Senator behind bars

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The mugshot.

The mugshot.

It’s gonna be an uncomfortable day at the Statehouse, what with yesterday’s arrest — at the Statehouse, no less — of Sen. Norm McAllister on charges of sexual assault and human trafficking, blecccch. His friends and colleagues should be prepared for questions about it.

Some free advice, then.

You can always start with a generic “not enough information” approach. That’ll fly at least until his arraignment. After that, you can fall back on the “innocent until proven guilty” mantra, but be very careful about how you frame it.

Avoid anything that shows more sympathy for the (alleged) perpetrator than the (alleged) victims. Avoid coming across like a man who’s never given a thought to the reality of women’s lives. Avoid an overzealous presumption of innocence: “I can’t believe good old Norm would do this.”

Be absolutely sure to avoid casting aspersions on the (alleged) victims. Nothing about skanks or tramps or lowlifes or entrapment.

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Our ever-vigilant keepers of the public order

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Oh boy, a cop scandal of our very own. And thankfully, it doesn’t involve shooting someone dead on little or no pretext. Just a digital cornucopia of hate speech from one of Vermont’s Finest.

The Vermont State Police is investigating one of its own for material that the trooper posted to social media.

One of the latest Facebook posts from Cpl. Jon Graham’s personal page is an article from Right Wing News. A photo of a smashed Virgin Mary Statue. And a comment from the trooper reading, “and these animals will kill you if you speak badly of Mohammed….tolerance.”

…The posts go back years, seemingly undetected by state police. Some allegedly penning his thoughts like one from 2014, “was just behind a Prius with a Bernie Sanders 2016 sticker…oh how I wanted to spin her vehicle out.”

Others make comments about actual crimes, “Officer involved shooting in Windsor tonight…officer okay…scumbag in hospital…as it should be.”

More specifics in a moment. First, though, a couple of notes that cut to the heart of the problem.

— Graham has been a state trooper for 15 years.

— He’s been posting hateful, racist, sexist stuff on Facebook for years. And his bosses never noticed?
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Mary Hooper pulls some fat from the budgetary fire

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Previously I brought you bitter tidings of a budget cut that would mean sending more Vermont inmates to for-profit, out-of-state prisons.

Well, my pessimism was premature. Today, Rep. Mary Hooper (D-Breezy Acres) introduced a plan to phase in the closure of the Southeast State Correctional Facility, and devote some of the projected savings to new re-entry programs designed to lower the inmate population. The plan appeared sound and convincing to the House Appropriations Committee. If it all works as planned, Vermont’s inmate census will be low enough when the prison closes, that no out-of-state transfers will be required. (Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito had estimated that 100 more inmates would have to be exported to the tender mercies of the Corrections Corporation of America.)

And bonus: the released inmates will be better prepared to make a successful re-entry into civilian life. That makes them less likely to re-offend.

Her proposal was accepted by the Appropriations Committee and folded into its budget plan. I don’t know all the details of Hooper’s proposal; I didn’t have a chance to speak with her today. But it’s good news. It turns a negative into a positive, and still allows the state to bank $1.7 million in savings from the prison closure.

More on today’s hot and heavy Appropriations action coming soon. Warning: not a lot of good news.

Rebalancing the inmate portfolio

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The House Appropriations Committee is putting in long hours this week, trying to finish work on the budget by Friday afternoon. I don’t envy them their task… but I will point out one little detail regarding one of its proposed cuts.

One of the cuts in committee chair Mitzi Johnson’s list is the closure of the Southeast State Correctional Facility in Windsor. Well, according to Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito, that would mean sending another 100 inmates to out-of-state, for-profit prisons.

Vermont has been making strides toward bringing its inmates home — possibly inspired by last summer’s court ruling that sending male inmates out-of-state without also sending female inmates is unconstitutional. The state chose not to appeal for fear the decision would be applied to the whole system. As it stood, only the inmate who filed suit was brought back to Vermont.

But the legal Sword of Damocles still hangs by a hair, so dozens of inmates have been repatriated in recent months. The out-of-state count is down to 340.

The fly in the ointment is that our contract with the Corrections Corporation of America calls for a minimum census of 380 inmates. If the count falls below that and stays there long enough, CCA can impose penalties.

That’d be inconvenient.

Our Democratic rulers seem to be taking steps to prevent that from happening. Gov. Shumlin’s budget proposal included the lease of 60 inmate beds to the U.S. Marshal’s office. And now we have a plan to close a state prison. The lease is a revenue source; the prison closure is a budget savings; and on top of that, we get the added bonus of avoiding penalties!

Everybody wins, right?

Well, everybody except the inmates we’ll continue to ship out of state, far away from their families and friends.

Shocker: Gun bill “hits snag”

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As VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld reports, the bill that would expand background checks for gun sales “has hit a major snag.”

The snag’s name is Judiciary Committee chair Dick Sears, a.k.a. The Human Snag.

“I don’t believe that the background check portion of the bill has the votes in this committee to pass out of this committee,” Sears said Tuesday.

That’s a nicely passive-aggressive way of putting it. Sears is opposed to the background check portion, and nothing gets through his committee without his consent. I dare say if Sears was the only member of the committee opposed, it still wouldn’t get through.

Hirschfeld notes that it’s still “theoretically” possible that the provision could be passed through some other committee (I’d suggest Agriculture, just for sh*ts and giggles). But the Senate is notoriously deferential to its senior members, and nobody demands more deference than good old Dick.

No surprise anyway. The background check debate was a shadow play from the start. The bill had no chance, given the loud and well-organized opposition of the gun-rights community. Like the Allied soldiers at Gallipoli, it wasn’t a question of whether this bill would die on the beach. The question was, which beach would it die on.

Background check bill, welcome to Sears Beach.

Inmates aren’t people; they’re fungible assets

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For those who believe that shipping prison inmates to distant for-profit prisons is immoral (human rights), unconstitutional (judge’s decision, uncontested), or simply counterproductive (isolation may lead to recidivism), this week brought just a little bit of good news courtesy of the soon-to-depart Laura Krantz at VTDigger.

After bringing home a few dozen inmates this week, Vermont has roughly 360 inmates in a Kentucky prison and another 40 in Arizona — the lowest number in a decade.

With the good news came some bad: a provision in Vermont’s contract with the Corrections Corporation of America imposes penalties if the inmate population falls below 380. We are now very close to that figure.

Corrections Commissioner Andy Pallito admits that the provision creates a disincentive for Vermont to bring more prisoners home, even if there’s space in state prisons.

Then came the Governor’s budget address on Thursday. One of the revenue upgrades is $1.7 million from the lease of 60 inmate beds to the U.S. Marshals.

Hmmm. A lower inmate population could trigger higher payments to CCA… but now we’re leasing five dozen beds, putting the squeeze on in-state prison space… Hey presto: Synergy! We save money on CCA and we make money from the U.S. Marshals.

Fiscally, it’s a win-win.

If you don’t mind treating your inmates like commodities instead of human beings.