This story by John Lippman was first published in The Valley News on Nov. 16
WOODSTOCK — For the next 18 months or so, Windsor County criminal court cases will be heading back to the future.
Back, that is, to criminal cases being heard in the county’s historic Woodstock courthouse — and back again to resorting to video conference hearings introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Nov. 1, the county’s criminal court hearings moved to the courthouse in Woodstock, which previously dealt with only civil matters. With the downtown White River Junction courthouse now closed for renovations, scheduling and logistical headaches are likely to follow anyone involved in the county’s criminal justice system, which only recently overcame obstacles created by the pandemic.
Initially scheduled to occur this past summer, the move was delayed to prepare the Woodstock building, with its 19th-Century furnishings, for the influx of criminal hearings and defendants in custody — a stark adjustment from the courthouse’s genteel business of civil lawsuits, landlord and tenant disputes, and probate cases.
The Woodstock courthouse was built in 1854 and for more than a century was where criminal cases in Windsor County were heard. One such case was the 1952 capital trial of convicted murderer Donald Demag, who was executed in the state’s electric chair in 1954, the fifth and last man in Vermont to be put to death in that way. Vermont abolished the death penalty in 1972.
All in-person hearings for criminal cases — currently numbering more than 900 — will now be handled out of the Woodstock courthouse, where both county prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys are trying to adapt to routine protocols disrupted by the move.
“It’s having a wide-ranging impact on the regular day-to-day of our office but we’re hoping to work through it as best we can,” said Ward Goodenough, Windsor County state’s attorney. “But we’re working to ensure those challenges don’t negatively impact public safety concerns in Windsor County.”
Motor vehicle and traffic cases will continue to be handled out of a temporary office in downtown White River Junction.
The move of criminal cases and the family division has been necessitated by a scheduled $13.2 million renovation of the 37-year-old White River Junction courthouse due to “a lot of the systems have reached the end of their life,” said Teri Corsones, state court administrator.
She said the renovation, which includes replacing oil-fired boilers with a pellet-fired boiler, installing LED lighting, upgrading HVAC, life safety and security systems, stabilizing the riverbank and redesigning the clerks’ office space to better serve the walk-in public, is expected to take up to 18 months.
“Because of the extensive nature of the work, they said they needed the building to themselves to do it,” Corsones said of the state’s Building and General Services agency, which manages state buildings and is overseeing the project.
(The Orleans and Washington County courthouses are also slated to receive similar upgrades or replacement, although no dates have been set yet to begin the work).
State officials looked around White River Junction for possible space where the criminal and family divisions could temporarily operate but couldn’t find anything that fit the bill, Corsones said. The Woodstock courthouse presented the best option.
“It is difficult with criminal cases because you need special security and modifications more easily could be made for that at the Woodstock courthouse,” she said.
Among the modifications that had to be made is the installation of a holding cell for defendants in custody who have scheduled court appearances, which as a civil courthouse it had not previously needed. The White River Junction courthouse has multiple holding cells in order to keep male and female defendants separated.
Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer said his department, which is responsible for courthouse security and transporting inmates, is trying to adapt to the changes, which have not been overly burdensome.
“There is minimal impact on us,” Palmer said. “We bring (defendants in custody from prison) to Woodstock as opposed to White River Junction. There have been some logistical issues with the building that we have worked through, as you will always have with such a big move.”
He called the problem of what will happen when there are male and female defendants in custody at the same time at the courthouse but only a single holding cell “a good question. We’re working through it.”
The people most affected by moving criminal cases to Woodstock will likely be defendants, Jordana Levine, a White River Junction defense attorney, said. Levine’s firm, Marsicovetere & Levine Law Group, handles a substantial number of the cases that require a public defender in Windsor County.
“It’s only been two weeks (since the move) and we’ve been working hard to overcome all the challenges we can, but it’s certainly much harder for our clients,” Levine said.
It is not unusual for a defendant to have a suspended or revoked driver’s license and “there is absolutely no public transportation to Woodstock,” she said.
Although her firm is renting office space monthly in Woodstock — and “paying for two parking spaces,” Levin noted — White River Junction, given its central location for housing and services, is much more readily accessible for clients.
Levine said they are considering asking permission to conduct hearings remotely with clients and their attorneys from her firm’s White River Junction law offices.
“For some things that would work, although not a trial or evidentiary hearing,” Levine said.
And then there is the problem of squeezing three court divisions — civil, criminal and family — that were previously divided into two locations, into one. Levine noted the consolidation puts pressure on everything from hearing schedules, jury pools, access to private meeting rooms and to preventing parties from having interaction, as judicial codes require.
“We’re still figuring out what the next 18 months is going to look like. We have some concerns and we hope to work with the court and the defense bar as best we can to mitigate those challenges,” said Goodenough, the county’s top prosecutor.
Both prosecutors and defense attorneys said that the walls of the conference rooms are thin and poorly insulated and do not offer the necessary privacy. There also is no phone yet installed in the conference room, meaning defendants without a cellphone cannot reach their attorney.
The cramped space is “going to slow the process down,” predicted Levine, who also said weekly meetings that Judge Heather Gray, the presiding criminal division judge in Windsor County, has been holding with officers of the court where parties can voice concerns has “certainly been helpful.”
And given Woodstock’s reputation as a tourist mecca — buses, traffic, lack of parking — Levine foresees all of that potentially complicating access to the courthouse.
“I’m just glad this didn’t happen during foliage season,” Levine said. “I’m not going to lie. I’m a little concerned about what all this is going to look like next fall if we are still there.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Windsor County criminal court temporarily moves to Woodstock.