Lowell Six wind turbine protesters convicted of trespassing

Posted on August 22, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

Eric Gillard, the brother of one of the Lowell Six, holds a sign in front of the courthouse. Photo by Paul Lefebvre

by Paul Lefebvre

copyright the Chronicle 8-22-2012

NEWPORT — It took a jury of nine women and three men four hours to find wind opponents known as the Lowell Six guilty of unlawful trespass, following a one-day trial here in Superior Court.

The verdict appeared to reflect a trial in which a straight law and order issue trumped a disputed property boundary.

Conflicting testimony over the dispute may have confused the jurors as about an hour or so into their deliberation, they sent a note to the judge.

They wanted to know if there could be a legal owner when a property is in dispute. And if the dispute was still current.

Trial Judge Martin Maley complimented the quality of the questions, but ruled each irrelevant.

“Do the best you can based on the evidence you heard,” he instructed them.

Disputed property boundaries were the key to the defense case: If the state could not prove that the protesters were standing on property that was in the lawful possession of Green Mountain Power (GMP), then the defendants could not be convicted of unlawful trespass.

The prosecution argued that GMP was in lawful possession of the property, and that the protesters had broken the law when they refused to leave the land that had been posted by the company.

The trial was the first to be held involving protesters against the Lowell wind project that is being constructed by GMP.

Each of the six were arrested on December 5, 2011, when they refused police orders to leave posted property on Lowell Mountain while blocking the path of heavy construction vehicles.

Although the six presented their case as a group, the jury found each guilty as individuals.

Six more protesters are scheduled to be arraigned next month for a similar confrontation on the same mountain earlier this month.

Held Wednesday of last week, August 15, the trial was surprisingly silent on the underlying and highly charged issue that caused the defendants to break the law. Before the jury entered the courtroom, Judge Maley warned he would only allow limited testimony on why the defendants were on the land. And nothing, per se, on wind itself.

The jury, he said, knew what the case was about. “It’s not a secret to them.”

So wind remained the elephant in the room: the one everyone knew was there and agreed not to see.

Surprisingly, the only one to raise it as an issue was prosecutor Sarah Baker, when she sought to challenge the intent of the defense’s star witness, surveyor Paul Hannan of Calais, formerly of Holland and at one time a Kingdom legislator who served in the House.

Placed on the stand as an expert witness by defense attorney Kristina Michelsen, Mr. Hannan was prepared to provide the rock-bottom kind of testimony the defense needed to support its case.

Mr. Hannan testified that he had 31 years of experience as a surveyor and the credentials to qualify as an expert. The rules of evidence, however, say that either side can challenge an expert’s witness. And when her turn came, Ms. Baker proceeded vigorously.

First she asked Mr. Hannan about his association with Sterling College, and learned that during the years 1990 and 1991, he was one of the faculty members who accompanied students on three-to-four-day expeditions on Lowell Mountain.

The prosecutor pressed on. Did he have any prior knowledge of Don Nelson — who allowed the students to use his property and who also is in a property dispute with GMP concerning the boundary line between his land on the mountain and the adjourning site where the utility is constructing its wind project.

No, said Mr. Hannan.

Ms. Baker may have thought she had found a chink in the defense’s armor when she abruptly asked the witness if he had any association with any anti-wind group.

Instead, the question brought a prompt objection from attorney Michelsen, along with a few hisses and murmurs from the 35 or so spectators in the gallery, a largely anti-wind crowd.

Judge Maley sustained the objection and Ms. Baker sat down, taking with her any references that the industrial wind project on Lowell Mountain had anything to do with the case.

There was a stirring in the closing moments of the trial when one of the defendants, Dr. Ronald Holland, took the stand. The doctor’s name had surfaced earlier in the trial when Deputy Sheriff Phil Brooks testified for the state.

Of the ten protesters on the mountain that day, the deputy said he only knew Dr. Holland from previous personal and professional encounters. He went on to testify that about two weeks prior to the December 5 confrontation, he received a call at home from Dr. Holland. The doctor, according to the testimony, told the deputy he was going to the mountain that day to protest and wanted the deputy to arrest him.

“I informed him I was off duty and it wasn’t going to be me,” Deputy Brooks testified, adding that he passed what he characterized an “odd request” on to the State Police, who didn’t do anything either.

That testimony was before the jury when Dr. Holland took the stand late in the day. The 67-year-old resident of Irasburg told jurors that days prior to the confrontation with police, he had gone onto the site and measured with twine the distance where he believed Mr. Nelson’s property ended.

And on the day of the confrontation, he testified he went to the limit of that measured distance.

But in a question that had nearly everyone in the courtroom leaning forward on the edge of their seats, Ms. Michelsen asked the emergency room doctor why he had climbed to the top of Lowell Mountain on December 5, 2011.

He paused and bowed his head a moment before answering that he had gone there to “protest the taking of Don Nelson’s property.”

Defendant David Rodgers, 69, of Craftsbury followed Dr. Holland to the stand and testified that he too believed he was on the Nelson property when police moved in to arrest him.

He testified that Dr. Holland had tied a block of wood to the end of a string as a means of measuring the property’s boundary. And that he was “very careful not to” trespass on the land GMP is leasing to erect its 21-turbine wind plant.

The procession to the stand might have continued had not the prosecution agreed to stipulate that the remaining four defendants had followed the doctor’s lead.

But if the defense thought a protest over property rights could overturn the confrontation that followed, the jury saw it differently. Nor did any witness refute or challenge the deputy’s testimony over what happened that day.

Deputy Brooks testified he received a call around nine that morning from GMP, informing him that protesters were on the mountain blocking heavy equipment from working on the wind project. Police arrived roughly two hours later, and observed that the group was blocking cranes and big trucks.

“They were stopped on either side of where the defendants were,” he testified.

Deputy Brooks testified that prior to December 5, GMP had shown him a map of the project and its property boundaries. And when confronting the protesters, he said he gave everyone the opportunity to step back behind the property line between GMP and the Nelson farm.

Of the ten protesters, three complied with a police order to step aside. Six refused and were placed under what sounded like a gentleman’s arrest. The deputy said he chatted cordially with the defendants and discussed everything but the project going on around them.

“I limited myself to that,” said Deputy Brooks.

The biggest problem police encountered that day, the deputy added, was finding a way to transport their prisoners off the mountain.

Police also arrested a seventh individual, Chronicle publisher Chris Braithwaite, who is challenging his arrest on grounds he was there doing his job as a reporter.

GMP’s intent to keep people off the site and the property it has under lease was deliberate and thorough, according to its project manager Charles Pughe, who also oversaw the posting.

“We cleaned out several stores,” he said, speaking of the no trespassing signs the company purchased. “We had to have so many of them.”

Mr. Pughe testified that the land was initially posted for safety and to keep hikers out of harm’s way. But he also noted that problems with people at the site began appearing sometime in October, as campers began to gather on the neighboring Nelson land.

Terms of the lease gave GMP authority to exclude or allow access to anyone the company chose, he said.

Mr. Pughe was off site the day the protesters were arrested. But under cross-examination by Ms. Michelsen, he said, he could tell from photographic evidence — including photographs taken by the arrested journalist — that the protesters were on GMP’s leased property at the time of their arrest.

He estimated the face of the turbine would be about 200 feet away from the Nelson boundary line.

From the moment he took the stand it was evident that Don Nelson was not going to be a friendly witness.

He gave mostly monosyllabic responses to the prosecutor’s questions, and when asked to read a document, he shrugged and said he didn’t have his glasses. That brought a query from the bench

“Need your glasses, Mr. Nelson?” asked Judge Maley.

“Don’t have them with me,” replied Mr. Nelson.

The prosecutor decided to try a different tack by asking the witness if he had given Dr. Holland permission to go on his property.

“My land is open. People come and go,” he replied. “I don’t invite or not invite. We don’t post it.”

When Ms. Michelsen’s turn came to ask the questions, Mr. Nelson said that Dr. Holland had come to see him about the boundary dispute, and that he had provided him with the coordinates that were in disagreement. According to his testimony, the dispute began years ago with the landowner who leased the land to GMP. At the time, the witness testified, there was a difference of roughly 420 feet.

For its final witness, the state put on the surveyor who recently bought out a surveying business in Derby Line that surveyed the Nelson property several years ago in hopes of resolving the boundary dispute.

Andrew Nadeau testified that the previous owner had surveyed the property in dispute in 2007, and that he had spent in excess of two weeks surveying it as well. But the surveyor who spent the longest time on the stand turned out to be the expert for the defense, Mr. Hannan.

Throughout his testimony, Mr. Hannan repeatedly testified there were fundamental mistakes in the 2007 survey — that affected the boundaries of lots leased by GMP.

He told jurors that in surveying the same ground, he found that markers had been inappropriately defined. He said there must be corroborating evidence to define a marker or monument that had been used in the past when the land was first surveyed. And such markers, he added, could be used to determine boundaries.

“When is a stone pile a stone pile or a monument?” he asked at one point.

Jurors already had heard from Mr. Nelson that surveying is not an exact science, and depends in part on the quality of surveys done in the past. Mr. Nelson noted that he and his neighbor had tried to settle survey discrepancies on their abutting lands through an agreement. Their boundary dispute was rekindled, however, when the agreement came unraveled.

Mr. Hannan testified that in surveying the land for the Nelsons, he found almost no markers on the ground that were left when the land was first surveyed in 1790. And he told the jurors that the monuments defined by the 2007 survey were inaccurate.

Closing arguments were short, lasting about five minutes apiece. Each attorney offered similar arguments to those they had made in their opening statements.

The verdict clearly took the defense and its supporters by surprise. After asking the judge to poll each juror for a verdict, Ms. Michelsen said she would be filing post trial motions. The court gave her ten days to submit them.

Prosecutor Baker said she would be requesting a restitution hearing, which means the state will try to convince the court to order the defendants to pay compensation to GMP.

The late hour verdict led the defendants to call off a press conference they had planned to hold at the conclusion of the trial.

In a press release Monday, Dr. Holland was quoted as saying:

“We are obviously disappointed with the verdict but respect the jury’s efforts. This is, and will continue to be, a complex case that rejects the simple and disingenuous offerings of Green Mountain Power. We will continue to educate Vermonters on the science and math of ridgeline wind-generated electricity.”

As Mr. Pughe was walking away from the courthouse, he said he hoped the verdict would make his job easier.

The remaining four defendants of the Lowell Six are: Ryan Gillard, 23, of Plainfield; Suzanna Jones, 50, of East Hardwick; Ann Morse, 48, of Craftsbury; and Eric Wallace-Senft, 46, of West Woodbury.

contact Paul Lefebvre at paul@bartonchronicle.com

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Victim testifies in attempted murder trial

Posted on June 27, 2012 by BethanyMDunbar

Deontae McNeil at his trial in Orleans Superior Court in Newport. Photo by Joseph Gresser

by Joseph Gresser

copyright the Chronicle June 27, 2012

Editor’s note: On June 27 after six and a half hours of deliberation, the jury declared that it was unable to reach a verdict in this case. We will have full coverage in next week’s Chronicle.

NEWPORT — Donelle Morin, a resident of West Charleston, identified Deontae McNeil as one of two men who attempted a year and a half ago to rob her and, in the process shot and stabbed her. Mr. McNeil, who is 25 years old and a resident of Putnam, Connecticut, has pled innocent to charges of attempted second degree murder and aggravated assault with a weapon.

Ms. Morin’s testimony Tuesday afternoon commanded the full attention of the 11 women and three men who, including two alternates, make up the jury. She was the last prosecution witness in the trial which began Monday morning in the Orleans Criminal Division of Superior Court.

On the morning of October 14, 2010, Ms. Morin said, she was disturbed in her shower by a knock on her door. She put on a robe and answered the door, thereby meeting “two gentlemen who changed my life.”

Ms. Morin said Andrew Ladouceur, who has already pled guilty to charges in the case, was at her door asking to use her telephone. The man, she said, told her that his truck had broken down and that he wanted to call for help.

After handing him the phone, Ms. Morin said she closed her door and went to get dressed. Once clothed she looked out and saw a gray truck parked nearby on Route 5A, near her Charleston home.

She said that she also noticed an African American man, who was with the caller. The second man asked to use the bathroom, and Ms. Morin, who said she was beginning to be suspicious of the pair, refused to allow him to come into the house.

Instead she directed him to the lawn around the side of the house.

Ms. Morin said she was worried because of a rash of burglaries in the area and suspicious because the story the men told about their truck kept changing. She phoned the State Police dispatcher, but was told that no troopers were in her area.

After making that call, Ms. Morin said she photographed the two men with her cell phone. That upset the African American man, she said.

Ms. Morin said he asked why she had taken his picture and when she told him, he said it made him nervous.

She said that she replied that his presence made her nervous.

Ms. Morin said she had to go out to an appointment and didn’t want to leave the men in the vicinity of her empty home. She said she offered to give them a ride to the truck and help them jump start their car.

Ms. Morin said she got into the driver’s seat of one of her two cars, an Audi, while Mr. Ladouceur seated himself in the front and the African American man got into the back on the driver’s side.

Before she was able to start the car she said she felt a gun at the back of her head and heard the man in the back seat say, “you’re dead meat.” Ms. Morin said she was ordered to take the men into her house.

As she raised her hands, Ms. Morin said she threw her keys away. At the same time she grabbed hold of the gun and tried to keep it pointed at Mr. Ladouceur.

Ms. Morin said Mr. Ladouceur seemed terrified by the gun pointing his direction. The man in the back seat fired two rounds from what police described as a nine-shot .22 caliber revolver.

Neither of them hit anybody, Ms. Morin said. She said the man in the back seat told Mr. Ladouceur to “get your knife out and cut the bitch.”

Ms. Morin said Mr. Ladouceur stabbed her arms and slashed her hand in an attempt to keep her away from the gun. In the meantime, the man in the back seat fired four more shots, hitting Ms. Morin in the leg and foot with two of them.

Finally Ms. Morin stopped struggling and the men dragged her from the car. They took her purse and started going through, taking her money and her cell phone, which they smashed.

While their attention was occupied, Ms. Morin said she ran to her other car, a BMW, and climbed in thinking that its keys were inside. She was mistaken and the African American man shot out the window, spraying Ms. Morin with broken glass.

The two men grabbed Ms. Morin and dragged her toward her house. They stopped when some traffic passed and Ms. Morin broke free and ran down her drive toward Route 5A. She said Mr. Ladouceur tackled her, punched her in the face and, with a knife to her neck, dragged her toward the house again.

When another burst of traffic caused the men to stop their efforts, Ms. Morin broke free again and ran toward the road. The African American man shot at her, hitting her twice in the arm, Ms. Morin said. This time she reached safety and flagged down a passing truck.

She said the men ran into her house, and while motorists were trying to help her she said she spotted two people climb into the gray truck.

“I wanted to give chase,” Ms. Morin said. But she was persuaded by her rescuers to lie down and be taken to the hospital.

The 26-year-old Mr. Ladouceur of Charleston, pled guilty to a single charge of attempted burglary of an occupied dwelling in April. That charge was reduced from those of aggravated assault, first-degree unlawful restraint with risk of injury, and attempted assault and robbery with a weapon, to which Mr. Ladouceur pled guilty in 2010.

The lower charge and the four-to-ten-year sentence that accompanied it were offered by Orleans County State’s Attorney in exchange for Mr. Ladouceur’s testimony in Mr. McNeil’s case.

Mr. Ladouceur preceded Ms. Morin to the stand. He said that he had spent a lot of time in Putnam, Connecticut, where he had run up a tab with a drug dealer he knew as D-Rock.

He said he returned to Vermont to raise money, where he was told by a friend, Jamie Chateauneuf, that Ms. Morin had 300 pounds of marijuana in his basement.

Mr. Ladouceur said he called D-Rock who wanted to take part in the robbery. Mr. Ladouceur said he borrowed a truck from John Willey and drove to Connecticut where he picked up D-Rock.

After a detour to Providence, Rhode Island, Mr. Ladouceur said he returned to Vermont, borrowed some guns on the pretext of going rabbit hunting from Arthur Blouin, and with Ms. Chateauneuf went to Ms. Morin’s house with the idea of burglarizing it.

Mr. Ladouceur said he acted only on the orders of D-Rock, and claimed to have let Ms. Morin escape in order to save her life. He acknowledged punching Ms. Morin, but said he did so “instinctively” when he thought Ms. Morin was going to hit him.

At the end of his testimony, Mr. Ladouceur said that D-Rock was Mr. McNeil.

In his cross-examination, Mr. Katims treated that claim with scorn. He mocked Mr. Ladouceur as being the “hero” of the story, and tried to get him to admit tailoring his testimony to gain a favorable outcome of his own case.

Mr. Ladouceur resisted that charge, but admitted going into Ms. Morin’s house and into her basement after she escaped.

Ms. Morin said she missed $500 that she had set aside to pay taxes when she got home. There was no testimony that claimed marijuana was found in Ms. Morin’s house.

Mr. Katims was much gentler in his cross examination of Ms. Morin, who he acknowledged in his opening statement had been robbed, stabbed and shot by a white man and an African American. He instead focused on eliciting testimony that contradicted Mr. Ladouceur’s claims of helping Ms. Morin.

In that he was only partly successful. Ms. Morin testified that Mr. Ladouceur punched her more than once, and attributed her escape solely to her own efforts. She did say that Mr. Ladouceur seemed to act in response to the African American man’s orders.

Mr. Katims’ strategy in the case, so far, has been to challenge the identification of Mr. McNeil as the African American man who shot Ms. Morin. Judge Robert Bent, who is presiding over the trial, has already refused to suppress Ms. Morin’s identification, which Mr. Katims challenged on the grounds that an initial photographic lineup was improperly conducted by State Police Detective Sergeant Darren Annis.

Sergeant Annis testified on Monday and Tuesday as to his conduct of the investigation and admitted making several major errors in the case. They included mislaying evidence and failing to ask witnesses for a detailed physical description of the African American man they saw.

Sergeant Annis testified that two people who had an opportunity to see the African American man for an extended period of time, including Ms. Chateauneuf and Mr. Blouin, failed to pick him out of a photographic lineup.

Mr. Katims is expected to call a psychologist who has conducted research on the problems of eyewitness identification to the stand on Wednesday. He told Judge Bent he hopes the case can go to the jury in the early afternoon.