Bennington County prosecutor lays out case for re-election

BENNINGTON — State’s Attorney Erica Marthage believes her roots in Bennington County, hands-on experience as a prosecutor and involvement with criminal justice reform issues make her the best choice for leading the office over the next four years.

Marthage, first elected in 2006 and seeking a fourth term, is challenged by attorney Arnold Gottlieb in the Aug. 14 Democratic primary. Although independents could still enter the race, there are no other declared candidates, meaning the winner of the primary will most likely be elected on Nov. 6.

“I think I should be re-elected because I have done a great job for Bennington County,” Marthage said in an interview. “The criminal justice system in this state has been undergoing a fairly significant reformation, and I have consistently made sure that Bannington County has had a voice in that.”

Marthage, who has been criticized by Gottlieb for Bennington’s high rate of incarceration compared to other counties, challenged the accuracy of that image and contended she’s played a major role in developing court diversion programs in the county.

“Part of the way I’ve done that is that I’ve been a leader in developing new programs, like restorative justice programs, both at the state level and locally,” she said. “I’m involved in multiple boards, committees, panels, and I testify fairly regularly in Bennington and Montpelier as to legislative issues. And in that capacity, I’ve just been a solid voice for our community, and how we view what our role in that system is.”

Been `in the trenches’

Referring to her opponent, Marthage said, “One problem I have [with the criticism] is that I think my opponent has a fundamental lack of understanding of the Vermont criminal justice system; be it through a lack of experience, a lack of residence, a lack of basic understanding for how criminal justice in Vermont works.”

She added, “I thought about it: You know there is not one state’s attorney [in Vermont] that did not work as a deputy. You have to do your time in the trenches.”

Gottlieb moved to Dorset four years ago after a long career as an attorney in Ohio.

While Gottlieb said he would seek to have a formal drug court docket established in the county, Marthage said she has worked closely with the nonprofit Center for Restorative Justice in Bennington involving the “multitude of programs at CRJ that my offices utilizes every day, and have done that for all 12 years.”

She has worked with CRJ staff members and said she has confidence in their recommendations on diversion issues, including more traditional diversion involving crimes like shoplifting or vandalism, as well as addiction treatment diversion.

The locally based CRJ office — with programs developed with input from her office and local organizations and service providers — is likely more responsive, she said, to the needs of county residents than any diversion program developed in Montpelier and dependent on a continued level of funding from the state.

Bennington has different needs, requirements and available services than a county like Chittenden, she said.

“They have all kinds of resources we just don’t have,” Marthage said, referring to attempts to institute treatment diversion programs successful in Vermont’s largest county in Bennington County.

She and others tried to implement a similar program here, she said, but it wasn’t effective.

“We met a number of times to figure out how do we provide this program without having someone in Montpelier say, ‘Here’s some money; go create this program,'” she said. “So we really created the treatment diversion program just within our community, and within our resources, because, you know, we can’t wait around for [a commitment of state funding].”

Knowing who lives in the community and whom to contact concerning diversion issues is another reason “why it is important for the state’s attorney to have some sense of the community,” Marthage said.

“For example, I refer people to diversion repeatedly,” she said, sometimes concerning more than one incident while they are in a diversion program.

“Some people, maybe they have made a poor choice, but they are not criminals,” she said

“Then there is the whole other end of the spectrum,” she said. “Violent felons, sexual predators, people dealing drugs for profit on the misery of others. Those are the people that are not appropriate for alternative justice.”

An addiction treatment diversion program “is the newest piece of that program,” she said, “which deals with mostly nonviolent drug addicts to keep them either out of jail or get them to the point where they can either actually get diversion or get a deferred sentence, or put their life back together and connect them with the services that they need.”

Treatment diversion “was the culmination of a lot of years of work with all of the community partners,” she said, referring the CRJ, mental health treatment and recovery programs, along with the state Department of Corrections and Department for Children and Families.

Incarceration statistics

Gottlieb and others in the legal community contend that Bennington has long maintained a tough-on-crime philosophy, resulting in what her opponent says is an inordinate percentage of residents incarcerated compared to the other 13 Vermont counties.

That impression was reinforced in a 2016 Seven Days article that cited 2014 statistics showing Bennington County residents were incarcerated at a per capita rate higher than any other county. The article also quoted public defenders and other attorneys as agreeing that has been true in the county since long before Marthage took office. She defeated longtime State’s Attorney William Wright in 2006.

“To me, that article was based on one day in the criminal justice system,” Marthage said. “When you look at that claim that Bennington has more people incarcerated, it just is not supported by the data.”

More recent data, gathered as the Legislature was considering bail reform measures, showed that for eight major offenses for which people are normally held before trial, Bennington “is right smack in the middle of every county in Vermont,” she said.

The statistics covered an entire year, she said, and provided the percentage of the total number incarcerated pretrial for each county. Bennington accounted for 11 percent of the total, Marthage said, while Rutland County had the highest percentage and Chittenden County the second highest.

In terms of total incarceration rates, she said, they are down statewide 33 percent since 2008 and crime has decline 31 percent. One explaining factor, she said, is a greater reliance on diversion programs statewide for those facing criminal charges.

Concerning pretrial incarceration, she said, “People with a nonviolent misdemeanor offense are not in jail. And I challenge anybody to show who is in jail that they think shouldn’t be there.”

Unpromising early years

When elected in 2006, after working as a deputy state’s attorney for four years, Marthage was at the time Vermont’s only female state’s attorney.

Growing up in Manchester, she graduated from the University of Vermont and the University of Connecticut School of Law.

But she acknowledges that her prospects were not always bright, as she experienced poverty growing up, alcoholism in her family and brushes with authority.

“I missed school,” she said. “I want to say that in the sixth grade I missed 63 days. My father was an alcoholic but has been sober since 1983.”

She attributes a keen interest in juvenile justice issues to her experiences during those years.

“The secretary to the principal [at Burr and Burton Academy in Manchester] was always so nice to me, and I was frequently in her space, waiting to see the principal,” Marthage said.

“There were a handful of individuals at each school” who gave her encouragement, she said.

Marthage also worked early in her law career representing juveniles in Bennington and Windham counties.

“That is what I get the most satisfaction from — working with kids,” she said. “Anybody who knows me knows I dealt with all this growing up in Manchester. I feel like there were certain people I interacted with at certain periods in my life that made a difference.”

While she went away to college, Marthage said, “I always intended to come back. My family is here, I volunteer in the community, raised my kids here — my past, my present, my future; it’s all here.”

Because her office also handles guardianship, mental health, elder abuse issues and child protective issues, she often knows the family, if not the person, involved in a crime or an accident or overdose.

“It’s a lot of people that feel comfortable approaching me everywhere,” she said.

“I think the part of state’s attorney that people don’t think of right off the top of their head, is there is a lot of compassion, a lot of understanding that goes into my job as well, and people see that piece of that, because frankly it is not front page news,” she said. “It’s the families that I talk to every week that call me just because don’t know what to do.

“Does that mean that I think no one should go to jail?” she said. “No.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Bennington County prosecutor lays out case for re-election.