Editor’s note: This story was updated at 5 p.m. with details from the sentencing.
RUTLAND – Donald Fell admitted Friday to his role in the carjacking and beating death of a North Clarendon grandmother, heading to prison for the rest of his life without the possibility of parole and avoiding a death sentence after nearly two decades of litigation.
A judge called the killing an “act of great cruelty and brutality.”
But first, the family of the slain 53-year-old woman, Teresca King, blasted what they called a broken justice system that they say permitted Fell to avoid the death penalty, and provides more rights for criminals than the victims they leave behind.
“This case is a total embarrassment to our federal justice system,” Barbara Tuttle, King’s sister, told Judge Geoffrey Crawford moments before the life-without-parole sentence was imposed on Fell in federal court in Rutland.
Fell, twice asked by the judge during the hearing Friday if he wanted to address the packed federal courtroom that included many of King’s family members, provided the same response.
“No, sir,” Fell said in a soft voice.
U.S. Attorney for Vermont Christina Nolan, speaking for the first time of the plea agreement, said Friday after the hearing that it was the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., that issued the “directive” to withdraw the pursuit of the death penalty in the case.
“The attorney general of the United States directed this outcome and authorized this outcome and we are supporting the attorney general’s authorization and direction,” Nolan said, later adding, “There was a directive to withdraw the notice of intent to seek the penalty.”
She said she could not comment specifically on who made the request at the U.S. Department of Justice headed by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, though she did say it happened in late August.
“We don’t talk about our deliberative process,” Nolan said. “While I can’t get into the discussions that happened behind the scene, I can tell you that we never stopped thinking about Terry King and her family and about fighting for justice for them.”
Nolan, the top federal prosecutor in Vermont, added that she understood that the plea deal was not the result the King family had wanted.
“This is a not a good ending, there was never going to be a good ending for this case because Terry King died in brutal way, a terrifying way, a senseless way, and her family is suffering unspeakable grief, they have for 18 years,” Nolan said.
She then added, “While this is a not a good ending, this is not a happy day, it’s a solemn day, it is an ending.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., declined to comment Friday afternoon.
Fell’s attorneys did not speak during the hearing Friday directly about the plea deal. And, after the hearing, they also declined comment.
“We are not going to be making any statement,” attorney Michael Burt, a member of Fell’s legal team, said before leaving the courtroom.
Fell earlier in the hearing Friday entered his guilty pleas to four charges in the November 2000 death of King.
Specifically, the federal offenses were:
• Carjacking with death resulting.
• Kidnapping with death resulting.
• Brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence.
• Transportation of a firearm by a fugitive from justice.
To each charge, Fell, who stood, but remained shackled except for his right hand, responded four times in a voice barely audible in the courtroom, “Guilty.”
At the start of the hearing, Fell, dressed in beige dress pants and reddish button-down shirt, had raised his right hand when he was put under oath to tell the truth.
After entering his guilty pleas, Fell was sentenced by Crawford to spend the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole, plus 204 months. The plea deal prevents Fell from filing a “direct appeal” of his sentence and conviction, but would allow him to pursue claims if he was unhappy with his attorneys’ performance.
The judge called King’s death an “act of great cruelty and brutality.” He added, “This is among the most serious crimes that has occurred in the district of Vermont in decades.”
The matter of “just punishment” has been central to the case, the judge said, and raised the issue of how a “humane democratic society should best respond.”
Crawford said that a sentence that keeps Fell locked up for the rest of “natural” life provides that “just punishment” even for crimes “unjustifiable” as the ones in this case.
“This may not be the only answer to the moral question, but it is the answer which values life,” the judge said, “even the life of the person the victim’s family loathes for good reason.”
Fell attorneys have worked for years to spare their client’s execution, arguing that as a child from a very early age he suffered physical and sexual abuse that set him on a path of violence.
In exchange for Fell’s guilty pleas, federal prosecutors who had been pursuing his execution in the case over the 18 years it has been running, agreed to take the death penalty off the table.
The plea deal came as attorneys had been preparing for a second death penalty trial for later this fall. More than a decade ago in the first trial, a jury returned a verdict calling for the death penalty for Fell in King’s slaying.
At that time, Fell was the first person sentenced in Vermont to death in more than a half-century.
Vermont does not have the death penalty, but because King was taken hostage in Vermont and brought to New York state where police say she was beaten to death, federal prosecutors took jurisdiction and brought capital charges against Fell.
However, that death sentence was later overturned over juror misconduct.
During the first trial in 2005, which was held in Burlington, a juror visited the scene of King’s carjacking in Rutland and other venues related to the case before reporting back to other jurors.
King’s family had the harshest words Friday for Judge William K. Sessions, who was presiding over the case at that time and issued the ruling overturning Fell’s death sentence.
A co-defendant in the case and friend of Fell, Robert Lee, was also charged with capital federal offenses in King’s death, but he killed himself in prison in 2001 before he could be tried.
Police said Fell and Lee confronted King when she arrived to work early on the morning of Nov. 27, 2000, at the Price Chopper supermarket in downtown Rutland.
The two men were in search of a vehicle to get out of Rutland, according to authorities, fleeing the slayings of Debra Fell, Fell’s mother, and her friend, Charles Conway, in a Rutland apartment only hours earlier after a night of drinking and playing cards all together.
The plea agreement stated that it was Fell who attacked Conway with a knife and killed him and it was Lee, armed with another knife, who killed Debra Fell.
After carjacking King at shotgun point, the plea agreement stated, Fell and Lee drove her to Dover Plains, New York, were they beat her to death, kicking her in the head and striking her face with a rock, as she lay on her back.
According to testimony a decade ago during Fell’s trial, King prayed for her life before the two men beat her to death.
The two men, after killing King, then left her body in a wooded area off the side of the road, and fled the scene, stopping about 12 miles away to grab breakfast at a fast food joint, prosecutors say
Fell and Lee then continued on to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where they are from, staying the night there and stealing a pair of license plates to put on King’s car, the plea agreement stated.
Three days after carjacking King, both Fell and Lee were arrested in King’s Plymouth Neon in Arkansas. After initially providing false statements, prosecutors say, the two men then admitted to taking part in the crimes.
Crawford spent a great deal during Friday’s hearing laying out the facts of the case as presented in the plea deal, and making sure Fell agreed to them.
Fell, who was 20 at the time of the crime, is now 38.
King’s family, who from the start of the case almost two decades ago pushed for the death penalty, has said they did not support the agreement Fell reached with prosecutors, but were resigned to accept it.
If the plea deal didn’t go through, they said they feared years of appeals and possibly an overturned conviction and death sentence years from now. Several of the family members said they had lost faith in a justice system that said was badly in need of reform.
In addition to Tuttle, three other members of King’s family addressed the court: her two daughters, Karen Worcester and Lori Hibbard, as well as a granddaughter, Katie Daley.
They described King as a person who put her family first, who also enjoyed playing cards and cookouts.
“She loved fishing with the family and always seemed to catch the biggest fish,” Worcester said.
All three of King’s surviving siblings attended the hearing Friday, as well as many other family members and friends.
Both Worcester and Hibbard, in delivering victim impact statements in court, agreed with Tuttle on their frustration and anger with the justice system.
“As we leave this courtroom today we leave disappointed that justice was not served,” she told the judge. “However, we walk out knowing we will not have to endure this continuing unjustice any longer.”
Hibbard told the judge of the need for more rights for victims.
“We need to change so many things with our justice system. I know it’s just a job for lawyers and judges, and I think sometimes they forget that there is a family suffering because they have lost their loved one,” Hibbard said. “All they see are a stack of paper and a bunch of binders.”
She then added, “I see my mother.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Judge accepts plea deal; Fell sentenced to life.