Prosecutors say they have decided to retry former state senator Norm McAllister, whose conviction of prostituting a tenant who lived and worked on his Highgate farm was overturned last month by the Vermont Supreme Court.
Franklin Deputy State’s Attorneys John Lavoie and Diane Wheeler, who prosecuted McAllister in the 2017 trial that led to his conviction on one misdemeanor count, say they plan refile that charge following the high court’s ruling throwing out that conviction.
“We’re still prosecuting it,” Lavoie said Tuesday.
Both Lavoie and Wheeler declined further comment on their decision to press ahead with the case in light of the Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling.
In overturning the conviction, the high court sent the case back to the trial court in Franklin County for a retrial.
However, immediately following the high court’s ruling, Franklin County prosecutors said they needed time to review the decision before deciding whether to pursue a new trial on the misdemeanor offense against McAllister.
The case had been set for a status conference Wednesday to talk about how it will proceed. Due to scheduling issues that court proceeding has been put on hold. No new date was immediately available.
Robert Katims, McAllister’s attorney, could not immediately be reached Tuesday for comment. He did say after the Vermont Supreme Court ruling that if prosecutors decide to go ahead and retry his client he planned a quick response.
“We’ll file a motion to dismiss it, saying that basically, enough is enough,” Katims said at that time. “Mr. McAllister was put through the wringer in these cases and it’s not very fair to put him through another trial.”
The Supreme Court, in overturning McAllister’s case last month agreed with two of the central arguments raised by his legal team concerning the trial that led to a jury conviction on a misdemeanor count of prohibited acts.
That charge accused McAllister, who was a sitting Republican Franklin County senator at the time of the filing of the case against him, of prostituting a woman living and working on his Highgate farm to a friend.
Prosecutors alleged that McAllister used the money, $70, to pay the electric bill for the trailer on his property where the woman was living.
The high court in overturning McAllister’s conviction wrote that “the trial court committed reversible error when it admitted previously excluded prior-bad acts evidence and when it retroactively instructed the jury to disregard admitted testimony during deliberation.”
About three years ago McAllister was arrested on the Statehouse grounds, and in 2016 he was suspended from the state Senate. Later that year, McAllister lost a re-election bid, failing to emerge from the GOP primary.
Initially, he faced two counts of felony sexual assault, alleging he raped two women who worked for him, including one of whom was the tenant farmhand. He also faced three counts of prohibited acts relating to prostitution. One of the charges of prohibited acts was later dropped.
McAllister twice stood trial, each case involving different women. In 2016, during the first trial, one of the sexual assault charges was dropped when it was discovered that his accuser perjured herself on a minor detail during her testimony.
In July 2017, in the second jury trial, McAllister was acquitted of a second felony sexual assault charge alleging he twice raped the woman who had lived and worked on his Highgate farm.
That jury also acquitted him of a prohibited acts charge. That charge alleged that his relationship with that woman, spanning several years from 2012 to his arrest, was coercive and amounted to prostitution.
Read the story on VTDigger here: McAllister to be retried in prostitution case, prosecutors say.