A Pownal man accused of repeatedly beating a woman wants to file a conflict of interest complaint against the Bennington County sheriff, but he’s having trouble finding out where to bring his complaint and what agency would investigate it.
“It’s supposedly drafted,” Michael Crawford said Friday of his complaint against Sheriff Chad Schmidt.
But, Crawford said, his attorney, Matt Hart, is trying to figure out who to deliver it to.
“It’s time to get moving on this,” Crawford said.
At a hearing in Crawford’s case last week in Bennington County Superior criminal court, Hart told a judge he intended to file a misconduct complaint against Schmidt with the Vermont Attorney General’s Office. Hart did not return several messages this week seeking comment.
Hart alleges that Schmidt and his department have a conflict in his client’s case because of sexually explicit Facebook exchanges the sheriff had with a woman several years earlier who Crawford is now charged with assaulting.
In several of the most serious charges against him, including ones that could send Crawford to prison for life, it was a sergeant with the Bennington County Sheriff’s Department who led the investigation.
Schmidt, in a statement to VTDigger, has denied the Facebook messages came from him, and said he and the woman have “no relationship whatsoever.”
The Vermont attorney general’s office says it doesn’t have “jurisdiction” over the allegations of misconduct against the Bennington County sheriff raised by Crawford and his attorney.
Lauren Jandl, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, said late Friday afternoon that she was not aware of a formal complaint filed with the office by Hart regarding Schmidt.
“If we receive a formal complaint, we will review it as we would any other,” she wrote in an email this week. “However, based on what is reflected in the public record, it does not appear to be an area in which the Attorney General’s Office has jurisdiction.”
For matters regarding police certification or alleged noncriminal misconduct, she added, “the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council is the appropriate venue.”
Jandl also wrote, “Based on the public record at this time, it does not appear that there is criminal activity. We will follow up appropriately if and when additional information comes to our office’s attention.”
Rick Gauthier, executive director of the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council, said Friday that no misconduct complaint has been filed with his organization by Hart.
And, Gauthier said, Act 56, which governs the council authority in such matters, only relates to misconduct allegations from July 1, 2018, onward.
The Facebook message exchanges provided by Hart to VTDigger between the woman and the account labeled “Chad Schmidt” took place in 2014.
In the exchange, a message from the “Schmidt” account alerts the woman of a warrant for her arrest before it formally had been issued, allowing her clear it up before she would be jailed.
“How did you know so quick,” she asked him about the knowledge of the warrant.
“I get emails before they ‘get filed,’” said the response from Schmidt’s account.
The exchanges between the two span more than 200 messages, most of them from the Schmidt account are very sexually explicit, including alluding to wanting to have sex with the woman in his crusier.
The woman, who spoke VTDigger about the message, has said she is sure it is Schmidt she was communicating with. She said she knew Schmidt from a previous place where she worked and he would often drop by.
John Campbell, executive director of the Vermont State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs Association, said Friday his office also does not have the jurisdiction to investigate matters of misconduct regarding a sheriff.
“The sheriffs are independently elected officials,” Campbell said.
“We handle the financial dealings of the sheriffs and the state’s attorneys,” he said. “We have no statutory authority to conduct an independent investigation of alleged misconduct of a sheriff.”
Asked if there was anything preventing a sheriff from calling for an independent investigation from an outside law enforcement agency of allegations of misconduct, Campbell said there wasn’t.
Crawford is facing several charges in Bennington County, including four counts of aggravated domestic assault brought against him later in October 2018, all for separate incidents that happened a year earlier in 2017.
Several of the charges against him also carry habitual offender enhancements, which can result in sentences of up to life in prison.
Crawford has pleaded not guilty to all of the offenses, and has said he strongly denied the allegations.
Hart had previously said he raised the issue regarding the allegations of the sheriff’s misconduct and conflict of interest with Bennington County State’s Attorney Erica Marthage, but she told him she didn’t believe it affected the case.
Marthage, in responses to inquiries from VTDigger about the Schmidt allegations and Crawford’s case, said in an email that since it was ongoing criminal matter she would not issue any “extrajudicial statements.”
At the hearing in the case last week, Marthage did state in court that she didn’t believe the sheriff’s department had a conflict of interest in the case.
She said that the case was handled by Bennington County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Lloyd Dean, assigned as an investigator with the Bennington County State’s Attorney Office.
“The sheriff’s involvement is zero in any of these cases,” Marthage said at the hearing.
“Investigator Dean worked for the sheriff’s department, he is certified through them, but he is employed in my office,” she said. “There’s never been anything to do with Sheriff Schmidt on any of the cases that he had filed regarding this defendant.”
Schmidt has served as sheriff since he was appointed to the post in 2009 by Gov. Jim Douglas.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Alleged sexting sheriff off the hook? Accused abuser can’t find anybody to investigate..