ST. ALBANS – A Franklin County jury acquitted Norman McAllister of a charge that he prostituted a tenant living and working on his farm, a verdict that comes more than four years after his arrest outside the Statehouse when he was still a sitting state senator.
The 12-member jury reached its not guilty verdict Wednesday after a one-day trial and one hour of deliberations.
The verdict is the latest legal twist in a series of cases against McAllister, a former Republican state senator from Franklin County, who was initially charged with several sex crimes in May 2015, which eventually led to his suspension from the Senate.
The misdemeanor prohibited acts charge decided Wednesday is last case against McAllister. More serious charges filed against him of sexual assault have either been dropped or ended in acquittals after jury trials.
During the trial Wednesday, the prosecutor described McAllister’s actions akin to a pimp while the ex-lawmaker’s attorney called him an innocent man facing an accuser who needed someone to blame to keep her ex-husband from getting angry at her.
Previous trials on the prohibited acts charges against McAllister dating back as far as 2017 resulted in a conviction later overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court, as well as another that ended in a mistrial earlier this year.
Franklin County Deputy State’s Attorney John Lavoie, the prosecutor, told jurors as the trial kicked off in criminal court in St. Albans that McAllister prostituted a tenant living on his Highgate Farm to a friend to cover a utility bill debt she owed him.
“What he said was he has this friend who is going through a divorce,” Lavoie said McAllister told the woman. “I could send him to you, you could have sex with him, and that would pay for the bill.”
The woman, he added, who had no income coming in, and facing few options to repay that debt, agreed, and she met McAllister’s friend for sex and that debt was covered.
“Mr. McAllister suggests this could continue, she doesn’t it want to,” the prosecutor told the jurors. “It leads to only one instance.”
Robert Katims, McAllister’s attorney, said in his opening statement to the jury that the woman’s allegation against McAllister stemmed from her desire to appease her ex-husband, who would be more upset with her if she engaged in prostitution on her own.
“There was no way she could admit to engaging in prostitution,” Katims said of the woman. “She lied and said Norm set it all up, it was his idea.”
Lavoie, during his opening statement to the jurors, played a portion of a recorded phone call between the woman and McAllister.
The woman, in that call, spoke with McAllister of plans the two had previously discussed to prostitute her to migrant farmworkers to make money, with the pair dividing any money they took in.
“Like you did with that guy that one time?” McAllister responded to the woman in the call.
Lavoie told the jurors McAllister is the person who arranged the meeting in 2013 between the woman and “that guy” referenced in the phone call.
No meetings with the migrant farmworkers occurred. Instead, the charge brought against McAllister relates to the allegation he “procured” the woman to have sex with “that guy,” the prosecutor said.
The woman, called to the stand by Lavoie as the first witness in the case, testified that she had responded to a Craigslist ad for a job caring for goats as part of a milking operation on McAllister’s farm in 2012.
For that job, she said, she was paid $600 a month, with no taxes taken out, plus she was allowed to stay at a nearby trailer McAllister had on his property, and she was responsible for making the utility payments.
McAllister pulled the plug on the goat-milking operation a few months later, she said, leaving her with little income to cover those utilities bills. Soon after, she said, the power was shut off at her trailer, and McAllister paid to get it back it on.
Then a short time later, the woman testified, McAllister suggested prostituting her to one of his friends, a single man who wanted to have sex with a woman. She agreed and met that man at her trailer.
The woman testified she didn’t know the man by name and police have not been able to find him.
The woman, on the stand, described the man as short, balding and “kind of overweight.”
After they had sex, she said, they both put back on their clothes. “He said thank you very much,” the woman added, “and he left.”
Later, the woman said, McAllister told her that man reported that he “really enjoyed himself and wanted to have it happen again.”
The woman said she told McAllister, “I was definitely not comfortable with that.”
Lavoie, the prosecutor, then asked the woman if she had had any further discussion with McAllister about the utility bill.
“No,” the woman responded.
“Was it considered paid?” the prosecutor asked.
“As far as I knew,” she replied.
During cross examination of the woman, defense attorney Katims zeroed in on a 2012 domestic violence case involving her and her ex-husband at the time.
Through the questioning, Katims drew out allegations from court filings and sworn police statements the woman made against her ex-husband in that case.
Katims pressed the woman about conflicting accounts in the past about that case, including as recently as earlier this year during a previous trial involving McAllister that ended in a mistrial.
“In April of this year do you remember testifying in this court about this that you lied in those statements?” Katims asked her.
“It was my perspective at the time,” the woman replied.
“Now you’re saying you didn’t lie at all,” the attorney later followed-up.
“Correct,” she replied.
“So you’re saying you were lying then about lying before,” Katims asked.
“I had a different perspective at the time and I have been through a lot of therapy,” she replied.
In addition to the woman, the only witness in the case was Detective Sgt. Benjamin Katz of Vermont State Police.
He testified about how the recorded phone between the woman and McAllister took place, with a judge issuing a warrant approving the taping.
Katz also testified about reasons why a woman may recant previous statements in domestic violence cases, including financial, as well as ongoing fear and family dynamics.
McAllister did not testify during the trial. He had testified at one of the earlier trials that resulted in a conviction on the prohibited acts charge that was later overturned by the Vermont Supreme Court. He did not testify in the retrial in April that ended in a mistrial.
Lavoie, in his arguments Wednesday to the jury, spoke about the time spent by the defense on a 2012 domestic violence case involving the woman and her ex-husband a “sideshow.”
The prosecutor added, “That is just not this case, this case is about procuring (the woman) for prostituion.”
Katims told jurors that the 2012 case goes to the motivation of the woman to accuse his client, and whether she was a truthful person.
The defense attorney said the only evidence the prosecution had against his client came from the woman, and that’s testimony, he told jurors, that could not be relied on for convicting his client beyond a reasonable doubt.
“It’s not even close,” Katims said. “Norm McAllister is not guilty.
Lavoie then played the recorded phone call one last time for the jury.
The prosecutor then told the jury the woman is no longer together with her ex-husband so there is no motivation for her to lie about McAllister.
“If this was a lie, she didn’t need to stick with it,” Lavoie said. “Why would she subject herself to this, why would she stick with this story if it were not true.”
This story will be updated.
Read the story on VTDigger here: McAllister found not guilty in latest trial on prostitution charge.