A Vermont man has been sentenced to death for his role in an attempted prison break in North Carolina that left four correctional employees dead.
A jury sentenced 30-year-old Mikel Brady, who was born and raised in Randolph, to the death penalty Tuesday after a little more than an hour of deliberation, according to the Virginian Pilot. Brady had been found guilty of the crimes by the same jury just a week earlier.
The attempted escape took place in October 2017, when Brady allegedly gathered supplies from his job at the prison’s sewing plant, and then worked with three other inmates at the Pasquotank Correctional Institution to brutally kill four prison employees and wound several others with hammers and scissors, as Seven Days reported. After the attacks, Brady allegedly hopped a fence, ultimately surrendering to staff just outside the facility.
Brady grew up in Randolph with what his lawyers described as an abusive father and teenage mother, the Virginian Pilot reported. He was diagnosed with both bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders at a young age, but was reportedly encouraged by his father not to take his medication.
“As the twig is bent, so goes the tree,” his attorney, Thomas Manning, said to jurors, quoting a proverb, according to the Virginia Pilot.
His criminal record began to grow in his teenage years, when he was part of a drug and burglary ring responsible for scores of break-ins around Randoph, as Seven Days reported.
In 2008, he was arrested for stealing 209 sticks of dynamite from a quarry in Bethel, according to Seven Days. In 2009, he was charged for a South Royalton home invasion that left the victim with a severe brain injury.
Over the next several years, he was charged with more than 20 crimes, ultimately fleeing to Mexico, where we was captured, extradited and sent to prison in Vermont in 2009.
He was released in 2012 shortly after serving his minimum sentence, with a judge citing his good behavior behind bars as reason for his release, according to Seven Days. After that, Brady began working at a Randoph butcher shop, playing in a softball league, and taking his medications. After a few months, his girlfriend became pregnant with his son.
But that stability did not last. In 2013, Brady was caught attempting to poach deer and fled Vermont, where he was supposed to be on furlough. He ultimately moved to North Carolina, where in February he was pulled over for a seatbelt violation and shot the state trooper who caught him four times, Seven Days reported.
The officer survived the shooting, but the incident still landed Brady with a 24-year sentence that he was serving at Pasquotank when he allegedly planned the escape.
In North Carolina, there are 142 other people on death row. Brady will become the 143rd. However, the last execution the state actually carried out was in 2006 — with many of the proceedings having been stalled by lawsuits over racial bias and lethal injection drugs. It is unclear how long Brady might wait before having his sentence carried out.
The list of North Carolinans who have faced death row is one of the largest nationwide. The list of Vermonters, however, is far smaller. The state abolished the death penalty in 1972, and hasn’t sent anyone to death row since.
One man, Donald Fell, faced the possibility of death row for the alleged kidnapping and murder of a Vermont grandmother in 2000, but ultimately took a plea deal of life in prison late last year.
The Virginian-Pilot reported that the prosecutor in Brady’s case told the jury that if they opted for life without parole, rather than death row, it would be “open season” on the state’s corrections officers.
“I understand he’s got one life,” said District Attorney Andrew Womble, “but he took four.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Man who fled Vermont furlough gets death penalty in N.C. murders.