SPECIAL ISSUE: A Facilitator’s Reflections
whatever sentence they believed appropriate. The court ordered a pre-sentence investigation, to augment the pre-plea investigation that was already ordered, to be
completed two weeks prior to the sentencing date.
I became personally involved in this case
one week prior to the sentencing date.
Mike O’Malley, district manager of Rutland
probation and parole at the time, knew of
my interest and experience in restorative
justice conferencing and passed a draft of
the pre-sentence investigation by me. One
condition that the VT DOC was considering recommending to the court was that
the offender participate in a group conference if the family of the deceased victim so
desired. I thought it was great that this was
being considered at all but recommended
to Mike that holding a conference prior to
sentencing would be even more compelling. Doing so would potentially give the
surviving victims a substantial role in sentencing, while simultaneously serving both
the interests of the state and the defense.
It also did not seem appropriate that the
defendant be “sentenced” to do a conference as participation in any conferencing
process should be voluntary.
Mike sent the following e-mail to the
Rutland County state’s attorney, the defense attorney, and the VT DOC probation
and parole officer who had conducted the
investigation:
After reviewing and staffing a recent
PSI on (the offender), it became quite
apparent that the adversarial nature of
the court system was not in the best interest of justice in this case. The victims
are looking for closure for this tragedy.
They appear reasonable and rational in
their requests for closure and reparation from the offender, given the situation. The offender has taken responsibility for her action, would have probably already expressed her remorse
for her poor judgment, agreed to victim’s wishes for reparation, and the social/psychological healing would have
already begun, had she not followed
sound legal advice from her legal
counsel, which does not always tack
and tie with good social/psychological
advice. I would like to suggest the following—the use of Group Conferencing as a pre-sentence option.
As part of our recommendation to
the Court on this PSI, we have encouraged the Court to consider employing the group conferencing process as
a pre-sentencing tool. This is indeed
a compelling option in this case, as it
appears likely that the defendant and
the family of the deceased, along with
other appropriate parties, would voluntarily agree to engage in this facili-
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tated process. The goal would be to
arrive at an agreement of reparation,
which would be signed by all participants, which would address what
needs to happen now as a result of the
harm done. The final sentencing decision of the Court would not in any way
be obligated by this agreement, but
would certainly be, we would hope, informed and influenced by it. If all parties are agreed, the Department of
Corrections could organize and hold
such a conference in as little as two to
three weeks time.
There is no guarantee that a final agreement will be accomplished.
However, there are very strong indicators that both parties in this case
are excellent candidates to successfully complete this healing process for
themselves as well as their community
support systems. The ball is now in the
hands of the attorneys in this case.
As a result of this e-mail, the defense attorney submitted a request to the court to extend sentencing in order to accommodate
a group conference. The Rutland County state’s attorney was willing to agree to
this request as long as the deceased victim’s father agreed. In fact, the father was
very open to the possibility but wanted to
discuss it with his wife that night. The next
morning, we were informed by the state’s
attorney’s office victims’ advocate that the
father and his family wished to participate
in the group conference prior to sentencing. With the assent of the state’s attorney
and the defense attorney, Judge Theresa
DiMauro agreed to extend sentencing for
six weeks.
The resulting agreement/understanding
that was developed and agreed upon by all
participants at the restorative justice conference was:
We, the undersigned, agree and recommend to the Court that the offender not receive a period of incarceration
as a part of her sentence. We do believe that she should not drive for a total period of two years after sentencing. We also believe that the Court
should establish a community service
component at sentencing to possibly
include public speaking, public service announcements, organizing public support to make improvements to
(the State highway) or other appropriate efforts to positively impact t