Group opposes death penalty for Fell
By Chris Blank
Free Press Staff Writer
A group of death penalty opponents met to renounce capital punishment in Vermont as the federal murder trial of Donald Fell began Monday in Burlington.
"It is an act of vengeance, nothing more or less," former Gov. Philip Hoff said. "It's as simple as that."
Fell had accepted a plea agreement from prosecutors that would have spared his life for the November 2000 murder of Rutland resident Terry King. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected the deal that would have kept Fell in jail for life without possibility of parole and directed the U.S. attorney in Vermont to pursue the death penalty. The victim's family has publicly supported the government's decision to revoke the plea deal.
The group, Vermonters Against the Death Penalty, includes several politicians and members of the clergy, a professor and a college student. Speakers for the group said Vermont has already rejected the death penalty. The state Supreme Court upheld Lionel Goyet's conviction and death sentence in 1957, but the sentence was never carried out. The death penalty, which has been outlawed since 1967, remained a part of state law until 1987.
Rev. Gary Kowalski of the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington, said society rather than the individual is responsible for distributing justice.
"We've done that to hem in vengeful impulses and further civilize our society," he said.
One of King's daughters, Karen Worcester of East Wallingford, said the group had the right to express themselves but said the opposition is upsetting.
"They just make a tough situation even tougher for us," she said after court recessed Monday.
Much of the discussion centered on what the members of the group said was an attempt by Republicans in Washington, led by President George Bush and Ashcroft, to force their values and beliefs upon Vermont. Nancy Welsh, a University of Vermont associate professor of English, said the Vermont delegation in Washington needed to match action with their rhetoric and work to repeal the federal death penalty.
"The Bush administration chooses cases like those of Fell to turn back to the death penalty and force abolitionist states like Vermont to use the death penalty," Welsh said.
Kowalski said that beside trying to increase the use of the death penalty, the federal government pushed for the death penalty in cases like Fell's in order to hide the racism of criminal justice system by adding a white man to death row.
"No man should be put to death to fill a quota," he said.
Burlington Mayor Peter Clavelle said the issue had been debated and decided in Vermont and that the federal government needed to respect the will of the people.
"Voters have said one small step we can take to end the cycle of violence by abolishing the death penalty," he said
In addition to their public comments, the group has collected about 1,500 signatures since early May on petitions to bar the death penalty from any Vermont cases, including those tried by the federal government.
Free Press staff writer Adam Silverman contributed to this report.
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