Donovan v. George: Why are Vermont's top prosecutors at war?

A furious public disagreement is raging between Vermont’s top elected prosecutors, with no resolution in sight. Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George is accusing Attorney General T.J. Donovan of being “disingenuous and hypocritical” and of “misleading the public.” At issue are two murder cases and one case of attempted murder that were dismissed by George in 2019 after she deemed that the alleged assailants were legally insane. She said that she could not simply incarcerate people whose mental illness led them to commit a crime. "It is awful that our mental health agencies are failing us,” she tweeted at the time, “but real leadership requires digging in and fixing problems, not pointing fingers elsewhere and undermining the judicial system's integrity." Gov. Scott objected to the dismissals, writing, “I’m at a loss as to the logic or strategy behind the decision to drop all charges.” Scott asked the attorney general to review the cases, and in a rare move, Donovan overrode George’s decision and has now refiled the three cases that George dismissed. At the heart of this dispute is how the state deals with mentally ill people who commit serious crimes. Should they go to jail, or be held in a psychiatric institution? And should the governor and attorney general second guess the decisions made by frontline prosecutors? “From [Donovan’s] perspective, justice means jail,” George tells the Vermont Conversation. She accuses Donovan of “attempting to show that he is tough on crime. That seems like a change from his ‘progressive policies.’” Donovan insists that the attorney general has “concurrent jurisdiction” over the cases and that a jury should evaluate claims of insanity. I asked George and Donovan to appear together to discuss these issues on the Vermont Conversation. George agreed to the conversation, but Donovan insisted on a separate interview. T.J. Donovan served as Chittenden County State’s Attorney for 10 years, where he and George were colleagues, before he was elected attorney general in 2016. Sarah George was elected to succeed Donovan as Chittenden County States Attorney in 2016.