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Live, local courtroom drama has it all over “Law and Order.” Television trials can’t prepare you for the initial shock of watching an accused murderer being led into a courtroom — or the fact that he looks more like a bank teller in a blue button-down shirt. Flanked by armed guards, hands and feet cuffed, Brian Rooney emerged from a side door for a pre-trial hearing last month at Chittenden County District Court in Burlington because he sent a letter to the court that sounded like a request for a new lawyer.... Read more

For the Frost 28, it will be a case of poetic justice. For the scholar, it’s a chance to fill a gap in the educations of the youths who sacked Robert Frost’s summer home.

“My instinct was that if the schools had taught these people about Frost,” Jay Parini, a professor at Middlebury College, said, “this wouldn’t have happened.”... Read more

After 21 years of wearing an officer’s badge in the largest municipal police force in the State, Stephen Dixon had to learn to be the top cop in a small town, and he had six weeks to do it.... Read more

Susan Hansen doesn’t work behind a smoked-glass door with her name etched on it. Nor does she swill coffee while snapping photos from a Town Car. The Warren-based private investigator and mom drives a station wagon with two car seats in the back, sips herbal tea and lives in a “crazy tree house” on Prickly Mountain.... Read more

A Vermont Supreme Court justice has come out in favor of a bill that, for the first time, would allow the public to access the state’s criminal database over the Internet.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee last week, Associate Justice John Dooley urged lawmakers to expand the bill, S.246, to include other kinds of criminal court documents.... Read more

In one case, police arrested a local drug dealer and led him away in handcuffs as his two young daughters watched. In another, a single mother was busted on a parole violation and taken into custody while her toddler was left sleeping in another room. In a third case, police officers raided a house and ordered all occupants, including the children, to lay face down on the floor while the place was searched for suspected weapons.... Read more

No one in Burlington City Hall was surprised when Police Chief Tom Tremblay retired in January after 25 years with the Burlington Police Department. After all, as cops often say about the stress and long hours of police work, “It’s not the years that get you, it’s the miles.”... Read more

When Sgt. Michael Johnson was struck and killed by a fleeing motorist on Interstate 91 in June 2003, the 39-year-old state trooper left a wife, two sons and a daughter behind. The driver who hit Johnson, 23-year-old Erik Dailey of Lebanon, New Hampshire, had liability insurance coverage that was limited to $25,000. Since Vermont self-insures its employees for injuries caused by uninsured or underinsured motorists, the most Johnson’s family could hope to recover from the state was $250,000.... Read more

EVENT CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER

SOUTH ROYALTON & BURLINGTON — Attorney Leonard Weinglass, perhaps the country’s foremost champion of left-wing defendants, is scheduled to speak in Vermont next week on a little-known case that, he says, raises big issues about the U.S. criminal-justice system.... Read more

VERMONT — Most of us don’t like to hear that a convicted rapist, murderer, armed robber or pedophile is being released from prison and moving back to town. But whether you believe it’s society’s job to rehabilitate dangerous criminals or just lock them up and throw away the key, most violent felons eventually walk the streets again. And the likelihood that those ex-cons will succeed in becoming safe and productive members of society is often determined by their ability to find housing, jobs and a network of friends and family that can keep them out of trouble.... Read more