Deal on table in Fell case removes death penalty

A potential resolution to the Donald Fell death-penalty case is on the table, and the deal would remove capital punishment from the equation, Vermont U.S. Attorney Tristram Coffin tells the Burlington Free Press.

If prosecutors and the defense accept the possible plea agreement, Fell would plead guilty to charges of kidnapping and killing a North Clarendon grandmother more than 14 years ago, Coffin said. In exchange for the plea, Fell would receive a mandatory sentence of life in prison for a crime he previously was sentenced to death for committing.

Coffin declined to comment on who proposed the deal or when. But Coffin's comments came the same day the government dropped an appeal of a judge's ruling this summer that threw out both the death penalty and the underlying conviction in Fell's case.

Prosecutors had offered a plea agreement with the same terms in 2001, but the deal never was finalized. Fell signed the paperwork, but then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected the deal in favor of pursuing the death penalty.

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Coffin's disclosure Tuesday came as prosecutors in Vermont withdrew an appeal of U.S. District Judge William Session III's decision to throw out Fell's conviction and death sentence. Fell was found guilty of murdering Terri King, 53, of North Clarendon in November 2000.

This summer, Sessions ruled that juror misconduct during the 2005 trial was so egregious that Fell deserved a new trial and a new sentencing.

Coffin in September filed an appeal of that ruling to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. That filing was a procedural placeholder, prosecutors noted, allowing the solicitor general in Washington time to decide whether to pursue a full appeal.

The half-page motion to withdraw the appeal, filed Tuesday at the New York court, stated that the solicitor general decided against authorizing the appeal. The prosecution's document offered no explanation of the reasoning.

Withdrawal of the appeal essentially resets to the case — as though Fell had just been arrested and is merely a suspect facing a criminal charge. That means Fell's case could either go to trial again or be settled by a plea agreement between the government and the defense.

Members of King's family have said they want Fell to receive the death penalty and are willing to sit through another trial.

Fell, 34, remains on death row at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, even though he is no longer under a death sentence. A jury of Vermonters found him guilty in 2005 of kidnapping King as she arrived for work at a Rutland supermarket Nov. 27, 2000, and then beating her to death in New York as she prayed for her life.

Vermont has no death penalty under state law, but the case was prosecuted under federal law. Fell's accomplice, Robert Lee, also was charged, but he killed himself in jail before trial. The two men also were accused of killing Fell's mother and her boyfriend a day before the King kidnapping, but no charges connected to those killings were filed.

The juror misconduct, discovered by lawyers who began representing Fell during the lengthy appeals process in 2009, involved evidence that one member of the jury secretly traveled to Rutland during the trial to look at the crime scenes, told a third party about what he saw and shared his observations with the jury panel.

Jurors are required to base their decisions only on what lawyers present in court and are prohibited from conducting investigations on their own.

The juror, identified by Sessions as Juror 143, then failed to tell the court what he had done, and he lied under oath in August 2013 when questioned about his conduct during a court hearing before Sessions, the judge stated in his ruling. The Burlington Free Press later identified the juror as John Lepore of Northfield, a longtime Vermont state employee.

He has declined to comment.

Contact Elizabeth Murray at 651-4835 or emurray@freepressmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/LizMurraySMC.