Vermont judge rejects U.S. Supreme Court search ruling

July 11, 2006

GUILDHALL, Vt. --A Vermont District Court judge has rejected a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the power of police to search a private home, concluding that the state offers greater protections in such cases.

Judge Robert Bent said that under the state Constitution police must knock and announce themselves before conducting a search, even if they have a warrant, or face the prospect that any evidence they find could be thrown out.

The Supreme Court said June 15 that evidence obtained without first knocking could be used at trial, but Bent said that would not apply in Vermont.

"Evidence obtained in violation of the Vermont Constitution, or as the result of a violation, cannot be admitted at trial as a matter of state law," Bent wrote, citing an earlier state case as precedent. "Introduction of such evidence at trial eviscerates our most sacred rights, impinges on individual privacy, perverts our judicial process, distorts any notion of fairness and encourages official misconduct."

A defense lawyer in the Vermont case said Bent's ruling was an important statement. "Sanity prevails in Vermont," said attorney David Williams.

Bent agreed with the dissenting opinion in the federal case, which said allowing otherwise illegally obtained evidence to be used could lead law enforcement officers to ignore the law.

"The exclusionary remedy should remain in full force and effect," Bent wrote, "at least in our small corner of the nation."

Unless the attorney general's office appeals Bent's ruling to the Vermont Supreme Court, it applies only to the drug case he was hearing and would not be binding on other judges, legal experts said. But other judges are likely to take it into consideration if they have similar issues, said Cheryl Hannah, a Vermont Law School professor.

It was unclear whether the state would appeal to the high court. The prosecutor on the case was on vacation and unavailable for comment.

Williams challenged evidence the Vermont State Police Drug Task Force obtained against Ellen Sheltra last fall during a raid on her Island Pond home. She was charged with marijuana possession.

The officers were gathering in front of the home Oct. 12 when the door suddenly opened, an officer testified. The agents shouted "state police with a search warrant" and stormed inside, Bent wrote in his ruling.

The judge concluded the officer's testimony wasn't credible, noting that the three adults and two children in the house said they did not open the door.

Police seized 88 grams of marijuana and four guns.

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Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com

The Second Vermont Republic is a peaceful, democratic, grassroots voluntary asociation committed to the return of Vermont to its rightful status as an independent republic as was the case in 1791 and to support Vermont's future development as a separate, sustainable nation-state.

Poll Shows Vermont Independence Movement Leads the Nation

Author: Thomas H. Naylor

The 2006 Vermonter Poll recently conducted by the Center for Rural Studies of the University of Vermont indicates that the percentage of eligible Vermont voters who favor secession from the United States of America could very well be the highest in the nation.

Secession is nothing new to Vermonters. On January 15, 1815, less than twenty-five years after Vermont became the fourteenth state, it joined other New England states in signing the report of the Hartford Convention in opposition to the proposal of the Secretary of War to implement a military draft for continuing the badly mismanaged War of 1812 with England. This report was nothing less than a declaration of the right to secede.

In 1928 and 1929 a quirky little Vermont literary magazine known as The Drift-Wind published a series of tongue-in-cheek articles by Arthur Patton Wallace and Vermont Country Store founder Vrest Orton calling for Vermont independence. According to Orton, the purpose of such a movement would be "to constitute an Arcadia for persons of free thought, active mind, high standards, and aspirations and cultural imagination." Orton even drafted "A Declaration of Independence for Vermont." Chicago-based economist David Hale, who grew up in St. Johnsbury, also called for Vermont independence in a 1973 piece in The Stowe Reporter, which won the New England Press Association Award.

UVM Professor Frank Bryan and Vermont Representative Bill Mares published The Vermont Secession Book in 1987. Three years later, seven of seven independent-minded Vermont towns, including Montpelier and St. Johnsbury, voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union following a series of debates between Professor Bryan and Vermont Supreme Court Justice John Dooley. Then on October 11, 2003, the Second Vermont Republic, Vermont's proactive independence movement, was launched in Glover. Two years later it sponsored the first statewide convention on secession since North Carolina voted to secede in 1861. The convention, attended by over 300 people, was held in the House Chamber of the Vermont State House. Currently the town of Killington is trying to secede from Vermont and join New Hampshire.

About Vermont's independence streak, Frank Bryan once said, "Vermont is just obstinate. We'll do anything to be on the wrong side." But is Vermont or America on the wrong side?

Vermont's idiosyncratic nature came through loud and clear in the 2006 Vermonter Poll. In a statewide random sample of over 600 eligible voters, two-thirds of the respondents expressed the view that the U.S. government has become unresponsive to the needs of individual Vermonters. Nearly twenty percent of those sampled believe that it would be useful for the Vermont legislature to commission a study to evaluate the economic impact of Vermont becoming an independent republic as it was between 1777 and 1791.

How many eligible voters in Vermont actually favor secession from the Union? According to the survey more than eight percent of the eligible voters would opt for secession. If one extrapolates from the survey to the population of the entire state of Vermont, there could be as many as 37,000 voters who are favorably inclined towards secession.

To put this eight percent figure in historical perspective, it is important to realize that when the thirteen English Colonies successfully seceded from the British Empire, only twenty-five percent of the population actually supported secession. Furthermore, eight percent may arguably represent the highest percentage favoring secession of any state in the Union. Alaska and Hawaii, for example, have the oldest and best known independence movements in America. Yet in both of these states the percentage supporting secession is known to be less than six percent. The Alaskan Independence Party was organized by Joe Vogler in 1973. Although he ran for governor in 1974, 1982, and 1986, he never got more than 5.8 percent of the vote. The Alaskan movement has been dormant since Vogler's death in 1993. In most states the percentage favoring secession is probably less than one percent. Few third party movements ever come close to achieving an eight percent support level.

Two and a half more years of the so-called war on terrorism, a foreign policy based on full spectrum dominance, the suppression of civil liberties, and a culture of deceit combined with skyrocketing gasoline prices and a precipitous decline in the dollar could easily double the percentage of Vermont voters favoring secession. The election of either Hillary Clinton or Condoleezza Rice to the presidency in 2008 could send the percentage through the roof.