Assault case of Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore ends in mistrial

Updated Thursday, July 25, at 12:23 a.m.

NORTH HERO — The criminal case against Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore ended in a mistrial late Wednesday night after jurors failed to reach a consensus on whether or not the sheriff was guilty of simple assault for twice kicking a shackled man in a holding cell in August 2022.

After a three-day trial in Grand Isle County Superior criminal court, jurors entered into deliberations around 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday. By 9:30 p.m., they had told Judge Samuel Hoar that they did not think they could reach consensus. But even after giving the case further consideration, as Hoar instructed, the jurors entered the North Hero courtroom nearly two hours later to report the same.

“Are you convinced that there is no amount of further deliberation that will allow you to break through whatever impasse is preventing you from reaching a unanimous verdict?” Hoar asked the jury around 11:15 p.m.

“Yes, your honor, I am convinced,” replied the case’s designated lead juror, who was not identified.

Had he been convicted, Grismore could have faced up to a year in prison or a $1,000 fine. The jurors were tasked with considering whether Grismore’s actions were both “reckless” and caused the shackled man, Jeremy Burrows, pain — two key components of the assault charge.

In his final remarks to the court Wednesday night, Hoar appeared open to trying the case again later this year, though he did not set a date. Speaking to Robert Kaplan, the attorney who represented Grismore, Hoar noted that it had been nearly two years since the incident that prompted the sheriff’s charge took place.

“Frankly, your client deserves a resolution sooner rather than later,” Hoar said.

A state panel had already found that Grismore’s actions violated Vermont’s policy on police use-of-force and, as a result, it voted to revoke his police officer certification. But Wednesday’s case was supposed to determine whether Grismore also violated criminal law.

Central to the trial was body camera footage of the incident, which was released to reporters just days after it took place. Both Kaplan and Doug DiSabito, the Grand Isle County State’s Attorney who led the prosecution of the case, referred to the video repeatedly, playing the same segments time and again for the jury on a large screen.

The footage shows sheriff’s deputies responding to a call at Burrows’ mother’s house, where Burrows later threatens and lunges at one of the officers, prompting his arrest. Burrows, who appears intoxicated, is taken to the sheriff’s office and shackled to a bench. At one point, he falls flat on the ground. After two deputies help him back up, he appears to refuse orders to sit down. At that point, Grismore, who was also a deputy at the time, enters the frame and kicks Burrows back onto the bench before repeatedly pressing his foot into the man’s groin. Burrows stands up again, and Grismore kicks him back down again.

Why Grismore intervened the way he did — particularly in the second instance — was the subject of intense scrutiny and questioning from both attorneys this week.

Grismore contended to the jury that he was acting out of self-defense, using his leg to separate Burrows’ face from his own because he thought that Burrows was going to spit on him. Spitting on a police officer is a misdemeanor assault under state law, Grismore said, maintaining that this gave him the legal grounds to use force to “stop that assault.”

He told the jury that he intervened in the first place because he did not think the other two deputies — Christopher Major and Karry Andileigh — were able to control Burrows on their own. He was looking out for the deputies’ safety, he told the jury, but also for Burrows’, because the man needed to sit down or risk falling on his face again.

Kaplan, while questioning Grismore on Wednesday, also asked the sheriff if he had a particular reason to worry about getting spit on. “I sure did,” he told the jury, turning to grab a handful of tissues and then appearing to start to cry. His father, he explained, had died from complications related to Covid-19 in the year before the incident.

According to the body camera video, Burrows spit on Major, specifically, at least once before he was brought into the sheriff’s office, as well as in a police cruiser and on the floor of the holding cell. But it is less clear whether the video also shows Burrows attempting to spit at Grismore.

Thomas Aveni, a police use-of-force instructor Kaplan hired as an expert witness, said that given Burrows was “a spitter,” Grismore was right to assume he would spit again. Aveni’s assessment, broadly, was that Grismore’s use of force was necessary and appropriate based on the circumstances, he told the jury Wednesday afternoon.

However, Major and Andileigh told the jury that they did not see or hear Burrows attempting to spit, as Grismore testified. Both deputies have also said previously that they thought they had a good handle on the situation without Grismore’s involvement.

Eric Daigle — an attorney and former Connecticut State Police detective whom the state hired as its expert witness for the trial — also said in testimony that, in his review of the video, he saw no evidence Burrows would spit.

Daigle, whose law firm works on police use-of-force cases, said that police officers aren’t trained to respond with force to being spit on, instead characterizing it as an unfortunate, but sometimes unavoidable, part of police interactions with people.

He characterized the second kick, in fact, as “almost retaliatory.” He offered, generally, a polar opposite assessment to Aveni’s — saying that Grismore’s actions were inconsistent with the police use-of-force standards and other policies that were on the books at the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office at the time.

DiSabito also questioned why Grismore, if concerned about contracting Covid-19, hadn’t encouraged the other deputies to put on any personal protective equipment, such as a mask. He also questioned why Grismore waited until after using force on Burrows a second time to put a spit-deflecting hood over Burrows’ head.

In response to the latter, the sheriff said he didn’t have a good answer.

Meanwhile, Burrows, in his own testimony, said he did not recall trying to spit on Grismore at all.

Both attorneys referenced a screenshot from the body camera footage that shows Burrows standing, almost defiantly, in front of Grismore just moments before the sheriff kicks him a second time. Burrows’ lips appeared to be slightly pursed in the image.

“I believe I was blowing him a kiss,” Burrows said when DiSabito asked him on the stand to describe the image. “I was angry. He kicked me in the balls.”

Burrows told the jury that his memory of that day fades in and out, likely because he was heavily intoxicated, but that he recalled being kicked and feeling pain. (Burrows appears to loudly shout, “Oh!” immediately after the second kick in the video.)

Burrows said that he currently lives and works at a homeless shelter in Berlin. His fiance serves as his power of attorney, he said, and he isn’t able to fully support himself.

He added that he has had issues with substance use in the past and that he regretted his conduct that day. The video shows Burrows repeatedly using racist and homophobic language toward the deputies, much of which was played loudly for the jury’s ears.

In response to a question on the stand, Burrows said he did not know at the time that it was Grismore — or even a police officer — who had kicked him. He said that he only learned about the details of what happened when he was pointed to a news story about the incident after the fact. Kaplan zeroed in on Burrows’ lack of memory in questions and comments to the jury, saying it made him an unreliable narrator.

At the same time, DiSabito emphasized that Grismore was not wearing his uniform at the time of the incident (Grismore said that he was not supposed to be working that day and had come into the office to catch up on paperwork), adding that the sheriff never identified himself to Burrows before intervening alongside Major and Andileigh.

Instead, the now-sheriff “barrelled in,” DiSabito said in his closing statement. He said that Grismore’s description of events was disingenuous and an effort to justify, after the fact, two uses of force that in reality had no justification.

“There is nothing worse for good police than one who doesn’t follow the rules, who doesn’t follow procedure, who doesn’t follow training,” DiSabito told the jury.

Burrows, earlier in the trial, raised a similar point — saying that his interaction with Grismore has since made him “scared” to call law enforcement.

“It’s not a good feeling to have,” he said, adding that while police departments often use the motto “protect and serve,” he felt that Grismore “didn’t protect and serve me.”

Read the story on VTDigger here: Assault case of Franklin County Sheriff John Grismore ends in mistrial .