Response to Attorney General William Sorrell

November 3, 2008

William H. Sorrell
Bill Sorrell Campaign Committee
P.O. Box 281
Montpelier, VT 05601

Dear Attorney Sorrell:

Thank you for your October 28, 2008 response to my request that we meet to debate the legality of a criminal prosecution of George W. Bush in Vermont.

While it is difficult for me to gauge if, indeed, the voters of Vermont have had adequate opportunity to hear our points of view, your understanding of my position remains inaccurate. You persist in stating that I am looking to prosecute Mr. Bush for "war crimes." I am not. I intend to prosecute Mr. Bush for murder, which is a different crime subject to different statutes and prosecutable in Vermont. I know the law and explained in a response to you posted on my website on October 24th how I will apply it to this case. Just go to charlottedennettforattorneygeneral.com, press the "Bush Prosecution" tag and you'll find "Response to Attorney General William Sorrell."

If you require further clarification, do not hesitate to get in touch.

You say that you find it "curious" that I would seek to include Mr. Bugliosi in my debate with you. Let me explain. As attorney general, on serious matters of public safety, health and necessity, I would not hesitate to reach out to the most qualified experts I could find to help me. Indeed, I would be remiss if I did not. That is why I have pledged to appoint Mr. Bugliosi special prosecutor on this particular case. I am certain that the people of Vermont who are considering voting for me fully understand the enormity of the undertaking I am proposing and would approve of my bringing on the nation's premiere prosecutor to handle the case. I thought the public should hear from my appointed expert during the debate so they could see that my confidence in Mr. Bugliosi is well placed. You would have been welcome, had you accepted my challenge to debate, to bring someone of equal caliber to square off against Mr. Bugliosi.

I am well familiar with the attorney general's oath of office "to do equal right and justice to all men and women to the best of (your) judgment and ability according to law." I note too your admonition that I "owe this responsibility to both victims and would-be defendants." In fact, I thought of your words and the oath of office when I attended the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant hearings on October 28, 2008, the very day that I received your letter. That day, I learned from health department chief William Irwin that your office helped his department avoid public hearings after the health department changed the formula for measuring Vermont Yankee's radiation emissions. Under the new formula, higher radiation emissions that would have previously been illegally high, fell under legal limits. Are you aware that by law, public hearings must be held whenever a state agency is contemplating changing a procedural rule?" Is it really your "best judgment" that avoiding public scrutiny on this change in the way Vermont Yankee's radiation emissions are measured is better for Vermont's citizens?

It appears to me that your actions regarding Vermont Yankee reveal not "equal justice" but rather a predilection for protecting Entergy's interests rather than the potential victims of increased radiation. A primary duty of the attorney general's office is to protect the health, safety and environment of Vermont citizens. I shall live up to that duty.

You have, on several occasions suggested that I have violated my Code of Ethics. The code hangs in my office and I see it every day. It states, in part, "I will not wittingly, willingly or knowingly promote, sue or procure to be sued any false or unlawful suit, or give aid or consent to the same." Your unjustifiable and legally erroneous threat to bring "enforcement action" against gubernatorial candidate Anthony Pollina regarding campaign donations evoked harsh criticism from many Vermonters, including federal judge William Sessions and the editorial board of the Burlington Free Press. In their October 16, 2008 editorial titled "Pollina bests Democrats again," the board suggested that your behavior was if not partisan, a sign of legal incompetence.

In closing, I think it is unfortunate that the people of Vermont will not have the opportunity to hear us debate the issues surrounding the prosecution of George W. Bush for murder in Vermont, they can at least compare our positions via your letter (which I shall post on my website) and my responses to your claims. I am also attaching comments Mr. Bugliosi offered in response to your letter. They too shall be posted on my website.

Sincerely,

Charlotte Dennett
Charlotte Dennett for Attorney General

Vincent Bugliosi's Response to William Sorrell's October 28, 2008 letter to Charlotte Dennett Regarding Prosecuting George W. Bush for Murder

William Sorrell says that George Bush is not guilty of the murder of Vermont soldiers in Iraq because it could not be seriously contended that he "intentionally killed or intentionally caused the killing of individual Vermont soldiers. Unfortunately for Mr. Bush (and derivatively, Mr. Sorrell), the law of murder is not that simplistic. Moreover, we shall see that even under Sorrell's own words, Bush is guilty of murder.

Murder is an unlawful killing with malice aforethought. There are two types of malice aforethought: express and implied. Express is when there is an intent to kill, which Sorrell alleges is lacking here on Bush's part. But a jury could well find an intent to kill here, though not in the popular use of the term. By ordering American soldiers into war in Iraq, Bush absolutely knew that this would inevitably result in American casualties. For Bush to defend himself by contending that he was contemplating a war without casualties would only make him look foolish. Such an argument would be rejected out of hand by a jury. What difference does it make if someone intends to kill B or doesn't intend to kill B, but intends to commit an act that he knows will kill B? It's a distinction without substance. Further, it is boilerplate law that "since every sane man is presumed to intend the natural and probable consequences of his act, it follows that if one willfully does an act, the natural tendency of which is to take another's life, the irresistible conclusion is that destruction of such other person's life was intended." So, in this sense, there was an intent to kill.

But even if we reject this fundamental legal principle, Sorrell alleges that Bush did not intentionally kill or intentionally cause ("cause" being the key word) the killing of individual Vermont soldiers. By his use of the disjunctive "or," even Sorrell seems to stipulate that if it could be shown that Bush intentionally caused the killing of Vermont soldiers, Bush would be guilty of murder. Accepting Sorrell at his word, when Bush invaded Iraq, again, he absolutely knew he would be causing Iraqis, either in self-defense or to repel the invader, to fight back, and that in doing so, American soldiers would be killed. There is no way for Bill Sorrell to get around this reality.

It has to be noted that even if a jury were to conclude that there was no intent to kill (no express malice) on Bush's part, surely, at an absolute minimum, they would find implied malice, which does not require any intent to kill, only an intent to do an inherently dangerous act with wanton and reckless disregard for the consequences and an indifference to human life. This state of mind is certainly satisfied by Bush taking this nation into a deadly war, and is too obvious to elaborate on.

So Sorrell, the chief legal and law enforcement officer of the state of Vermont, is unequivocally wrong on the law. He is also wrong on the matter of jurisdiction. He has repeatedly said that the state of Vermont has no jurisdiction to prosecute Bush for murder since the killings of Vermont soldiers took place in Iraq, not Vermont. Although the basic rule is that a state only has jurisdiction to prosecute cases in which the crime was committed within the territorial jurisdiction of the state, there is a very well-recognized exception to that rule called the "effects doctrine." This doctrine provides that if a crime is committed outside a state but has a harmful, adverse effect within the state, that state has jurisdiction to prosecute the crime. Certainly the death of Vermont's soldiers has had a harmful effect on the state of Vermont. Indeed, the effects doctrine has been applied to crimes whose effects on a state were much, much less significant than the deaths of citizens.

There are many cases that have invoked the effects doctrine under both state and federal law, and several are cited on pages 305 to 307, and 309 to 310 of my book, THE PROSECUTION OF GEORGE W. BUSH FOR MURDER. It is alarming that the chief legal officer of Vermont, William Sorrell, is unaware of the law on this extremely critical matter.

Sorrell really betrays his lack of knowledge and experience in the criminal law when he writes, "experienced, competent prosecutors typically work closely with the families of victims during the period leading up to and through a criminal prosecution." This is nonsense. Apart from the fact that Charlotte Dennett is not the attorney general at this point, and hence, could not be preparing for a criminal prosecution, prosecutors very rarely "work closely" with the families of victims. Work closely doing what? This would only happen if the survivors were percipient witnesses to matters offered into evidence at the trial by the prosecution. But nine times out of ten they are not, so other than the prosecutor having one or two solicitous contacts with the survivors at the beginning and calling them on occasion (if they don't attend the trial) to keep them abreast of things, there may very well be no further contact. The only thing a survivor does at a murder trial is identify a photo of the deceased for the jury. That takes less than a minute, and obviously there is no cross-examination.

When Mr. Sorrell further suggests that the survivors should be asked if they believed "their loved ones were intentionally murdered by George Bush," he betrays an even deeper and disturbing lack of experience in the criminal law. Not only is the survivor's state of mind on this issue irrelevant, so is that of the victim, even if he or she could talk. Doesn't Mr. Sorrell know that the legal victim in a criminal case is not the lay person who suffered the harm, but the people of the state? Further, doesn't he know that the lay victim of a crime like rape, robbery, arson, et cetera, is only a witness for the prosecution? This is why a criminal complaint or indictment in a state reads "People of the State of [name of the state] vs. [the defendant]. It doesn't read the victim versus the defendant. Is Sorrell confusing a civil with a criminal case? Does he not know that in many important criminal cases, the prosecution goes forward even when the lay victim does not want them to?

That Mr. Sorrell suggests (though he does not say it directly) that the state of mind of the survivors of the Vermont soldiers who died in Iraq is in any way relevant to the issue of whether George Bush should be prosecuted for the murder of their loved ones can only be characterized as unbelievable, particularly for the chief legal officer of the state of Vermont.

In all candor, on the issue of whether or not the state of Vermont should prosecute George Bush for the murder of its soldiers who died fighting Bush's war in Iraq, Bill Sorrell seems to be woefully out of his depth.

Paid for by Charlotte Dennett for Attorney General
PO Box 281, Montpelier VT 05601