By Mike Donoghue, Vermont News First

The supervisory staff attorney at the Rutland County Public Defender’s Office has emerged as the new front runner for possible nomination as the next federal judge for Vermont.

The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice have been privately vetting Mary Kay Lanthier, 53, of Orwell in recent weeks, according to four sources who said they were directly aware of the process but were asked not to speak publicly.

Lanthier, who has been a public defender for more than 20 years, oversees a handful of lawyers who represent indigent defendants in state criminal cases in Rutland County.

She is a past chair of the Vermont Chapter of the American College of Trial Lawyers, one of the more prestigious legal groups.  She also serves as the treasurer for the Vermont Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and is listed as an adjunct professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

Lanthier, a graduate of Northeastern University School of Law in Boston,  did not respond to multiple phone messages left this week at her office.  A colleague said she has been asked not to talk about her candidacy.

Vermont is seeking a fulltime replacement for Chief Federal Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford, 69, of Burlington, who has said he plans to take “Senior Status” in August.  Senior Status means Crawford can continue to sit on cases, but with a limited workload.

The advancement of Lanthier means Assistant Federal Defender Steven L. Barth, Vermont Law School Professor Jessica C. Brown and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael P. Drescher are now on a back burner, the four sources all independently reported.

Vermont News First had reported in March that Barth, Brown and Drescher were the top picks by the special screening committee.

The committee had sent the three names in January to U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Peter Welch, D-Vt.  The Senators are asked to make the final recommendation to President Joe Biden, who makes the nomination. 

It is unclear if Sanders and Welch will ask Vermont residents to offer public comments on filling the post, which is a lifetime appointment.  It is considered one of the most important tasks for a U.S. Senator in any state. 

Sanders, who is taking the lead as Vermont’s new senior senator, and his office have offered no details on why the process has been going so slow compared to past years.  Former U.S. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., as senior senator, made appointments of federal judges a top priority for his office.

Sanders was non-committal this month when quizzed by ABC22/FOX44 in Colchester about the overdue appointment.

“We’re working on that right now – can’t give you an answer right now, but very conscious of that,” Sanders said under questioning by a TV reporter during an interview the day he announced his plans to seek re-election.

Some members of the legal profession and the general public have questioned the makeup of the screening committee.  All three lawyers appointed by Sanders, a non-lawyer, to the seven-member screening committee have never filed a case in U.S. District Court in Vermont, according to an investigation by Vermont News First earlier this year.  A fourth screener was listed for only 11 federal cases in Vermont in her career.

The Sanders/Welch screening committee also had nobody representing any of the offices that deal on a daily basis with federal judges in Vermont.  They include the court clerk’s office, the U.S. Marshal, U.S. Probation, U.S. Attorney and the Federal Defender.

The office staffs for both Sanders and Welch and then the two senators themselves conducted interviews with the initial 3 finalists.  Lanthier was interviewed after the names of the first three were made public.

Those first three candidates declined public comment when reached by Vermont News First earlier this year.

Crawford’s replacement will be primarily assigned to the federal courthouse on West Street in Rutland.

Sanders and Welch are under pressure because President Biden wants to appoint as many judges as possible before the General Election in November when the Democrats could lose the White House.

Those familiar with the federal appointment process, including for past judgeships, have questioned if there will be enough time to get a Vermont nomination approved by the full Senate.  The senate is facing the upcoming summer recess and other issues, including the ongoing criminal trial of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who is charged with being on the take, including receiving gold bars from foreign operatives, records show.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee – with 11 Democrats and 10 Republicans — must consider the Vermont nomination and take public testimony before it goes to the full senate.  The Republicans have a 49-48 edge over Democrats, but three independents routinely side with the Democrats.

Leahy’s seniority and membership on the Judiciary Committee helped get quick approvals.  Welch is a new addition to the Judiciary Committee and this will be his first chance to try to ramrod a Vermont nomination through.

It is unclear what happened to the initial three names the committee sent to Senators Sanders and Welch.  Biden, even before he became president, made clear he was primarily looking to appoint women, people of color, other minorities and public defenders to fill federal judgeships.

Steven Barth, 49, of Shelburne has been an assistant federal defender in Vermont since 2010 and handled many high-profile cases.  He graduated with honors from the University of Vermont in 1996 and from New York University School of Law in 1999. 

Barth spent two years with the New York City law firm Dewey Ballentine before moving to the Federal Defender’s Office in San Diego.  By 2007 he had been named a supervisor and led a trial team of about 7 lawyers while still maintaining his own active load at both the trial and appeals level.  His wife, Michelle Anderson Barth, is a lawyer and represents clients assigned to the Federal Drug Court in Burlington.

Jessica Brown, 53, joined the Vermont Law and Graduate School as an assistant professor of criminal law in July 2021 and was later named associate director of the Center for Justice Reform.  She was named its director in August 2023, two months after it received a $975,000 federal grant secured through Sen. Sanders.

She has 24 years as a public defender, mostly in New Hampshire, including four as a federal defender.  She was a state public defender in the Granite State from 1997-2007 before joining the federal office from 2007 to 2011.  Brown moved to the Chittenden County Public Defender’s Office as a staff attorney from 2011 to 2016 and then served as the supervising attorney from 2016 to 2021.

Michael Drescher, 58, of Hinesburg has handled several high-profile cases since joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont in early 2002.  U.S. Attorney Nikolas “Kolo” Kerest named Drescher as the chief assistant in the Vermont office during a reorganization last year.

He had worked earlier at the Burlington law firm then known as Sheehey, Furlong, Rendell & Behm, where he did both civil and criminal work.  Drescher has the distinction of squaring off against Sen. Welch in a civil lawsuit in federal court, according to records. Drescher is a 1987 graduate of Dartmouth University, did a stint in the Peace Corps. and graduated from Northwestern University School of Law in 1995.

Vermont News First initially reported Crawford’s plan to step down from fulltime status in June 2023 when he mentioned it during a court hearing – and in a later follow-up interview.  The Senior Status designation will allow Crawford, who was appointed in 2014, to have a say on the workload assigned to him by the court clerk’s office.

Judge Christina Reiss, the other fulltime district court judge in Vermont since 2009, is assigned to the courthouse on Elmwood Avenue in Burlington.  Reiss, who previously served as Chief Judge in Vermont 2010-17, will regain that title in July.

The annual pay for federal district court judges was bumped this year from $232,600 to $243,300.

A 2016 feature in Seven Days newspaper noted Lanthier grew up in Castleton.  Her father worked in a slate quarry and her mother was a postmistress.  She and her husband, a retired school teacher, had two teenage sons, it said.

While Mary Kay Lanthier is known for defending robbers and thieves, one of her sons is known as a different kind of robber and thief.  Andrew Lanthier was a four-year standout baseball player and Dean’s List student at St. Michael’s College, graduating this month.  The two-time captain set a record for career stolen bases, and he was featured twice on ESPN television for robbing opposing hitters of home runs.  He made spectacular plays for the Purple Knights by jumping over the centerfield fence in one play in April 2023 and another in April 2024.  Both made the Top 10 Plays of the Day, including No. 1 for the catch last month.

Sanders’ senate office has said it wants to be the only authorized source for the release of information on the judgeship, but staffers often do not respond to inquiries.  There was no response Wednesday.  The office has declined to say how many lawyers applied for the post or the timetable that was planned.

Leahy, who retired from the senate after 48 years in January 2023, was a lawyer and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Leahy had a long list of Vermont lawyers that he could confide in and some that worked on his political campaigns.

By comparison, Sanders has expressed public disdain during his career for lawyers.  He has fewer lawyers in his deep inner circle in Vermont to consult for the judgeship.

His three appointments to the screening committee were Paul Burns, the executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group in Montpelier, Xusana Davis, executive director of Racial Equity for the state, and Barbara Prine, a staff attorney at Vermont Legal Aid and longtime leader in the Progressive Party in Burlington.

Burns, Davis and Prine are all listed as never appearing for a case in federal court in Vermont, according to its computer system known as PACER.

Davis and Burns also are unauthorized to practice in the federal court in Vermont because they have not gone through the admission process, records show.  Prine is admitted to the federal bar in Vermont.

Update: Lanthier’s appointment was officially confirmed at noon today