By Michael Donoghue, Vermont News First
A version of this story appears in this morning’s Caledonian-Record.
Outgoing President Joe Biden has agreed to provide last-minute clemency for the 15-year federal prison sentence imposed on a man linked to a drug-related homicide in the Northeast Kingdom in October 2018 – apparently without checking with prosecutors.
Vermont News First has been told Michael Anthony Hayes, 42, was one of nearly 2,500 federal inmates that Biden announced on Friday that he was slashing their prison sentences. Hayes will be discharged by summer.
Biden has classified the 2,490 inmates he commuted Friday as “non-violent drug offenders.” The sweeping commutation order helped Biden establish a new national record for Presidents setting prisoners free. The 82-year-old President hinted he might issue more pardons and commutations before leaving the White House on Monday.
The outgoing U.S. Attorney for Vermont, Nikolas “Kolo” Kerest, said Sunday afternoon that his office learned on Saturday afternoon that among those commuted by Biden were more than 20 individuals convicted by federal prosecutors in Vermont in recent years.
“The Office had no opportunity to provide input about and had no advance knowledge of the President’s intent to commute the sentences of these individuals,” Kerest told Vermont News First. Kerest, who was appointed by Biden, has resigned effective Monday.
Hayes had an expected release date of Sept. 4, 2031 as of last week, but his new release date with Biden’s action is July 16. With good time in prison, he was expected to serve more than 13 years in prison. Now his penalty for the three felonies is just under 7 years in prison.
The specific or full identities of all those commuted by Biden remain unclear. The White House has only provided the public with names of those commuted, but failed to release identifying information including ages, hometowns and even the courts or states that they were convicted in. In some cases defendants like Hayes have the same identical name as other defendants with a commuted sentence.
It was the latest in a string of controversial pardons and clemency orders signed by Biden since the General Election. He provided his son, Hunter Biden, a full and unconditional pardon last month to cover all crimes charged and uncharged between January 2014 and December 2024. Republicans and some Democrats criticized Biden after he had pledged to the county for several months he would not pardon his son.
President Biden also pardoned 37 death row inmates and converted their sentences to life in prison. Last month he also commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 others who were serving their sentences under house arrest due to COVID 19 and not in federal prisons.
Hayes, who is known as “Mo,” has a long criminal record, including multiple felonies, records show. They include nearly a 5-year prison sentence for failing to have a permit for a firearm in Connecticut in 2009 and a subsequent felony drug conviction. He has violated probation multiple times, Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Fuller has said.
Hayes was linked to the fatal shooting of Michael Pimental, 37, of Waterford on Oct. 13, 2018. The victim was shot at a trailer he shared with Krystal Whitcomb on Duck Pond Road in Waterford and his body was secretly transported to the Essex County community of Concord and dumped on the side of Victory Road. It was wrapped in a blanket, black plastic bags and yellow electrical wiring, state police said.
Hayes was one of at least 8 defendants charged in the drug and gun case that included the fatal shooting, officials said. The triggerman was later identified as John Welch, then 34, of Haverhill, N.H., records show.
Former longtime Federal Magistrate Judge John M. Conroy ruled after Hayes was arrested Dec. 4, 2018 that he was a danger to the community and could not be released safely pending his trial. A defense motion filed later to release him from prison because he had COVID also was rejected.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont was considering seeking the death sentence in the Pimental killing, but eventually notified the federal court judge it would not pursue that course.
Instead, Welch, Hayes and Krystal A. Whitcomb, 35, of Waterford faced possible life sentences before reaching plea deals.
Judge Christina Reiss in Burlington sentenced Hayes on May 3, 2022 to 10 years in federal prison for trafficking in cocaine and crack cocaine and a second concurrent 10-year sentence for being an accessory after a drug trafficking homicide by moving the body in an effort to hinder or prevent apprehension, trial and punishment for the killing, records show.
Reiss also imposed a consecutive 5-year prison term for possession of a firearm to further his drug trafficking crimes.
Hayes pleaded guilty to all three felonies on October 15, 2021 as part of a plea bargain he struck with federal prosecutors. The agreement he signed called for a sentence between 14 and 18 years.
He was named in 9 of the 19 felony counts filed by a federal grand jury. The other six charges were dropped at sentencing.
At least one Vermont state prosecutor involved in the case appeared miffed on Sunday by the moves by Biden and the White House and their failure to understand the case.
“It’s obvious that they did not look at the circumstances leading to the federal charges,” Essex County State’s Attorney Vince Illuzzi said Sunday. Illuzzi had responded to the scene in 2018 when the body was found in Concord to assist the Vermont State Police homicide investigators and to order the autopsy.
“It’s a criminal case that arose out of a homicide and not just selling and trafficking drugs. The Vermont Drug Task Force had been investigating the group for months,” Illuzzi said. The task force had made multiple buys at the Waterford trailer.
Illuzzi said he could have filed charges, including illegally transporting a body without a permit — a crime that carries up to 5 years in prison and a $1,000 fine. He opted to let the federal prosecution cover the entire case.
The other state prosecutor that also worked on the homicide case was then-Caledonia County State’s Attorney Lisa Warren because the shooting happened in her jurisdiction. She is now a state court judge.
Judge Reiss also ordered Hayes, formerly of Washington, D.C. to serve four years of federal supervised release conditions once he was discharged from the 15-year federal prison sentence. That is believed to still be required.
The judge said the 15 years was “sufficient, but not greater than necessary” for his sentence based on all the facts.
Hayes is serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Intuition – Hazelton in Bruceton, West Va., according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. His defense lawyer had recommended the federal prison in Danbury, Conn.
One day after the homicide, the Grafton County Sheriff’s Department stopped Hayes and Whitcomb in a 2005 silver Cadillac registered to Pimental. Officers found blood in the trunk that matched the DNA of Pimental and also seized three firearms, 2,600 bags of heroin and about $20,000 in cash. Hayes provided a false name during the traffic stop, officials said.
Hayes and Whitcomb had bought ammunition at the Walmart in Littleton, N.H. in November 2018, officials said. Hayes as a convicted felon and with a felony pending in New Hampshire could not legally buy ammunition, Fuller, the prosecutor, said in court papers.