By Mike Donoghue, Vermont News First – Published Friday, March 22
RUTLAND – A leading public defender, a law school professor and a longtime federal prosecutor are in the running to become the next U.S. District Court Judge in Vermont.
The names of Assistant Federal Defender Steven L. Barth, Vermont Law School Professor Jessica C. Brown and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael P. Drescher were on the approved list compiled by a special screening committee, according to two sources familiar with the process, but not authorized to speak publicly.
All three candidates declined public comment when reached by Vermont News First about filling the post.
A screening panel, after completing interviews in January, sent the three names to U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Peter Welch, D-Vt. The senators and their staff subsequently conducted interviews with the expectation for at least two recommendations to be sent to President Joe Biden, who makes the final nomination.
It is unclear when Sanders and Welch will ask Vermont residents to offer public comments on the finalists for the lifetime appointment.
Chief Federal Judge Geoffrey W. Crawford, 69, disclosed in June 2023 during a court hearing – and a subsequent newspaper interview – that he would be taking Senior Status in August 2024. The 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.
Crawford’s replacement will be primarily assigned to the federal courthouse on West Street in Rutland.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The annual pay for federal district court judges was bumped this year from $232,600 to $243,300.
The federal judgeship is considered one of the top legal posts in Vermont and the screening is important because it is a lifetime appointment.
The tradition is for the two senators to forward two names to the president, who will make a formal nomination for one of them. The nominee must be approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and eventually the full senate.
Sanders, who became Vermont’s senior senator last year, has taken the lead on the screening process. His senate office is said to be the only authorized source for the release of information on the judgeship.
Sanders’ office has little in response to inquiries over the past few months, including again on Friday. Sanders’ office also has declined to provide the timetable for the entire selection process and even the number of lawyers that initially applied for the post.
Biden’s White House is under the gun to try to fill as many judicial posts as possible in case he needs to vacate the office after the November election. Biden had said when he ran for president that he would be looking for women, people of color and other minorities to fill federal judgeships.
This marks the first time Sanders, a non-lawyer, is taking the lead in finding a lawyer to be a federal judge in Vermont.
U.S. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., who retired after 48 years in January 2023, was a lawyer and served on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Leahy had a long list of lawyers that he could confide in and some that worked on his political campaigns.
By comparison, Sanders, who has expressed public disdain during his career for lawyers, has fewer in his deep inner circle in Vermont to consult for the judgeship.
Sanders helped create a 7-member committee of lawyers to screen applications. Some members of the bar and the general public expressed concern over the lack or limited experience some screeners have in federal court.
A Vermont News First investigation revealed that each of the three people appointed by Sanders for the screening committee had zero cases filed in U.S. District Court in Vermont.
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 member of the Vermont Progressive Party in Burlington, 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.
Meanwhile, three other lawyers on the judicial screening committee have been very active in federal court in Vermont. They are David Silver, a Bennington defense lawyer and former Vermont Judicial Nominating Board member, Lisa Shelkrot, a Burlington lawyer, and Shap Smith, a former Speaker of the Vermont House who works at a Burlington law firm.
The busiest among the committee is Shelkot, who has been involved in 187 criminal and civil federal cases in Vermont. Silver has been involved in 47 federal civil and criminal cases in his career in Vermont, the records note. They were both appointed to the committee by the Vermont Bar Association.
Welch selected Smith, who has appeared in 83 federal cases in his career – all on the civil side in Vermont, the records show.
Welch’s other appointment on the screening committee, Eleanor “Ella” Spottswood, has been involved in 11 cases in federal court in Vermont while serving with the Vermont Attorney General’s office. She left the AG’s office late last year to become a senior staff attorney with Planned Parenthood of America in New York.
Spottswood is a former New Hampshire public defender and is chair of the Vermont Judicial Nominating Board, which helps screen state judges.
Meanwhile nobody was selected for the screening committee from the offices that deal with federal judges in Vermont on a daily basis. They include the court clerk’s office, the U.S. Marshal, U.S. Probation, U.S. Attorney and the Federal Defender.
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