By Michael Bielawski
A November, 2022 video of Chittenden County State Prosecutor Sarah George reveals her ambition to “dismantle the criminal legal system” as her main motivation for entering this line of work.
She also admits to firing prosecutors that she disagreed with and not formally charging offenders with crimes whenever possible, among other statements.
George was speaking at a Halloween, 2022 public forum called “Change from Within: A New Vision for the 21st Century Prosecutor” at Harvard Law School.
The event was cosponsored by The Bernard Koteen Office of Public Interest Advising (OPIA) at Harvard Law School and Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), an organization funded by lefting philanthropist George Soros.
Professor Alex Whiting moderated. Scheduled panelists included:
● Miriam Krinsky – Executive Director, Fair and Just Prosecution
● Alvin Bragg – New York County (Manhattan, NY) District Attorney. (He was unable to attend because he was in court prosecuting Donald Trump.)
● Sarah George – Chittenden County (Burlington, VT) State’s Attorney
● Eric Gonzalez – Kings County (Brooklyn, NY) District Attorney
● Mark Gonzalez – Nueces County (Corpus Christi, TX) District Attorney
According to her Wikipedia bio, “George was appointed to the position in 2017 [by Gov. Phil Scott] when her predecessor T.J. Donovan left office after being elected Attorney General of Vermont. She won a full term in 2018 with 99.1% of the vote.[2] In 2022, she was challenged in the Democratic primary by Ted Kenney, a member of the Williston Board of Selectmen who claimed that George’s policies made the county less safe. Kenney was supported by multiple police unions, and the Vermont Republican Party encouraged Republicans to request a Democratic ballot so they could vote against George. However, George easily prevailed in the primary, defeating Kenney by a 53%-33% margin.”
She speaks at the forum starting at about 9:30, 28:40, and 1:06:20 in the video. At the start, she says, “I got my masters in Forensic Psychology and during that program, became very aware of the injustices in our justice system so I went to law school because I wanted to dismantle the criminal legal system and thought that that’s the best way to do it.”
She admits to stacking her office with like-minded public defenders.
“So I was able to get rid of the prosecuters that were in that office that I felt were harming our community and replace them with public defenders that I knew I wouldn’t have to convince why we were going to do things differently,” George said.
Later she again talks about purging those from her office who she disagreed with.
“I knew the people I needed to get rid of and everybody else in the office knew it too. I didn’t have to worry about that aspect, and then I brought in public defenders that we had worked with for years and we had really good relationships with or people from Legal Aid,” she said.
She also admitted that one of her primary objectives is to not take cases whenever possible. She says, “And to actually decline to bring in cases is probably the greatest power that we have.”
She added on this subject, “So I’m trying to find ways to not charge people and to find community services that those folks can connect with instead of going through our system and then eliminating the use of cash bail, attempting to divert or decline any cases possible, using probation and parole as absolute last resorts, and incarceration as an absolute last resort, all the way up the line.”
She admits to ignoring her critics because she says they are lying. She said, “It’s so true, I get attacked from both sides. And I think that one thing, I frankly don’t pay much attention to the right side anymore because it’s based on lies and fear and it’s never based on actual facts and so I tend not to pay any attention to that.”
She expressed frustration that anyone is ever referred to as ‘a defendant’ in the courtroom.
“I mean that was a historically purposeful thing to dehumanize the folks that you’re prosecuting and not know their names, not care about their names, not care about them,” she said.
She also admits that one of her top goals is to close Vermont’s prison for women. She said, “I am too a hopeful abolitionist, I think that I actually get a hard time sometimes because I’m on the board of an abolition organization a nonprofit that is working towards closing the women’s prison in Vermont and not reopening a new one,” she said.
She says that ultimately the legal system should not be the answer.
“I think overall what it means is finding ways that the legal system doesn’t become the answer to the societal issues,” she said.
A commenter says no thanks
A commenter on the YouTube video says what these activist judges are doing is ignoring their responsibilities to protect the public by not holding people accountable for their actions.
@MrBBPrinter wrote, “I find this oddity. The purpose of the law is to protect the rights of the people. When people choose to live in an adverse relationship with the law and the balance of society how do the innocent receive justice?
“If the people in a society want to change the type of laws they choose to live by and the type of justice they want then these people (in the video) need to become advocates for these changes and convince the electorate that laws need to be changed. To behave in the manner they advocate here is to advocate for a dictatorial relationship between prosecutors and citizens. My opinion, they ignore human nature.”
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle