One year after Barton Chronicle publisher Chris Braithwaite was arrested atop Lowell Mountain while covering a protest at the site of the controversial wind development, the state yesterday dismissed the trespassing charges leveled against the longtime Northeast Kingdom newsman. 

Braithwaite was arrested last December along with six protesters at the site of Green Mountain Power’s Kingdom Community Wind development. As the Burlington Free Press this morning reports:

Orleans County sheriff’s deputies arrested Braithwaite along with six protesters who refused to leave. The Orleans County State’s Attorney’s Office pursued all the charges, claiming Braithwaite had no more right to be on the mountain that day than the protesters. The six protesters were found guilty of trespass by a jury in August.

Braithwaite’s case was set for a jury trial starting December 13 in Vermont Superior Court in Orleans County. On Tuesday, Braithwaite’s lawyer, Phil White, filed a motion to dismiss the charges after receiving subpoenaed documents from Green Mountain Power. Those documents are sealed, and the motion White filed is redacted (download that motion here). However, the Free Press is reporting the documents regarded GMP’s “internal policy for handling protesters and media coverage of them.”  

Deputy State’s Attorney Sarah Baker filed a notice of dismissal with the court yesterday afternoon, before the court could rule on White’s motion to dismiss.

Seven Days snagged a few minutes with Braithwaite this morning, when he spoke to us by phone from his office in Barton. He says he signed a nondisclosure agreement in order to view the GMP documents, and couldn’t say much about their contents — but added he’s trying to get the documents unsealed, and hopes other newspapers will do the same. 

“I wish I could tell you why this was dismissed, but I can’t,” he says. “We’ll try and change that.”

Kathryn Flagg was a Seven Days staff writer from 2012 through 2015. She completed a fellowship in environmental journalism at Middlebury College, and her work has also appeared in the Addison County Independent, Wyoming Public Radio and Orion Magazine.

2 replies on “Trespassing Charges Dropped Against Barton Chronicle Publisher”

  1. Does Vermont’s delegation support the wind power production tax credit (PTC). Which is set to expire on December 31?
    “:the PTC currently grants wind power producers a tax credit of 2.2 cents/kilowatt-hour, in addition to a federal wind power investment tax credit”
    If not for this subsidy, it is doubtful if any Vermont mountains would be targets for development.

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