HYDE PARK – Seth Brunell, who was charged with second-degree murder in the 2022 killing of Hinesburg transgender woman Fern Feather, reached a surprise plea deal Thursday midway through the trial.
Under the terms of the deal, Brunell will plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and will serve a decade of probation but no additional prison time. He has been jailed since his arrest in 2022, as his trial has been repeatedly delayed.
Lamoille County Superior Court Judge Mary Morrissey approved the plea deal Thursday. Under the conditions, Brunell will be prohibited from consuming alcohol or drugs without a prescription, will be barred from possessing firearms and will wear an electronic monitoring device during his probationary period, according to court records.
A second-degree murder conviction could have resulted in Brunell being incarcerated for life.
The deal comes partway through the first week of Brunell’s trial in Lamoille Superior Court in Hyde Park, and a day after his attorney, Jessica Burke, made a motion for a mistrial. Burke filed the motion after discovering that a Lamoille County Sheriff’s deputy had allegedly improperly spoken with Brunell about the incident while transporting him from the courthouse to Southern State Correctional Facility on Monday afternoon.
According to Burke’s motion, a state police investigator directed law enforcement officers in a “scheme” to record the conversation during the transport in the hopes of obtaining “evidence of Defendant’s statements to use against him during the pending trial.”
During that conversation, a Lamoille County Sheriff’s deputy asked Brunell specific questions about the day of Feather’s death and Brunell’s relationship with his attorney, all of which he answered “candidly,” according to the motion for dismissal.
That resulted in statements from Brunell “obtained in violation of his Miranda rights, to his right to counsel, and in violation of attorney client privilege,” Burke wrote.
Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Aliena Gerhard, the Lamoille County state’s attorney, declined to comment on any connection between the mistrial motion and the plea deal. According to reporting from WCAX, Gerhard criticized the actions of law enforcement during the transport. The scrubbed trial also drew a critique from Feather’s mother, the TV station reported.
Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux said he was not immediately able to comment on the matter Thursday afternoon. A Vermont State Police spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment.
Burke, Brunell’s attorney, said the potential mistrial was a major factor in the plea deal.
“My client and I and the state were all prepared to see this trial through,” Burke said in an interview. “That was everyone’s intent, that was everyone’s goal, but unfortunately, due to this unconstitutional behavior on the part of law enforcement, we were suddenly left without a path forward to try the case.”
Brunell was confident about the case, Burke said, but it didn’t make sense to risk further litigation “when you have an outcome that can result in freedom, which is what this offer did.”
The plea deal puts an end to the high-profile criminal proceeding spurred by the April 2022 stabbing of the 29-year-old Feather, whose killing led to an outpouring of grief and condemnations of violence against the Vermont LGBTQ+ community.
Prior to the plea deal, however, Brunell’s attorney had argued that he was acting in self-defense after Feather made increasingly aggressive sexual advances.
The plea deal also resolves a separate charge related to a 2023 escape attempt from Northeast Correctional Complex.
