Conflicts of Interest: William Sorrell and Cindy Maguire

The Attorney General's investigation was essentially one and the same with the State Police investigation of Woody's shooting. On December 5th or 6th, Assistant Attorney General Cindy Maguire stated that her office would rely on the same paperwork as the States Attorney - "there's an outside agency looking at this case - the Vermont State Police. We all rely on that police investigation..." Therefore the fatal bias revealed by the December 3rd State Police press release extends to the Attorney General's investigation, and is confirmed by the profound biases apparent in the report.

But aside from the biases evident from the handling of the case itself, the Attorney General's office suffers from a number of conflicts of interest, rendering it incompetent to perform a fair investigation.

• Cindy Maguire, who is Chief of the Criminal Division at the Attorney General's office, has spent most or all of her career working with law enforcement, including in the capacity of defending police officers against civil rights lawsuits.
• Cindy Maguire, and perhaps others in the Attorney General's office, routinely works with the Vermont Drug Task Force, and the Brattleboro Police Department is one of its mainstays. See Herbert G. Ogden's letter.
• William Sorrell is on the record opposing reforms that would address some of the conflicts of interest and establish civilian review boards. On December 23rd, he stated about such reform legislation proposed by Windham County state legislators: "it sounds like it's fixing something that isn't broken."