An official investigation by county and state officials was launched immediately following the shooting. Presumably such an investigation might have led to the indictment of officers for homicide, and yet the officers were returned to active duty 10 days after the shooting. After the recusal of Dan Davis, on the day that the Woody's family announced their wrongful death lawsuit, Vermont's Attorney General's office took over the 'investigation', and continued to suppress release of any evidence in the case, even ignoring subpoenas by the the Woodwards' attorneys and resorting to the extraordinary measure of blocking discovery with a motion to a federal court.

Attorney General Sorrell released his findings at a press conference on April 2, 2002, in the form of his insulting, victim-dehumanizing Woodward Shooting Report . Even without careful analysis of its findings, profound flaws and biases are apparent. This bias was immediately evident to people who attended the press conference with some prior exposure to the case, as revealed by the following account.

Sorrell's report was the first release of information by officials since Chief Martin released an edited transcript of some police radio transmissions on December 12th. Within a month of the release of the Sorrell's Report, the Attorney General's office complied with requests from Justice for Woody to provide the eyewitness evidence packages they had promised to release. Subsequent requests by other citizen investigators, such as T. Wilson, were met with long delays.

page last modified: 2008-07-20