White River Junction — A judge last week denied former Windsor police officer Ryan Palmer’s motion to dismiss charges filed against him in connection with a shooting incident in November 2014.

Windsor Superior Court Judge Theresa DiMauro sided with the state Attorney General’s Office, ruling that prosecutors gave the grand jury the proper legal standard to apply when deciding whether Palmer’s use of force when he shot and wounded Jorge Burgos was “reasonable.”

Regardless of that, DiMauro said, the grand jury’s only job was to determine whether probable cause existed to proceed with criminal charges, not whether a self-defense claim exists or is applicable.

“In short, the defendant was not entitled to an instruction on self-defense in the grand jury proceedings,” DiMauro wrote in a six-page order filed last Wednesday. “Even if he was so entitled, the instructions given were consistent with existing Vermont law and were not erroneous.”

Palmer, through his attorney, Dan Sedon, filed a motion in June to dismiss his charges on the grounds that instructions given to the grand jury were flawed. The judge and prosecutors should have instructed the grand jury to apply a federal standard that assesses a police officer’s behavior in a use-of-force situation separately from an average person’s behavior, but they didn’t, the defense argued.

Two months later, the Attorney General’s Office filed a response that said the judge and prosecutors properly instructed jurors by telling them to apply the “reasonable person” standard. That is the standard current Vermont law instructs prosecutors to apply in like situations, the Attorney General’s Office wrote.

“Based on the case law from external jurisdictions, the defendant essentially asks this court to depart from Vermont law, adopt a “reasonable police officer” standard, apply that new standard retroactively to the 2015 grand jury proceedings, and then dismiss the indictments,” DiMauro wrote. “The court declines to do so.”

Further, she said, any change in existing law is a question for the Legislature, not the court.

Palmer, 30, was indicted by a grand jury in July 2015 on a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment. The grand jury found there was probable cause to charge him for shooting Burgos in the parking lot of Ferguson’s Auto in Windsor during a drug sting.

Palmer contends he shot Burgos in self-defense as Burgos fled the parking lot in a vehicle.

The incident was caught on camera, court records indicate.

Palmer resigned from the police department in July, citing personal reasons. According to his Facebook page, he is currently living in Kentucky.

His conditions of release don’t indicate that he has a restriction on where he can live pending trial. A final trial date hasn’t been set.

Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.

Correction

A grand jury found there was sufficient evidence to indict former Windsor police officer Ryan Palmer on a felony charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment, but did not make a determination of guilt. An earlier version of this story was unclear on that point.