A change of plea hearing has been set for later this month for accused killer Donald Fell in a deal that is expected to take the death penalty off the table for him and send him to prison for life.
Fell, 38, is set to appear in federal court in Rutland on Friday for the hearing that is expected to include his sentencing, according to an electronic entry in the court docket entered on Wednesday afternoon.
The one-page notice does not reveal the specific terms of the plea deal.
Any plea agreement still would need the approval of Judge Geoffrey Crawford.
However, according to the daughter of the slain woman, 53-year-old Teresca King, of North Clarendon, Vt., who Fell allegedly carjacked in Rutland and beat to death in New York State in 2000, the death penalty will no longer be an option under the plea agreement.
Karen King Worcester, Teresca King’s daughter, posted about the plea deal on Facebook on Tuesday night.
“So I figured I would post this before it comes out on the media,” Worcester said, writing that federal prosecutors “have decided to offer Donald Fell a plea deal. He will be sentenced to life in prison” on Friday.
She said that after an 18-year “emotional roller coaster,” she was not satisfied with the plea deal. “Justice has NOT been served and he should be getting nothing less than death,” she said.
Worcester could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday. Kraig LaPorte, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont, which is prosecuting Fell, said the office would not comment on the recent court filing.
Fell’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The process of screening potential jurors in the case started earlier this month.
Fell’s friend and alleged accomplice, Robert Lee, died in prison in 2001 before he could be tried on capital charges.
Fell is facing his second death penalty trial. In the first one, he was convicted and sentenced to death, but a judge tossed out that verdict and sentence in 2014 over juror misconduct.
A plea deal with federal prosecutors in Vermont had been reached with Fell early in the case, prior to that first trial. That deal would have resulted in Fell receiving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
However, then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected moving forward on that proposed agreement and the case proceeded to trial.
According to police, Fell and Lee were fleeing the slayings of Debra Fell, Fell’s mother, and her friend Charles Conway when they carjacked King as she arrived to work early in the morning at a supermarket bakery in Rutland and then beat her to death in New York State.