NEWPORT – A retired Navy SEAL commander from Sunapee pleaded guilty to a trespassing violation and paid a $1,000 fine after Sullivan Superior Court dismissed two felony charges over the removal of a tree and a stump along his lakefront property line.
A grand jury indicted Michael Hayes, 55, in late May on two felonies: criminal mischief and timber-harvesting trespass, in connection with the incident, which occurred roughly a year earlier.
Both felonies, which carry potential penalties of up to seven years each in prison, were dismissed by the court, with the state’s agreement, on the morning of Oct. 23 at his plea and sentencing hearing.
For trespassing, the substitute violation he pleaded guilty to, he paid a $1,000 fine at the clerk’s office before leaving the courthouse.
“I accepted responsibility for a violation — a non-criminal resolution — to put this behind me as quickly as possible,” Hayes wrote in a statement to the Valley News.
In the summer of 2025, Hayes, who owns a Lake Avenue residence on the shore of Sunapee Harbor, feared that a hemlock on the common property line was dead or dying, he said. Hayes said a 2017 incident, in which a falling tree totaled a family vehicle, added to his concern. A letter from Mercedes-Benz obtained by the Valley News documents the loss.
Stacey Nath-Vinick and Michael Vinick, neighbors on the abutting property to the south, emailed Hayes in response to his concerns over the shared tree, as they were preoccupied with a death in the family, Nath-Vinick said in court.
“Via email on June 11th 2025, the day after my husband’s father died, [Hayes] asked us if we could cut down our tree,” Nath-Vinick told the court during Hayes’ plea and sentencing hearing on Oct. 23. “I immediately responded that we had a death in the family and we’re not dealing with this right now.”
Days later, Nath-Vinick told the court Hayes had the hemlock removed, along with a 4-foot stump from a hemlock the Vinicks cut down in 2019. Hayes said in his statement that the Vinicks cut that tree without his permission.
Roughly a month after the removal of the tree and the stump, the Vinicks commissioned Brian Beaty, an arboricultural consultant registered with the American Society of Consulting Arborists and International Society of Arboriculture, to conduct a tree appraisal, according to the report obtained by the Valley News.
“Using photographs provided by Mr. Vinick and observations of the stump I assessed the subject tree to have a condition rating of 53%,” Beaty wrote in his report, on a scale combining health, structure and form within a range of 10% to 100%.
Beaty concluded that the “appraised replacement value of the cut hemlock and its neighboring stub is $11,259.”
The stump served as an anchor post for a hammock regularly enjoyed by Michael Vinick, Beaty noted.
Reached by phone following Hayes’ Oct. 23 hearing, the Vinicks declined to speak on the record.
Following the two felony indictments, Hayes, through his attorney Jason Casey of the law firm Hinckley Allen, retained Jeffrey Coombs, president of Ossipee Mountain Land Company, a forest management and firewood company, to evaluate photographs of the removed hemlock and other remaining trees on the common property line.
In Coombs’ appraisal, he found that two remaining hemlocks straddling the property line were in “an advanced state of decline” and possessed “no positive market value,” finding conditions consistent with photographs of the hemlock Hayes had removed a year earlier.
Leading up to Hayes’ decision to remove the hemlock in June 2025, an arborist he hired as part of an ongoing drainage improvement project on his property observed that the tree “was dying, leaning toward the abutting neighbor’s house and would likely fall at some point soon,” Hayes said.
According to the Town of Sunapee’s Tree Cutting and Vegetation Clearing Request Form, the “felling and replacement of decaying trees and shrubs” is listed among the activities allowed without a permit.
Had the case gone to trial, the state would have had to prove several criminal elements beyond a reasonable doubt to convict Hayes.
To sustain a felony timber trespass conviction, the state would have had to prove that the market value of the trees and stump exceeded $1,000. The state would also have had to show that Hayes acted recklessly.
For the felony criminal mischief charge, the state would have had to prove that Hayes purposely caused, or tried to cause, a loss of more than $1,500.
Hayes’ attorney, Jason Casey, argued in a July memo to Sullivan County Attorney Christine Hilliard that the aforementioned criminal elements were lacking.
Casey pointed out that the Beaty tree report assessed “replacement value” as opposed to market value. Citing the Beaty report’s replacement-cost methodology, Casey challenged the state’s ability to establish the required element of pecuniary loss, which measures the cost of what was lost and not the cost to plant new trees.
Casey argued that his client didn’t act recklessly, citing Hayes’ experience with a tree destroying a family vehicle in 2017; his reliance on professional guidance and his email to the Vinicks regarding the removal of the shared hemlock in 2025; and the Vinicks’ having created the stump in 2019 allegedly without seeking permission from him.
“This was, at most, a good-faith misunderstanding regarding authorization, not a conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk,” Casey stated.
Hayes spent more than 20 years in the U.S. Navy SEALs, serving in South America, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and as a Commander of a 2,000 person Special Operations Task Force, according to his biography on the website of the 1162 Foundation, a nonprofit Hayes founded to support Gold Star Families.
He has no prior criminal history, Casey noted in his memo to the Sullivan County Attorney’s Office.
When a Valley News reporter went to the door of Hayes’ residence in June 2026 seeking comment on the felony charges he was facing, Hayes said he didn’t know he had been indicted.
“It is most regrettable and concerning that I was never contacted or offered any opportunity to provide the true and complete facts about what happened until after the local prosecutor had already filed charges,” Hayes said.
Phone and email attempts to reach Sullivan County Attorney Christine Hilliard were unsuccessful.
