A former St. Albans police officer pleaded guilty to assault on Monday for using pepper spray on a handcuffed man inside a holding cell in 2017.

A judge sentenced former corporal Joel Daugreilh to six months of probation, at which point the conviction could be scrubbed from his criminal record, the Attorney General's Office announced.

Daugreilh was the last of three former St. Albans cops to face criminal charges related to excessive force allegations that predate the pandemic. He pleaded guilty to pushing a suspect's head against the holding cell wall and shooting pepper spray into his eyes at close range. The suspect was handcuffed and shackled to a bench at the time.



Daugreilh resigned while under an internal department investigation, but then-attorney general T.J. Donovan initially declined to bring criminal charges. The incident only came to light publicly following a subsequent use-of-force controversy involving St. Albans police. Vermont Public requested records and video related to Daugreilh's case, but instead of providing them, Donovan reopened the investigation and later filed a charge of misdemeanor assault.
The criminal case took more than three years to resolve.

Video of the 2017 encounter has never been released. A spokesperson for Attorney General Charity Clark said on Tuesday that the office would provide redacted footage soon, now that the case is closed.

Judge Martin Maley accepted Daugreilh's plea following statements from the victim and the defendant, according to the AG's office. As part of his deferred sentence, Daugreilh must also perform 40 hours of community service.
His sentence is less severe than the one Maley handed Daugreilh's former colleague Jason Lawton, who pleaded guilty last year to punching a handcuffed woman in the same holding cell in 2019. The judge sentenced Lawton to three months in prison for what Maley characterized as a "savage beating."
A third former officer, Mark Schwartz, was acquitted by a jury in January of allegations that his use of a stun gun against a suspect who was standing on a sidewalk amounted to assault.

Following the spate of incidents, St. Albans' longtime police chief, Gary Taylor, retired in 2020.