In search of justice

THE CRUSADER
JD’87
Robert
Sand
Rob Bossi
FOR A LONG TIME, ROBERT SAND—“LIKE
almost every prosecutor in the world”—
measured his success by the number
of convictions he obtained or the duration of
sentences he achieved.
These days, Sand thinks differently. Over
time, the former state’s attorney of Windsor
County, Vt., saw those metrics as skewed;
as he and colleagues racked up convictions
and sentences for drug offenses, other cases
languished.
So Sand spoke up. As one of the first
elected prosecutors in the country to publicly
support significant marijuana and other drug
policy reform, he ruffled feathers. But he also
made headway. He rallied colleagues around
collaborative initiatives like the Sparrow Project,
a drug and mental health support program for
those who enter the criminal justice system, and
went on to lay the groundwork for Vermont’s first
DUI treatment court.
Now a professor at VLS, Sand is championing
more treatment courts in Vermont. “For under
three million dollars a year we could have a drug,
DUI, and mental health court in every county in
this state,” says Sand. It’s not “chump change,”
he acknowledged, but it’s also not beyond the
realm of possibility.
More broadly, he hopes his legacy could help
prosecutors find a new way of measuring success
in their work.
“Maybe to some small extent I helped people
think about how the role of a prosecutor could be
different, and that prosecutors could absolutely
do their job with full fidelity to their oath, and
still support criminal justice reform.”
37 FALL 2015