A judge has rejected a request by lawyers for Christopher Williams for a new trial in the 2006 shooting deaths of two people and the wounding of two others.
Williams was found guilty July 17, in the murders of the mother of his estranged girlfriend and of one of the former girlfriend’s teacher colleagues at the Essex Elementary School, as well as the shootings of two other people in the August 2006 rampage.
In an order issued in Vermont District Court for Chittenden County, Judge Geoffrey Crawford defended the decision not to move the trial out of the county despite extensive pretrial publicity, and rebuffed criticisms of the instructions given the jury as they prepared to begin their deliberations.