FARMINGTON — State prosecutors have dismissed criminal trespass charges against a Rhode Island prison official and a Massachusetts man who went into a condominium to get wine glasses when it was rented to other people.
The charges were dropped in exchange for each man agreeing to donate $1,000 to The Travis Roy Foundation, an organization that disburses grants to spinal-cord injury victims. The charity was chosen by the people renting the condo.
Robert Vitale, 48, of Foster, R.I. and William Kessler, 49, of Athol, Mass., each pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charge through their lawyer, Woody Hanstein, in March. Vitale is a deputy warden at a prison in Cranston, R.I.
The men were initially charged by Rangeley police in February with burglary and theft by unlawful taking.
Police said in February that people renting a condo in the same building the men were staying returned from a charity event to find the men leaving with four wine glasses.
The Franklin County District Attorney’s Office had lowered the charge to criminal trespass.
“After we conferred with the victims and reviewed the police report, each of the defendants agreed to donate $1,000 to a charity of the choice of the people who rented the condo that night,” Assistant District Attorney Andrew Robinson said Friday.
Based on the report, it was not clear that they entered the condominium with the intent to commit a crime, Robinson said. It appears that they had gone in and taken items that normally would be available to them, he said.
“I think, typically, there would have been glasses to use in the condo,” Robinson said.
The men previously had rented the condo and were able to use the glasses in that condo, he said.
However, it was rented to someone else at the time of the incident, and that was the issue, Robinson said.
“The defendants realized they made a horrible mistake, and to make amends they donated the money to the charity of the victims’ choice,” Robinson said.
Hanstein said his clients had no intention of doing anything wrong and simply went in to borrow glasses that had been available to them in the past.
“They have both made a generous charitable contribution and certainly are sorry for any inconvenience they may have caused anyone,” Hanstein said Friday.
“We did our job and it’s up to the courts to do their job — and obviously they didn’t,” Rangeley police Chief Dennis Leahy said Friday.
dperry@sunjournal.com
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