Tate Rheaume appears in Rutland County Superior criminal court on Tuesday April 9, 2024. Rheaume is charged in the crash that killed Rutland City police officer Jessica Ebbighausen in 2023. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger A Rutland judge has blocked the attorney for the driver charged with murde r in a chase that killed a Rutland City police officer from introducing at trial key parts of a damning internal affairs report that found officer misconduct in the pursuit. The decision last month by Judge Cortland Corsones is a serious blow to the defense for Tate Rheaume, who faces a slew of charges, including aggravated murder, in the July 2023 pursuit that led to the death of 19-year-old Jessica Ebbighausen, a police trainee. “Under these circumstances,” Corsones wrote in the ruling, “any violations by the involved officers of the internal departmental pursuit policy could not be found to be an efficient, intervening cause breaking the chain of causation of the defendant’s actions, in the criminal context.” The judge did leave the door open that, depending on how the trial proceeds, the evidence could come in — just not as the defense had wanted to raise it related to the cause of the crash. Rheaume’s defense has filed a motion, which remains pending, seeking to appeal Corsones’ decision to the Vermont Supreme Court.  “Our argument is, look, this is really critical to have some chance of acquittal in this case,” David Sleigh, an attorney for Rheaume, said Wednesday. The defense filing added that it is a matter for the jury to decide. “The Court’s order denying Mr. Rheaume the ability to present an alternative theory to the jury as to whether his actions were foreseeable and caused by intervening actions of the officers resulting in death, concern weighty constitutional rights to present a defense, due process, and a jury trial,” the filing stated. “At its core,” the filing added, “the Court’s order also concerns the allocation of authority between the Court in its gatekeeping role and the jury as fact-finder on the ultimate legal questions.” The internal affairs report, which became public last year, strongly criticized officers’ actions leading up to and during the chase. The report found that officers had committed several policy violations, including conducting a pursuit for something other than a violent felony and not seeking authorization to continue a pursuit. “The death of Officer Ebbighausen WAS preventable,” Rutland City Police Commander Sam Delpha, who did the internal review, wrote in his conclusion to the report. Delpha has since retired from the department. The criminal case against Rheaume alleges that he was fleeing authorities who were looking for him after reports that he was inside the home of a former partner in Rutland on July 7, 2023. After an officer spotted Rheaume’s vehicle, a pursuit began that ended on Woodstock Avenue in Rutland when, police said, Rheaume drove his pickup nearly head-on into a cruiser driven by Ebbighausen.  READ MORE Ebbighausen had been with the department for less than two months as a part-time officer and was set to begin training the following month to get her full-time certification.  Rutland County State’s Attorney Ian Sullivan, the prosecutor, declined to comment Wednesday other than to say he expected to submit a filing later this week in response to the defense bid to appeal Corsones’ ruling. Sullivan had argued in an earlier filing against allowing Delpha to testify about police violations he outlined in his report. “Introduction of the evidence related to RCPD’s policies run the risk of conflating policy deviations with a defense to criminal causation,” Sullivan wrote. Rheaume’s defense argues that actions of the officers during and leading up to the pursuit go to the heart of the cause of the deadly crash.  “If RCPD officers initiated and prolonged a high-risk pursuit for a non-serious offense, without supervisory authorization, in dangerous conditions, and then allowed an unauthorized trainee to drive, the jury could reasonably find that the resulting crash was not caused solely by Defendant, but by a concatenation of reckless decisions by law enforcement,” Sleigh wrote in a filing. Rheaume, 23, is being held without bail at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield. No trial date has been set.  Read the story on VTDigger here: Judge blocks attorney from raising police misconduct as a defense in chase that killed Rutland officer. ...read more read less