The man who became known as the North Pond Hermit is appealing a court order to pay restitution.
Christopher Knight garnered international attention after he was arrested in April 2013. He had lived alone in the woods for 27 years at North Pond, near Waterville, and committed an estimated 1,000 burglaries to sustain himself.
But his makeshift camp in the woods, it turns out, created an extra expense for state police to access the site, collect evidence and later dismantle it. The tab, says Kennebec County District Attorney Maeghan Maloney, is a little over $1,000.
“I asked the police to give me an itemized list of their costs, and that was the number that was on the bill,” she says.
Specifically, the cost to construct and deconstruct a temporary road to get to Knight’s camp.
But Knight’s defense attorney Walt McKee says his client shouldn’t have to pay.
“This was a law enforcement response to clean up a tent site. And the costs related to that are something we pay taxes for. So unless we’re going to start having individual defendants pay for police expenses, which would be unheard of, this needs to stop, and this needs to stop now. And that’s why we’re fighting it,” he says.
McKee says paying restitution to victims of a crime is one thing, and Knight already has. But he says the state police are not victims in this case, and paying them restitution is a slippery slope.
“When the Portland police go to the little area by the interstate, and they take down a few of the tents and camping materials, are they going to send a bill if there was a criminal trespass charge to that individual defendant? Of course not. Nobody wants to even bother with that in the first place. So why are we spending time and money doing this?” he says.
“This is a very unusual case, so I don’t see this request as having precedential value,” Maloney says.
She says Knight should have to pay restitution to state police because they had to go above and beyond in this situation. All things considered, she thinks it’s a fair request.
“In this case, the state was incredibly kind to Mr. Knight. We could have pursued prison time — extensive prison time. But instead, what I decided to do was give him a chance to turn his life around,” Maloney says.
And she says he has. Knight successfully completed the Co-Occurring Disorders Court program, which provides treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues. He then served seven months of a five-year sentence and now has a job. Maloney says there’s no deadline to pay restitution.
“When a restitution order is made, people pay what they can,” she says. “I’ve seen the court order as little as $20 a month.”
A Superior Court previously supported the state’s position.
Oral arguments for the appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court will take place next Thursday in East Machias.
