Theodore Bland Plea Deal Avoids Death Penalty in VT Double Murder

Theodore Bland, 30, a former resident of Stowe, Vermont, has reached a plea agreement that will spare him a federal death penalty trial in the 2023 killings of two Massachusetts men whose bodies were found in the woods outside Eden.

The deal isn’t done yet. Judge William K. Sessions III must approve it at a hearing set for April 27 in Burlington. But if he does, Bland will avoid execution and instead serve two consecutive life sentences.

“There was a deal made where Theo agreed to essentially a life without parole sentence if the attorney general withdrew the recommendation for the death penalty, and that’s where we find ourselves,” said David Sleigh, one of Bland’s defense attorneys.

Jahim Solomon, 21, of Pittsfield, and Eric White, 21, of Chicopee, were shot in the head and left in remote woodland near Eden, Vermont. Their bodies weren’t found until Oct. 25, 2023, roughly ten days after Bland allegedly killed them in a dispute over illegal drugs. Both men had been reported missing by their families before police located them.

Bland faces charges that include conspiring to distribute cocaine and fentanyl alongside the two murder counts. He’s agreeing to plead guilty to all of it. Prosecutors won’t seek execution in return.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Turner signed off on the agreement Thursday. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Vermont declined to comment Friday.

The death penalty piece matters here because it wouldn’t exist under Vermont law. Vermont abolished its state death penalty statute in the 1970s, but Bland’s charges were federal. That’s a different legal universe. Vermont’s last execution was in 1954. The federal charges Bland faces carry capital punishment as a possible sentence, and that threat became sharper when President Donald Trump lifted a moratorium on federal executions after taking office in January 2026. The moratorium had been in place under the prior administration, and its removal put real stakes back on the table for Bland’s legal team.

Sessions has been in this position before. He presided over the last federal capital case to go to trial in Vermont, when Donald Fell was convicted in 2006 on charges of carjacking and murder and sentenced to death. That conviction didn’t hold. It was overturned due to juror misconduct, and Fell’s case eventually resolved in 2018 with a plea to life without parole.

Bland was arraigned in December 2023 after federal prosecutors filed charges that explicitly carried possible death sentences. He’d been living in Stowe before his arrest. Solomon and White came from western Massachusetts, from Pittsfield and Chicopee, two cities about 25 miles apart in the Berkshires.

The charging documents describe a drug-related dispute as the motive. Bland allegedly shot both men roughly 10 days before their bodies were discovered on Oct. 25, 2023. The medical examiner confirmed both died from gunshot wounds to the head.

The April 27 hearing before Sessions is the last formal gate. Sessions doesn’t have to approve the agreement, though judges rarely reject plea deals outright in federal court. If he signs off, the federal government closes its only pending capital case in Vermont without an execution or a death penalty trial.

VTDigger first reported the plea agreement. According to VTDigger, Bland’s attorneys negotiated directly with the attorney general’s office to get the capital punishment recommendation pulled before the deal could move forward.

Sleigh’s quote lays out the core of it plainly. The attorney general pulled the death recommendation. Bland agreed to life. Sessions has to say yes.