[T]he longtime chair of the House Judiciary Committee told his successor on Thursday that he understood the immense pressure on the role after Vermont has been shaken by alleged crimes. But he cautioned about pressing ahead without careful deliberation.
“I understand what it means to have the public have high, immediate expectations that the committee is going to address something and bring something to a closure quickly,” Rep. Bill Lippert, D-Hinesburg, said during a House Democrats caucus on the bill.
“I want to caution us that we need to be deliberative, we need to be thoughtful and we need to be able to do our due diligence as well,” he added. “Because when this body acts because of an egregious disturbing crime in the public, we sometimes get it right but we always live with the consequences of that.”
Lawmakers set to work on crafting a new attempt law in Vermont after the state Supreme Court decided that the current law did not apply to Jack Sawyer, 18, who was accused of planning to shoot up his former school in Fair Haven.
The decision would lead to prosecutors dropping attempted murder charges that carried a life sentence and instead bringing two misdemeanor charges that carry up to three years in prison. Sawyer remains in jail on $10,000 bail, and his bail conditions would require constant supervision.
The new attempt law is based around a substantial step analysis that would allow police to intervene — and prosecutors to build an attempt case — earlier in the chain of events before a crime is carried out.
Law enforcement officials have complained that the current law only allows them to take action when someone is on the verge of committing a crime, creating a slim window for intervention and putting the public at risk.
Lippert and other members of the House Democratic Caucus raised two main concerns: that the new threshold for what constituted an attempt was too low and that the potential penalties — life in prison if convicted and being held without bail if charged — were too high.
“These are our highest levels of consequences in Vermont: we do not have the death penalty, our highest level of consequence is life in prison, and our highest level of bail is no bail,” Lippert said, adding that he was particularly concerned about young people whose lives would be forever changed as a result of the bill.
“Once they are charged with an attempt with this, there is something very significant that has happened, which we as a society can’t take back,” he said.
Rep. Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, the committee member who reported the bill to the full House, said that simply talking or writing may help establish intent to commit a crime, but did not amount to an attempt as defined by the new law.
“It takes more than that,” he said, “it’s not just writing, it’s not just a threat over the internet.“
The “substantial steps” in the proposed law include: lying in wait, enticing a victim, casing out a site for the crime, collecting materials to be used to commit the crime, and engaging an accomplice. Those steps must be proven in tandem with criminal intent in order for someone to be convicted of an attempt.
Because the threshold for what constitutes an attempt is lowered under the bill, the House Judiciary Committee had considered lowering the penalties as well. But they decided against that for serious violent felonies — such as sexual assault and murder — in order to give judges the constitutional ability to hold defendants without bail ahead of their trial.
LaLonde said part of the committee’s thinking was that prosecutors and judges would show discretion when trying the cases.
“I would certainly be concerned if this was abused, but I trust that the prosecutors and the courts will use their discretion that we’re giving them to not hold without bail in the appropriate circumstances and to sentence appropriately,” he said.
Rep. Maxine Grad, D-Moretown and the current chair of the Judiciary Committee, told her Democratic colleagues that she appreciated their concerns but did not believe they should stop the bill from moving forward.
She said the Supreme Court, in deciding that Sawyer had not committed an attempt, invited the Legislature to take up the issue by drafting new laws.
“And we are a part-time legislature, and so we could choose not to act now and something terrible could happen, and frankly I would rather act, given the world we live in now, and if we need to tweak it when we come back, we can,” she said. “But I’d rather be on the safe side and tweak something, like we always do, and be responsive to our communities.”
When legislators returned to the House floor for a vote on the bill, they were informed that the vote had been delayed until next week.
House Majority Leader Jill Krowinski said the vote was delayed because the House GOP raised issues about how the attempts language had been substituted for another amendment regarding the timeline of divorce proceedings. Among their issues, she said, was that the new language was not germane to the intention of the initial bill.
Krowinski said she personally supported the new bill, but understand why it might take her colleagues some time to come around to it.
“We have to balance our civil protections and keeping communities safe and I just think it’s something that we need to wrestle with and everyone needs to have the conversation internally and with constituents about it,” Krowinski said.
“For me, after many conversations, I feel comfortable with it,” she added. “We’re going to make sure we create more space for conversations and we’ll be revisiting this real soon.”