Criminal jury trials are set to resume in Vermont before the end of the year, after being put on pause for months by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Vermont Judiciary announced the plans to restart jury trials in a press release Tuesday, though jury selection for the first case is not scheduled until Dec. 7, at the Vermont Superior Court in Brattleboro.
Jury trials have been suspended in Vermont since the pandemic’s onset in March. Over the summer, a judicial committee was formed to determine when and how to safely restart the process during the pandemic.
This week, that committee said Vermont’s continued low case numbers make it appropriate to move forward with the trials.
“The right to a speedy trial by jury is guaranteed by our Constitution,” said Vermont Supreme Court justice Karen Carroll, in a statement. “We are committed to fulfilling that responsibility to Vermont defendants and to doing it safely for all involved.”
Carroll, co-chair of the committee to restart trials, said jury trials were originally canceled because of the “serious public health risk of gathering groups of people together,” but they are a key part of democracy that should resume now that Vermont has proven to be able to manage the virus.
In the Vermont Supreme Court’s declaration of judicial emergency in March, the court recognized that the suspension of jury trials was an “extreme measure” that was necessary, given the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic, even if it affected a criminal defendant’s right to a speedy trial.
In September, the court rejected a claim that a defendant’s lengthy pretrial detention due to the trial suspension violated his right to due process.
Lawrence Labrecque, 41, made the challenge after being held without bail on charges of sexual assault on a minor for two years, since July 2018. His case had a number of delays, some related to a change in lawyers, but had a trial set for April. That date was delayed after the judicial emergency was declared.
Chief Administrative Judge Brian Grearson said the state’s backlog of cases awaiting trial that existed before the pandemic has only increased with new cases filed between March and June, when the judiciary was hearing only emergency cases.
After the resumption of a reduced hearing schedule in June, he said, the backlog has continued to pile up, though Grearson noted that many cases are being resolved by settlements between parties, rather than awaiting the reconvening of jury trials.
Choosing a locale for the first jury trial, Grearson said, began with an assessment of the state’s various courthouses. The assessment determined that some courthouses are too small to conduct jury trials, based on CDC and Vermont Department of Health guidelines, though none of the state’s courthouses were expressly excluded from holding jury trials.
Grearson said some courts would be able to accommodate only a six-person jury instead of 12, while others were in the process of transitioning to a new case management system, thus temporarily removing them from consideration for an early jury trial.
Once the size and spacing of each courthouse was evaluated, Grearson said, the next step was evaluating air flow in the courthouses. Windham’s courthouse was the first to complete that evaluation, and thus will be the first to conduct a jury trial.
“As other courts complete a successful air flow evaluation, jury trials will be conducted in those courts, assuming that they comply with the CDC and Department of Health guidelines for social distancing,” Grearson said.
Courts also anticipate having to double the number of potential jurors summoned for a case to ensure there will be a sufficient number of trial jurors, given the potential that jurors might be sick, or high-risk for Covid, Grearson noted.
Civil trials won’t resume until January 2021 at the earliest.
Grearson said he expects that lessons learned from the first trial will inform the ensuing work in both civil and criminal courts, but that the timing and location of trials will ultimately depend “to a great extent” on the physical characteristics of each court, and its ability to comply with CDC and Department of Health guidelines.
