Vermont’s judicial system is being crushed under the weight of a backlog of court cases — and as members of the third branch told state legislators during a lengthy hearing on Thursday, there is no simple solution to get the situation under control.
“The backlog that we’re dealing with is pretty much unprecedented,” Defender General Matthew Valerio told lawmakers. “I’ve been a lawyer in Vermont for 34 years and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
A backlog of cases has plagued Vermont courtrooms since long before Covid-19 was first detected in the state, but the pandemic and its ensuing lockdowns exacerbated the issue. Jury trials shut down completely for more than a year, and courthouses scrambled in 2020 to pivot to online proceedings. In the meantime, the courts’ lists of pending cases continued to grow.
Even now, nearly three years since Vermont’s first pandemic lockdown, the judicial system has been unable to catch up. Chief Superior Judge Thomas Zonay and State Court Administrator Therese Corsones told lawmakers that as recently as last Friday, 1,156 felony cases had been pending for longer than two years. The situation is even more dire for misdemeanors, with 2,205 cases awaiting justice for longer than two years.
“We are in a situation now where, I think if nothing is done to try to resolve these backlogs, you’re going to see at some point misdemeanors that are seven years old, 10 years old by the time you get to them,” Valerio said.
Beyond the pandemic, officials cited myriad factors that have contributed to the backlog: a finicky IT system bogs down proceedings; outdated or nonexistent HVAC systems have rendered courthouses unsafe for public health reasons; Vermont’s workforce crisis has hit the judiciary, causing shortages in courthouse security (without which, court proceedings can’t take place); and a shortage of prosecutors to argue cases.
Zonay said that, within the judicial branch, it’s “all hands on deck.” Retired judges are returning to the courtroom in an attempt to move cases along, and when a judge decides to retire, Zonay asks, “When can you come back?”
Still, they’re treading water. Pending cases spiked when Covid first struck, and have since plateaued, a graph provided by the Vermont Judiciary showed.
A backlog of court cases is not simply an issue of a branch of government crushed under the weight of an untenable workload. There’s also a human toll, legislators said.
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution promises Americans accused of crimes the “right to a speedy and public trial.” House Judiciary Chair Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, told VTDigger after Thursday’s hearing that people accused of crimes are oftentimes living under conditions of release as they await trial, if they’re not in custody. That can mean abiding by a curfew, or being barred from traveling outside state lines. That’s even before they’ve been found guilty of a crime, and violating conditions of release can result in another round of penalties.
“They’ve had conditions of release hanging over them for more than two years,” LaLonde said. “It’s no good for the offender and it’s no good for the victim that they have to wait that long for access to justice.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Sears, D-Bennington, told VTDigger that holding a trial years after an alleged crime occurred is logistically difficult. Alleged perpetrators, victims and witnesses are put on the stand years after an incident occurred, and asked to recount the details. For victims, he said it can be retraumatizing. An arrest can offer some closure to a victim or their families, Sears said, but if it takes years to receive a trial, the incident lingers.
“That’s what’s hard for victims to understand,” Sears said. “Because the longer the process rolls on, the longer the hurt stays.”
As for what the Legislature can do about it, much of the work will happen in the appropriations process, Sears told VTDigger. The judiciary has already requested state funds to overhaul its IT program, which has been prone to crashing, thereby kneecapping court proceedings often for hours at a time.
Money can also be thrown at the judiciary in an attempt to beef up staffing, but there are already vacancies that go unfilled for the many reasons other jobs remain empty in Vermont, such as the lack of housing for young workers and an affordability crisis.
Both LaLonde and Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, told VTDigger that the backlog also calls into question what offenses justify court proceedings if they don’t present an immediate threat to public safety. Baruth said that the state could benefit from standardizing diversion processes.
“We need some sort of standardization that will force everybody to really consider whether every single case needs to be brought,” Baruth said.
LaLonde gave the example of driving with a suspended driver’s license. Licenses are oftentimes suspended because a driver didn’t pay a speeding ticket. If a Vermonter with a suspended license is found to be driving, suddenly they’re tied up in court.
“I want to avoid DLSs by having fewer suspensions to start with,” he said. “We absolutely need to keep suspensions for DUIs, or for people who get 10 points on their license, for safety reasons. I think that it’s important that some people shouldn’t have a driver’s license. But if it’s just simply that they haven’t been able to pay a fine, that’s a different thing.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misrendered part of a quotation from Matthew Valerio.