Judiciary Committee

The House Committee on Judiciary considers matters relating to civil rights and civil liberties, the criminal and civil justice systems, violence prevention and public safety, and other similar policies.

The House passed H.541 (An act relating to interference with voters and election officials) which was drafted in coordination with the Vermont Secretary of State to protect the integrity of our elections and the safety of election workers and volunteers. The bill creates a new criminal statute aimed at targeting those who would interfere with voters, election officials, or the electoral process in Vermont. In these uncertain times, we must take proactive steps to protect our institutions of democracy.

The House Judiciary committee passed H.578 (An act relating to penalties and procedures for animal cruelty offenses). The law and infrastructure related to animal cruelty and the seizure of animals who have been abused is antiquated and under-supported in Vermont. This bill aims to update the criminal statute to expand the scope of what is considered animal cruelty and develop criminal penalties that better address the harms being done to animals in our state. The bill also reworks the civil animal forfeiture laws to expedite and streamline the process to better protect at-risk animals and alleviate some of the financial burden taken on by shelters and volunteers who step in to help the state protect abused animals. 

H.566 (An act relating to sealing post-charge court diversion records upon successful completion) is a bill that relates to a larger effort to shift from expunging to sealing eligible criminal records in Vermont. Last year, the legislature passed expansive legislation that updated the sealing and expungement laws, and moved most eligible criminal convictions to be sealable, not expungeable. This bill targets a subset of criminal records that went to diversion post-charge (i.e. moved out of the formal court process to a restorative alternative some point after arraignment). It is still important that the records of those cases going to diversion are not destroyed in the expungement process. H.566 ensures those records are sealable and not lost.

In current practice, the public's ability to access publicly available criminal-case records is limited to either going to the court house where the records are stored and copying the records, or emailing a court clerk to have a specific record emailed to them. This process is even required of the news media. It is an antiquated system that impacts the ability of the public and the media to understand what is happening in our criminal justice system. H.572 (An act relating to permitting public access to electronic criminal case records) will provide a way for the Vermont public to access criminal case records online. This change will help with transparency in our court processes and help to address misconceptions in the criminal justice system by allowing individuals to more readily access the facts of any given criminal proceeding. This bill is anticipated to pass later in the session.

A recent Vermont Supreme Court case involving two young Vermont women who were filmed in a changing room without their consent illustrated gaps in Vermont's voyeurism statute. H.626 (An act relating to sexual extortion, voyeurism, and disclosure of sexually explicit images without consent) updates our voyeurism laws to better reflect the realities of how image-based abuse plays out in the digital era. The bill also creates a criminal statute prohibiting sexual extortion (sextortion), a form of image-based abuse often committed through social media and disproportionately affecting young Vermonters. Both provisions provide increased accountability and a clearer pathway for victims to seek justice.