What's Happening in Vermont?

As my colleague Colin Miller has indicated, quite a bit is happening in Vermont. Colin focuses, not surprisingly, on the evidence law related issue. While members of the Vermont Senate have proposed a 34-point plan, among the ommitted suggestions was a rule which would have, as Colin notes, "brought Vermont in line with the much despised Federal Rules of Evidence 413-415." Strangely, the news account of the story focuses on what wasn't included, while details of the 34-point plan are sketchy. For a little bit more information about the portions that did not make the cut, here are some of the details from a local news account:

In fact, Sears said from the outset that the committee would not spend time looking into two ideas backed by Douglas — civil confinement and the death penalty. Civil confinement would allow the state to hold certain sex offenders in prison beyond their sentences. Neither idea is included in the document.

Three other ideas have also been excluded from the Judiciary Committee's recommendations, including "judicial accountability," the federal Adam Walsh Act of 2005, and the idea of allowing a defendant's prior bad acts to be accessible to law enforcement and admissible in court, Sears said.

The failure to include an AWA compliance provision is pretty notable, but that may simply be taken up as a separate bill. I'm a bit surprised that the death penalty was even close to serious consideration after Kennedy v. Louisiana.

Comments

[Scott Huminski]

Police and Prosecutorial misconduct are out of control in Vermont. Laws are rather meaningless in that climate.

http://prosecutorialmisconduct.blogspot.com/

-- scott huminski