A panel of lawmakers heard pros and cons as well as quite a few suggestions last week on a proposal that seeks to reform bail statutes in Vermont.
The House Judiciary Committee heard testimony last week on the bill, H.728, from a range of people who work daily in the state’s court system, including prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims’ rights advocates, corrections officials, and a judge.
After hearing two days of testimony, House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Maxine Grad, D-Moretown, said she was optimistic the bail reform measure will move forward, perhaps with a few changes.
“I think what we have here is very workable,” she said.
Rep. Chip Conquest, D-Wells River, the committee’s vice chair, said that while it was unclear how many people the measure would keep from being detained for lack of bail prior to a trial, there was a bigger point.
“On the detainee population, I think it will have some effect,” he said. “But the bill is really also about making sure everybody is treated equally and fairly, and that I think the bill will be successful at.”
Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan, the state’s top prosecutor, spoke about the reforms during a Statehouse press conference at the start of the legislative session last month. He urged lawmakers to push for changes to make the system more equitable for poor Vermonters unfairly jailed.
The attorney general’s office helped to draft the legislation, which includes several of the provisions raised by Donovan. Those measures include a cap on bail for certain misdemeanor offenses, greater emphasis on home detention for those accused of nonviolent offenses pending trial, and taking into account a defendant’s ability to pay when setting bail.
The specific proposed changes in the legislation include:
• Imposing a bail cap on nonviolent misdemeanor offenses of $200. Offenses would include misdemeanors eligible for expungement.
• Requiring a judge to establish a defendant’s financial means before imposing bail.
• Creating a presumption that courts will release defendants accused of certain misdemeanor offenses, who are detained for lack of bail, to a home detention program pending trial.
• Providing that repeatedly violating conditions of release does not, on its own, entitle the court to revoke bail entirely.
Speaking to the Judiciary Committee, Lisa Menard, commissioner of the Vermont Department of Corrections, cited a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts showing that the state’s incarceration rate dropped by about one-third in the past decade. Currently, the state has about 1,700 prisoners, including about 250 serving sentences out of state.
Menard said between 350 and 400 of those incarcerated in Vermont are being detained pending trial. How much that figure would drop as a result of the proposed bail reforms in the legislation remains an open question, she said.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out,” she told the panel. “I’m going to need a little more time. A snapshot doesn’t tell you the whole story, it only tells you who’s there that day.”
The commissioner talked about the “churn” of the incarcerated population. “We don’t have 400 people and the next day have the same 400 people,” she said. “There could have been a change of 30 people in that time.”
That’s mostly because some defendants are lodged on bail overnight or over a weekend, and following their arraignments in court are able to get released, she said. Then, the process starts over the next day.
Chief Superior Court Judge Brian Grearson told the committee that, for a judge, issuing findings on a defendant’s ability to pay would be a tough task, due to the difficulty of determining a defendant’s financial status based on the limited information provided in public defender applications submitted by defendants.
“We’re not an investigative unit,” Grearson said. “We don’t have someone to verify anything.”
Marshall Pahl, a lawyer with the state Office of the Defender General, told the lawmakers he backed the proposed changes. He said judges already consider a defendant’s ability to pay when deciding matters of bail, even if it is based at times on imperfect information.
“In the criminal justice system, if we only proceeded when we had perfect information, we would kind of grind to a halt,” he said.
Windsor County State’s Attorney David Cahill said he preferred a system like one used in federal courts, where a person is either released or detained, with pretrial services personnel conducting a risk assessment. For those released, he suggested employing a simple GPS monitoring system.
“The rules for somebody released on GPS should be: Stay in Vermont. Keep your GPS unit charged. Don’t damage your GPS unit because it doesn’t belong to you. Attend your court dates,” he said. “That’s it.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Bail reform meets little resistance in committee hearing.