Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Welcome folks. This is House Corrections and Institutions Committee for this Thursday, sixteenth. We have with us Representative Richard that's going to introduce a constituent that gives us chance share Yeah. Thank you.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: Thank you.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: By now for yourself. Yeah.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: Thank thank you, chair Emmons, and and thank you, committee, for for giving us this opportunity. For the record, my name is Chris Pritchard, representative from the Rutland Bennington District, and I represent the towns of Timmith, Middletown, Rupert, Wells, Middletown Springs. And I have a constituent with me today that I'd like to introduce to you that I actually wrote a at her request, drafted a bill which which you allowed me to present in this committee. And and I had asked for the chance for her to give her story. I think it's powerful, I think and I think it needs to be heard. She's put a lot of work into these books that I've given today, and I don't think she'll get the opportunity perhaps, but I don't time will allow to go through these. I would really appreciate it if you took the time to to go through these. She has her thoughts in it, some pictures. The last part of the section is actually the person that took her husband's life criminal record before before this happened. So I just I wanted her to have the opportunity to speak to all of them. So it's my great pleasure to introduce you, Tammy Carbone from Timmets, Vermont.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: We call it the hot seat, but it's not really a hot seat. Thank you very much. So Tammy, if you could She's out from the ground.

[Tammy Carbone]: Absolutely. My name is Tammy Carbone. I live in Timmins, And I really appreciate all of your time. I know you guys are super busy. I will not keep you for very long. Just want to get through my little spiel. I'd like to thank you all for allowing me to be here today. I'd also like to thank Chris for working as hard as he did to introduce Bill H two five two. 2021, when the original blanket good time to earn bill was established, I had a lot of mixed feelings. I thought it was a positive motivator for folks who made a mistake and needed a reason to stay out of trouble in jail. What a better reason than 25% reduction in a person's sentence? What I didn't understand at the time was that everybody qualified. Murderers, child molesters, career criminals, everybody. Should victims have been able to testify before this was passed? Absolutely. But it was kept pretty quiet. Not too long after that, there were exemptions added. A few exemptions. My husband had been dead for five years at this point. A heinous, preventable crime committed in my tiny town of five fifty four people by a career criminal. Five years of hell. Five years of navigating through life without my soul mate. I know we're not here to talk about the tiny details of Leo's death, but I'll give you guys a brief summary. On 04/22/2016, I came home from trailering livestock at about 8PM. I was told by a state trooper that my husband had been hit by a truck and didn't survive. We lived on a dead end dirt road. No way this was real. I figured it was an equipment accident that was believable. A heart attack, believable. Asthma attack, believable. But not hit by a truck. I'd also spoken to my husband about seven. We kept in touch all day, communicating at least with five to six phone calls. And he had just started milking his cows. Something obviously was not right. Thankfully, our security cam security camera footage was reviewed by the state police, and it was confirmed that the person who took the blame for this accident was lying, and the true criminal was her son. I've supplied everybody with his record. At the end of the binders, the last 33 pages are his record. Lisa Beldi, his mother, told police she was driving. Once the footage was reviewed, the police finally got the truth out of her. She told them she didn't want her son to go back to jail, her 41 year old son. He disappeared for three days. Once he was found, of course, lie after lie was spewed from his mouth. Again, security camera footage told the truth. Leo had put 10 cows in the parlor, walked up the driveway. The video shows him walking to the mailbox, got struck by the truck, his boots went flying off, and he landed five to 600 feet down the road. Tom Heldings got out of his truck, pulled his body out from underneath the front of his truck, and threw him on the side of the road. He was sentenced on 07/27/2018, to nineteenth flight, leaving the scene of an accident, death resulting, and gross negligent operation, also death resulting. Because of his 33 misdemeanors and nine felonies, his habitual offender status played a role in his sentence. Mister Velvet had no license at this point for sixteen years because all of his duties, his DUIs. Neighbors called the state state police about his erratic driving. The Rutland County sheriff lived down the same road that mister Velvet drove down every day multiple times. A Rutland City detective lived around the Quanta from Mr. Velvety, and the town had a constable, who was also best friends with Mr. Velvety's grandfather. He also resigned not long after Leo's death. And actually, to add insult to injury, he paid the town taxes for mister Velby and his mother Lisa while they were both in jail. My husband's death was a 100% preventable. Leo and I had spoken to the constable a number of times. Nothing was ever done. If one of these public safety officials had done their job, my husband would probably still be alive. I found out mister Billy was pulled over three nights before Leo's death by the Rutland Sheriff's Department. My attorney asked for dashcam footage and was told, sorry. It rolls over after twenty four hours. It's unavailable. After Beldi was sentenced, I had a bit of relief until the first appeal came. Denied. Then the second ridiculous attempt, denied. And it just continued. In six days, my husband will be dead for ten years, and I'm still in court. This last ditch effort is a lawsuit against the state of Vermont in civil court for a new trial. Imagine my surprise when I learned that my sweet husband's killer qualified for good time earned because his charges didn't fall under the less than handful exemptions. How the hell could he qualify? He threw my husband's dead body on the side of the road and disappeared for three days, allowing his mommy to take the blame for his crime. Talk about adding insult to injury. I really tried to understand why the exemptions were so limited and only added after so many victims proposed the blanket approach. I'm a believer that there are such good people out there, including all of you, who jump into politics and want to make a change. But I think like folks who work at a slaughterhouse, human nature becomes numb to the job, and everybody just goes through the motions. They're not just words on a piece of paper, they affect human beings. And in this bill's case, it's not about budget, it's not about public safety, it's not about budget, it's about public safety and peace of mind for victims. I know this bill is dead, I accept that. I just don't understand why. I'm not sure if any person here has had to be the victim of a violent crime. I hope for your sake you never are. Forty five minutes is not nearly enough time to navigate you through the new normal of my life, my PTSD, money concerns, anxiety to the point I can't leave the form of drive some days, and the physical toll that's taken on me. But I'd like you to at least keep the binders, go through them, take a peek at them. That's my new reality. Thank you again for your time. I know your job is not easy, but please do better for victims. We truly do feel forgotten. And I will answer any question you guys have about my life now, because it's not very pretty.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I wanna thank you for being able to come up here today.

[Tammy Carbone]: I appreciate your time very, very much. I know how busy every committee is.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just don't even know what questions to even ask. I would be curious, what is his seventh? Nineteenth

[Tammy Carbone]: to life, the DOC website is very, very difficult to navigate. It tells you his release date, but then you have to go back by yourself and figure out how many good time days he's actually earned.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So the nineteenth of life.

[Tammy Carbone]: That's '25. '25 in Vermont.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: When he was charged, what was he charged with? And then when he was convicted, what charge was it?

[Tammy Carbone]: They charged him with a number of things. They compromised on the two major felonies, leaving the scene of an accident, death resulting, and then forgive me, I forget the second one. It's like vehicular negligent. It wasn't homicide, but negligent something also death resulting.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So what was the final pitch?

[Tammy Carbone]: Those two. Those two. They eliminated the drunk driving or OUI because multiple witnesses came forward and said they saw him pop pills, saw him drink, they saw him do all this stuff. He had no license for sixteen years because he had too many DUIs. So they eliminated those two and driving without a license, OUI, and there was a third misdemeanor one that they excluded as well and compromised for these two.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And I'm assuming you work for the victim advocate within the state's attorney's office.

[Tammy Carbone]: I do.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Have they been helpful?

[Tammy Carbone]: I think they are as helpful as they are financially backed, and there's not a lot. When everything first happened, I I still have the farm. I work like a 50 year old man, seven days a week, fifteen, sixteen hours a day. I learned how to drive tractors, I learned how to do hay. I had to. It was the only way I was gonna be able to keep the farm. And every day I worry about money. So I looked up programs that were available. There aren't many. Then I looked at programs that were available for inmates. I didn't have enough time to read them all. And that's not balanced at all.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So did the victim advocate through the state's attorney's office, did they help you through the process at all? Did they?

[Tammy Carbone]: They did, they explained everything step by step. So you felt? 100%.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: You felt you had a partner,

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: you had

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Absolutely. So do you So we have a system within DOC, it's called the victim notification system. Mhmm.

[Tammy Carbone]: Bans?

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Bans.

[Tammy Carbone]: Bans. Yeah. How are

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: you finding that system? I know you said the DOC web page is really difficult to deal with. I find it useless. The Vines or the DOC webpage?

[Tammy Carbone]: The Vines. I get an email when something changes. They relocated him because his mom was having trouble driving to Newport, and they requested that he be closer. So they actually relocated him to Springfield to accommodate his felon mother. I got an email that went into my spam file and I got it weeks and weeks and weeks later.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So you've opted in to be notified?

[Tammy Carbone]: Yes, I have, From the beginning.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: How often do you notify? Is it like every month? Or is it just when there's changes? Only when he moves. Correct. Because we've been working a lot on the victim notification system. We're trying to make that friendlier.

[Tammy Carbone]: I think just from a personal standpoint, I think that it's possible to get software that can text the victims. Everybody has a phone, phone call. Half of my property's a dead zone, but I do get texts. You do get texts. I think texting is just today's communication, unfortunately. I like speaking with people, but for the most part, everybody just texts.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we've been working on that a lot, so it's good to know. Sure. Questions, comments? Joe?

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Mr. Velvey here is a poster child for why there probably should be some added exemptions from earn time. Mean, an individual who clearly just doesn't get it. It just keeps going back and and committing more crimes and probably, you know, should not be eligible for earn time based on his career here.

[Tammy Carbone]: I know he's probably grandfathered in at this point, but if it prevents one person from having to have reaction I did when I found out 25% of his sentence is going to be scratched right off the top for acting like a human being.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Do you also receive notice that when a person doesn't get their return on that month? No. So you don't know if he's even received it because

[Tammy Carbone]: I can only tell What I have to do is go to the release date, divide that into so many days from the day he was sentenced in July 2018, add those days up, subtract that release date on the website from the total days, and that's how I figure out how many there's days he's

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: so many blips in that. Was pretty consistent that he's earned those seven days a month.

[Tammy Carbone]: Oh, no, he's earning them.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So when he was sentenced, had he been detained for a while? Was he incarcerated?

[Tammy Carbone]: They arrested him and they did not release him.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So how long was he incarcerated before was sentenced?

[Tammy Carbone]: Two and a half years.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So that was taken off of his sentences. Correct. And so the minimum was nineteen years. Correct. Maximum is life. So at 19, whenever he reaches that minimum, he would qualify for release, doesn't mean he will. Right. Zero one, thanks. Having three escapes

[Tammy Carbone]: on his record, That's one of the things he's a habitual offender. Three. It's not comforting for me at all.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So have you worked at all, I'm trying to think, that's the girl, For when he is eligible for release, I mean, have you worked just trying to think, would it be with your victim advocate and then the state's attorney's office to weigh in whether he should be furloughed or paroled when he meets his minimum. Because I know with he was going to be paroled, it would be a mechanism. I'm not quite so sure with furlough, what that mechanism would be. Have you researched that?

[Tammy Carbone]: No. I have 152 acres. I have 30 cows. Have 25 horses. I have 200 acres of hay to do. I have all my equipment to get ready this time of year. I'm lucky if I get a shower every day. No joke. Like, it's really not a joke.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I'm just wondering if they're I'm just not

[Tammy Carbone]: sure if they're furloughed. I suspect once the time comes closer, yes, I will definitely buckle down and work with the appropriate people and figure out what's going on. And he's threatened me in jail. He's told other inmates and folks that, do I believe he'll do it? Absolutely. If he's gonna go

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: back to jail, he's gonna go back

[Tammy Carbone]: with a bang. He can't not be in jail.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I just wanna make sure your voice is heard when it's time that he would be eligible for it. It doesn't mean he will be released. Right. But I would just want at that time that there's an open note for your voice. Oh, indeed, it will be heard.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Yes? Doctor. Breaks for you. What would you like to be changed? Simplified in my line of structure, what would you love if you had a magic wand? What would you change with the experience that you've had?

[Tammy Carbone]: Definitely the last ten years, but we can't go back. As far as going forward, perhaps maybe a few more exemptions. I'm not against this. I think it's a wonderful opportunity. I have plenty of family members myself who have gone to jail. Some have chosen to better their lives, others have chosen not to. And that's on them, that's not on anybody else. But add a few more exemptions for cases like this. He slipped through the cracks because he wasn't charged with the three additional things that came with this blanket rule that passed. I have no problem with the rule. I have a problem with some career criminal like Mr. Valdi earning good time behavior. It's ridiculous. And I don't think that was the intention when the law was made. I think it was all good things, but there are these folks that are out there. And I don't think there are a lot of them in the state, but they're there. And they cannot I don't know. I think Chris had a great idea. Two or more felonies, you don't qualify. Maybe habitual offenders don't qualify. Some sort of warning that it's fair to the victims that you're paying attention.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Anything other than tightening up the current time programs?

[Tammy Carbone]: I think the victims advocate groups are kind of forgotten about, too. I really do. And I understand there are big priorities in this state right now. Lots of more important things, but it needs to be addressed. It should be very important.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: More important. So those are two, and I heard both of them. Mhmm. If there's another one I would be interested in hearing.

[Tammy Carbone]: At least I didn't think I'd be asked this question. I don't know, I just feel like the whole thing, I think, I never followed politics until this happened. And then I'm sure you hear that a lot.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Then

[Tammy Carbone]: I started really following these cases and how rules were slowly changing where it used to be one DUI or two DUIs was a felony, now it's a misdemeanor, now it's three DUIs, that's a felony. I understand we can't throw everybody in jail. State can't afford to throw everybody in jail. I get that part. But if there are no consequences, things don't change. And I think we're so lackadaisical with criminals in general. And personally, I do think it all trickles down to the drug epidemic that we have, for sure. I don't know how to break the cycle. That's what you guys are

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: here for. No, we don't know how to break It's the cycle really difficult. Making money out of it.

[Tammy Carbone]: These are such important issues and it just gets I've spoken to other victims, they're just tired. They're tired, they don't have the energy to fight.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I I just wanna assure you that hearing this we do hear from the victim community. We've been doing that. We've done that right along. So I just wanna assure you that.

[Tammy Carbone]: I appreciate that.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Troy, then Conor. Thank

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: you for being here. Appreciate hearing your questions.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: As you were talking about potential exemptions, right, the the bill suggests two or more felonies. You also suggested possibly habitual offenders might be included in that. And that's my question. Did he lose? Did they drop as a habitual offender? I see the motion, but I can't

[Tammy Carbone]: He lost.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: He did. Okay. That went

[Tammy Carbone]: to the Supreme Court. That was in January.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: And he's still considered a habitual offender?

[Tammy Carbone]: He is still considered a habitual offender. And sadly, whether they found that clerical error from fourteen years ago or twenty There years ago, whenever it were others to choose from. He didn't just have true habitual offenses.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: That was my question. Because I just wanted to get a sense on how easy or hard it is to have that removed once it's been applied, given if we consider whether or

[Tammy Carbone]: not that should be a new exemption. The Supreme Court denied the motion to exempt that habitual offense in his conviction or his sentencing. Had they done that, it would have eliminated his sentencing. We would have either had to have gone back to court and gotten another sentence, or they tried to barter for time because he had served so many Do

[Conor Casey (Member)]: you have any sense of how often people do have their habitual fender status dropped?

[Tammy Carbone]: No, I do not. I never This is all new to me in the last ten years. Learned way more than No, I ever wanted no, no. Learned way more than I ever wanted to about the judicial system.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Said that there's a new What's a new corps date coming?

[Tammy Carbone]: So that hasn't been determined. We did our pretrial conference hearing, and the public defender asked for another year, to which the retort of the judge was, No, we've been here for ten years. What's the motion? Oh, he'd like a new trial, please. Oh. In civil court.

[Conor Casey (Member)]: Oh, think he's in.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, he's in

[Tammy Carbone]: civil court. Civil court, not criminal court. If they get the new trial, then of course it goes back to criminal court in Rutland. So the judge said, You have till June 1. June 1, I want to hear arguments. You're not getting a year. This has been ten years. He was pretty perturbed, actually. At this point, I can't really blame the court system.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Okay. Oh, okay, sorry.

[Gina Galfetti (Member)]: Tammy, I don't have a ton to say, but I wanna thank you for your courage coming in today. You're right, we're busy, but we should never be too busy to hear from you when your story sort of takes it off the page and it becomes very real. So I just want to thank you so much. Nobody can imagine your pain around the table here. I appreciate that. I also want to show you the respect to tell you that I was not supportive of this bill. The reasons being, I think we strive to keep a safe environment within the walls of the prison too. And I personally have seen this as a tool to do that. And we've also heard studies about recidivism rates, but I don't want you to know I'm having trouble reconciling some of that with the pain I'm hearing from you. And I just want to let you know, and I respect this committee so much too. I'm gonna read this whole thing and give it some thoughts and just wanna have the door open to talk to you going forward on this. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much, Jenny.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. So thank you. I actually did sign on the bill because it's not surprising where you come from. I love my wife, and if someone took her out of the mailbox, I can only imagine how that would feel. And if it was someone who would have been doing this over and over his whole life, it's not hard for me to to to share where you're at. But you it sounds like to me that you're you've also been tortured by the process of not just losing your husband, which is brutal and heartbreaking, but it sounds like not just the buying system, that sounds, that we are trying, trust me, we've been talking about it a lot, and this is only my second ear, because it sounds like it's so frustrating for us. I can only imagine how it is to be on the receiving end of it. But so it sounds like so this person, he's able to just keep asking for new trials and bringing you back into this.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: Very impressive.

[Tammy Carbone]: It's just, it hasn't ended for me.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: I can see that.

[Tammy Carbone]: Near as well.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Wow, anyway, that's illuminating for me too. So I got to wrap my head around that. Did you deal with Judge Tore at all? So I don't think so.

[Rep. Chris Pritchard]: I just see

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: her name on one of these.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Oh, that was one of

[Tammy Carbone]: the appeals that she actually before it went to the Supreme Court, she was in civil court in Rutland, and she agreed that the habitual offender should be knocked off his sentence. So that's why they and the state's attorneys came. They had a different view that ended up in the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court denied it.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Okay. Gotcha.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Alright, well thanks for thanks for No, seeing

[Tammy Carbone]: did not personally deal with her.

[Troy Headrick (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, okay, just wondering. Alright, that's just helpful that, and thanks for putting all this together, because this is super

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: William, I'll go to Kevin.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: You wanna go first then? No. Tammy, I I one thing that you said in your in your statement that really got to me, because it's not just you that said this, is that you know this bill's dead and that the process isn't working. And this bill has been on our wall for over a year, and I feel that there's a small minority of people in this building that will not hear people like you and make this happen. And will be honest, I'm fed up with that in general, both in this committee and in other committees. So I'm actually going to just say that we move to vote on H-two 52, because I feel like we don't have data for why this policy went into place. I don't think that we have data to explain why it should not change, so I'm going to move that the committee vote on H-two 52.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think we all take a deep breath here

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: on that. I feel like we've taken a deep breath for about a year, so I'm going to move that we vote on H-two 52, and if there's a second, we'll vote on it, but if there's not, then that's okay.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So we are at the end of a legislative session. Committee bill was dealt with now goes nowhere. It's really the session. We're in a very emotional timeframe right now. And I'm gonna ask the people just take a deep breath and think this. It's okay.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: I don't want to throw salt in the room, but I, for my own understanding, only you spent lots of time since your husband's death, but you probably spent a lot of money to go through this process or not? Did it cost you financially? It's not You're running the farm now. I understand that. Do you have to pay for lawyers, etcetera, to represent you? Or or I don't I don't know what the system offers.

[Tammy Carbone]: I didn't sue Tom Belding. The DA's office sued Tom Belding. So financially, besides stuff like, I don't know how to fix a tractor. No husband did that. There were a lot of different little There was actually a lot of money that went out because he did it. The man could do everything. He knew how to drive a tractor before ten years ago. So I'm pretty good at it, which I didn't think I would be, but no, financially, there's one salary, there's one income now instead of two, because I also do equine rehab. And during the winter, that was my good time. The cows were off of grass, so their quantity went down. During the summer, the quantity went up. They were out on grass and all of my rehab horses went home. It all balanced. So now that's not the case. So I stayed organic. I'm still raising replacement heifers. I'm still doing equine rehab. I'm still trailering animals, just to pay my bills, pay my mortgage. So Yes. No, attorneys did not cost me anything. Long answer. Wanted to ask that question. But it's a trickle down effect.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Oh, I'm not For sure. I'd say that justifies anything. Just Correct. Don't whether, Because it sounded to me like it took five years for justice

[Tammy Carbone]: to do Two and a half.

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: Two and a half years.

[Tammy Carbone]: July 2018, he finally got sentenced. Because his attorney kept just, we'd literally get dressed and go to court and his attorney would cancel. Just the mental toll of that, you mentally prepare for it. It gets canceled, maybe next week.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: So, welcome.

[Kevin Winter (Member)]: I'm so sorry for those circumstances why you're here today. I appreciate your loving strength to talk. You have indicated that he has, and I know usually the courts illegally will say, someone can say anything, but have the threats against you or that he's delivered to other folks within the facility, has that been discussed at all with the attorneys or in any of the court cases? Or just because he has just said it and hasn't acted on his threats, it doesn't get discussed? Does not get discussed.

[Tammy Carbone]: And yes, it was a couple years after Leo got killed. He was still pretty angry, still playing the victim, was quiet for a little while, just continuously just placed the victim in jail. And here we are in civil court ten years later. Indeed. I'm very lucky I have a lot of good friends and family that But I'm from Rhode Island. They're not here. They were here initially, but now I rely on my friends and everybody came and milk the cows until I sold them. I had to sell them, I couldn't do everything. So I am very lucky from that aspect. But yeah, it's taking a hold for sure. And I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and then, oh, here's another appeal. I didn't even know it was legal to appeal that many times. I mean, hey, the attorney's job is to be crafty and to get somebody out of the situation that they're in. So kudos to the public defenders in Vermont because they're doing it.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: And we're all paying for all paying And for it too. Indeed. So It was a sad situation.

[Tammy Carbone]: No. His family, they they pulled some stuff at first. Unfortunately, he he had a history. He's pretty much stolen from everybody in the community. He stole cherry trees that were cut down. Cherry trees. So I don't know why. Mental illness? I'm not really sure. But his family for three days stuck to the story, all 15 of them. They were not gonna rat him out, every one of them, until all those pesky security cameras. The reason we got the security cameras is he stole from

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: us. So

[Tammy Carbone]: they would do stuff like leave stuff on my porch. They insisted on a reenactment and bring the truck up in front of my farm, the whole reenactment, to which I assured the state police that was not gonna end well. With the family there, they wanted to come up and watch. They went online and did great, whatever. I don't care about social media. You don't wanna say stuff about me, that's fine. I don't care. My husband, nicest guy you've ever met in your life. So, yeah, for about a year and a half, driving by the house, driving by the house. I live on a dead end, just like a three mile loop and then back. Well, I'm not leaving. I'm not afraid of any of them. And they quickly learned that.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: So

[Joseph "Joe" Luneau (Member)]: There's a motion.

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: I think folks really need to think of the time of the session that we're at. Bill is when you wear it's we're done crossover. Crossover is to allow time for the other body and take a testimony to go out on a bill that we have been taking a testimony. I'm not doing that as a committee. I know this is really about Shawn for folks. But that's why I said just take a deep breath and get through. Because we haven't even looked at it really not last year's in June, and I know he had spoken in a real, emotional way.

[William "Will" Greer (Member)]: We've had a year to take testimony on this, and that is what is frustrating about this, is that we delayed the process to this point, and we knew there was a deadline for this well over a year ago, and here we are. That's why I made the motion. So I would love a second if there's a second, but if there's not,

[Alice M. Emmons (Chair)]: Second. Let's take a recess. We're gonna take the recess. Close the lunch.