Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Judiciary committee this Friday morning, January 30. So we'll we'll start if there are two things I wanna get to before we have some more testimony from judge zoning starting at 11:00 and can McManus on the on the cruelty bill. But H-six 26, I think, is close to ready to vote. But we can figure that out once we have a discussion about what I understand is kind of the last issue. One of the issues that was kicking around, I think I mentioned it yesterday, was whether to have without consent in the one section. I'm trying to find the way the heck that works. But having read having discussed this with Michelle and having read the Van Buren case, it's we'll leave it in, and so we will just leave that in. It wasn't where we landed.

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: I think that the issue I mean, I think everybody had come around to agreeing that it was important to leave it in existing 2606 because that statute had already been upheld as constitutional under strict scrutiny, one of the specific things being that it was narrowly tailored to meet a compelling governmental interest. And so no sense tipping the Jenga tower on that one. Okay, it work. And the other issue was using the without consent on the threatening to disclose. I think there's more an argument that you could pull it out of there because the fact that someone's threatening to disclose something is it's kind of implied in a sense that it's against the victim's wishes. But it doesn't hurt to have it in there, and it doesn't really create any kind of additional burden for the prosecution because you have the victim who says, I said, I don't want those pictures on the Internet. So it doesn't really create something that's harder for the prosecution. So I think there's no harm in leaving it in there.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So that was one issue. The other was the penalty. And if folks are looking at draft 3.2, which should be on your desk, it's 26, and at the bottom of page eight, it's a penalty impression. We've been kicking around whether that should be a three year felony or two year misdemeanor. Personally, I was at one point towards seventy two year felony because of the harm, and then further discussions just offline with Kim McPanis and just thinking about proportionality. If we wanted our sex extortion part of the sale to have a penalty that's equivalent to regular extortion. That's a three year felony. And that kind of made sense that this is less harm. It's not as bad or culpable behavior. So a misdemeanor kind of made sense. But then I wanted to kind of look at other but then looking at other looking for comparable laws that are misdemeanors in our statute, I got a list, and they're bad, but they don't seem as harmful or as bad as what you're dealing with here. So for instance, possession of child sexual inferiority that show nudity but not sexual conduct, bad. That's 13 VSA twenty eight twenty five. And I can post this. That's that's a two year misdemeanor. Prohibited conduct, is kind of a catch all Makes sense. Is a two year misdemeanor for second or subsequent offenses. That's really one one pleads down mainly from mood and mischievous. Sexual exploitation of a minor, typically used when a victim is at least 16 years of age, which is the age of consent. That has a variety of penalties depending on the elements of the offense, but it has a two year penalty for luring one perpetrator of Jesus' condition of power. And then there's a one Those are all misdemeanors. Yeah. Those are all misdemeanors. One year misdemeanor, all of the I mean, we can someday look and see it work. Right. Right. So but, you know, it's all kind of proportional to what the other penalties are. So those don't I mean, it's hard this is kind of the judgments we're making. It's it's the the offense that we're talking about here with the knowingly disclosing about a a visual image that of somebody who's new or engaged in sexual conduct, is that equivalent to these others? Or is that is our judgment that that's worse and should should have a higher penalty? A three year felony is what I would suggest. If we do that, I think we need to have the sex portion proportional penalties should be a five year insurance So

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: that's kind of

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: where I am, and I would love to hear people's input of what we should do with that particular. Patient? It

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: was up to me. We would raise all of them. The ones you listed, that's absolutely ridiculous that those are misdemeanors. But I also get the proportionality piece. And unless we're going to be changing the others, I guess it doesn't necessarily make sense to change for this one.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And I get back to hope what we did a few years ago when we made a run at this. And even then, when we were trying to have those redo the old criminal code, and we looked at the sex crimes. And actually at that point, we didn't change any of those because of testimony from the network and others because they were very leery about that. But I think that's worth another

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: For what reason?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I don't recall. I guess a few years ago, but I just remembered that we left it because there wasn't a big push to change all the Other viewpoints of where we are? That's all right. So what we we didn't do a few years ago, that wasn't a big picture because we were looking at everything. Right. Right. And maybe we can just keep it narrow to the because I 100% agree that from Alicia that we should this should be a three year penalty or three year felony. But for consistency's sake, I think it is on the same level of, you know, maybe one is a little higher level, a little lower level, but I think it's on the same level as the other ones and certainly not going to stop me from supporting the bill, but it is something that I think we really need to look at. Misdemeanors, Those I was going say crimes, but misdemeanors, as you read, to me are pretty egregious. I don't remember working on it, had no idea.

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: Those penalties have been there for a long time. Yeah, for most of them. I mean, depends.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Should we stick with this because of the consistency and make a point of we can actually start looking at the issue post crossover depending on how much we get from the Senate. Or we can just, we can even put in our first bill request for next year that will be an effort to, and this will give us a lot of time with the network and others in the off session to kind of figure out where to go with it. That's that's kind of what I was thinking, is just next year, I mean, not that we could start to work on it, but it's not gonna get it's not gonna pass this year. Right. Right. And anything that we do, any witnesses that we bring in, any discussions we have, we're just going to repeat it. That's true as well. We can, as a placeholder, have a love to already do it.

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: You may, and I'm happy, you know, we've got to have something to do this summer. Is draft number one. I don't want it.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Mr. Jacobs, is

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: this a draft

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: for next

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: year, the next plan? Don't know that, but I will look. But usually, you're in the top five, Martin, every year with the request. And it's something that I can certainly discuss with the network and others around the scope of something, looking at the penalties.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Anything else on this? It sounds like I'm hearing stick with what we have here right now, which is a misdemeanor here, a three year felony for the sextortion. But again, what's the other enhancements that we have as well?

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I guess I'm trying to, I think reviewing penalties in the future with a sort of an understanding or taking into account the forever nature of some of these things now, keeping up with technology, we can't, but trying our best makes a lot of sense. And I'm seeing that I'm reading this correctly and all the different subsections and stuff. The penalty for creating a recording without a person's consent. The first offense is two years. A thousand dollars.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: And then disclosing it, though, is

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: And disclosing it is 5. So we're like It's almost like we're going in the middle for disclosure of This was supposed to tackle disclosure of an image that might have been Image might have been made with consent, but the disclosure is not consensual.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, it captures that. Correct. But it could also capture if the prosecution just doesn't think they can prove that it was made without consent, it gives them a lesser, something with one less element to prove. So a lesser occluded defense probably is all that. Anything else with this? Are folks ready to vote on your phone? Are we all good? All right, on patient Bolton to approve Oh, yeah, sorry. One

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: other question I had that I it's probably to my It's just the concern It's trusting that the current system will appropriately work with juveniles who might offend. Because we're not I know it came up for us briefly. It's the conversation of possibly a different set of penalties for someone 18. But so I hear that we're not going that route, and I'm just registering some concern.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: I I could register why I didn't want to go to that meeting again.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I understand. We have our system of family court and confidential proceedings. So yeah, I get that.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So I will take a motion to approve that number 3.2 of H six twenty six dated today or dated yesterday 03:57PM. It says strike all amendment.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: So much.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Is there a second? Aye. Any further discussion? I think it's a good bill. Thank you, everybody, for the work done.

[Angela Arsenault (Member)]: I'm grateful, yeah, I'm really grateful to the committee for taking this up and taking it so seriously. And it's one of those bills that was driven by a story of It started with the story of a Vermonter who experienced a substantial, substantial harm and had no real recourse, no clear path to justice. And so, that's a pretty important part of what we do on this committee, I think. So, I'm really grateful that we were able to move this bill. And as far as the sextortion piece, that was my interest in tackling this came from work that The broader scope of work that I'm engaged with on online harms and hearing from our witnesses that it's a very real problem here in Vermont just makes it all the more relevant. I'm really grateful.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Thank you both to Angela and Alicia for shepherding this film and getting it in front of us as well. Clerk, Parsonal? Yes. Dolan? Yes.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Rutland? Yes. Rutland? Yes. Harrie?

[Zachary Harvey (Member)]: Yes. Hawaii? Yes. Oliver? Yes.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Rachelson? Yes. Christie, absent. Verditt? Yes.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Belong? Yes. Ten-zero-one. And I understand Alicia and Angela are going to co lead Barton. Excellent.

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: I just wanna note. So this is a clean draft. It was edited yesterday, so it can go to the clerk that you don't need to wait for anything else from me. And please reach out if I can be of any help as you prepare for them.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Excellent. All right. So we'll turn to H5. I don't know if there's a lot more to say than that. Obviously, a lot, and we've of got delayed a little bit. So my understanding, and and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is this is a bill that's introduced plus we have on our desk a an amendment. Correct. Okay. Alright. So just to get that out of way, I will take a motion to find favorable the amendment, which is on your desk, draft number 1.51, and it changes the effective date to 07/01/2026 instead of 07/01/2020. So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anybody opposed? Okay. I'll take What's that? I'll take a motion to then pass H5 as amended. And it's the bill as introduced as amended by the amendment we just had on the effective date. Second. Any further discussion? Just that Jen Paul meant to text me that she wanted to be here, but she's a little bit under the weather, but she is tuning in. Oh. She's walking. Alright, so it goes up to alright, hello again. I hope you feel better this weekend. The clerk can call me roll. Arsenault? Yes. Go on. Yes.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Goodnow? Yes. Carl Slant, yes. Harvey? Yes. Malay?

[Alicia Malay (Member)]: Yes.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Oliver? Yes. Rachelson?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yes.

[Kenneth Goslant (Clerk)]: Christie, absent. Verdict? Yes. Wong? Yes. 1001.

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Sam Karen is going to take with the blue part, is that correct? Unless somebody else is dying to

[Mr. Jacobs (Legislative Counsel)]: Wait, can you wait for me now?

[Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: You didn't look happy when you just looked at me. It was like, I'll take it, but You try. Can try. Just want to make sure. All right. So we'll come back. We'll go offline and come back at eleven because we don't have our