Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: Welcome back in the house,

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Judy, this

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: Wednesday afternoon, April 1. And Matt Valerio is here to comment on s two zero three and whatever else you wanna comment on.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Okay. Uh-huh. Evangelist. Madam Larry, defender general. I'll do the bill first.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: I really don't even know quite why.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: I really don't care about this bill, honestly. The apparently, the genesis of the bill was the state's attorney in Windham County wanted to change what we have now, which is the twenty year period runs from conviction to conviction. And, apparently, she went to her rep the senator and said, I'd like to have it run from incident to incident. I know why it went from conviction to conviction, if you wanna know, like, current what the current law is, because it was easy. You could go into the court records immediately and say, okay. Court records show the conviction is on this date, and the next conviction is twenty years later before you get the reprieve from your prior indiscretion. And I thought it was easier just, you know, to calculate the time. Apparently, the state's attorney in Windham County thought that it was a better idea to go from the date of the incident to the date of the new incident, which might be better from a, like, technical activity point of view. However, it would be more it'll be more difficult for everybody to figure out when the twenty years ran, because you have to go back into the affidavit, see when the actual date of the incident was, as opposed to just looking at the criminal record and seeing when the convictions are. I don't care either way. It really doesn't matter. But there was a reason why the law is the way it is now, which was to make things easier. And I suggested to senator Tashin that it might be easier to do what we're doing now. And he says, Well, like state's attorney wanted this. I said, Okay. So it doesn't matter to me at all. What

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: if it's the fact that it seems to be from conviction to incident now, not incident to incident?

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: It's easier to find when your conviction Like, it's difficult to find, you know what I mean? That's the whole point. Was difficult to figure out twenty years ago, like, where is the affidavit? Like, who could even find it? You know, I think maybe it'll be easier with Odyssey or whatever case management program they have. But who knows twenty years from now trying to figure out, and what, you know, what did they download from twenty years ago from this day? I I don't know. Bottom line is I don't really This doesn't have any real impact. This is just a matter of convenience one way or the other. And I don't think it has any real substantive impact on anything. You know, if it's a maybe they maybe there was some thought that, you know, if they didn't get a conviction within the twenty years, even though the incident was less than twenty years, that a defendant could diddle around with it and extend the you know, delay the proceedings until the next one. There's something to that. By the same token, digging around in old DUI affidavits, which are not really high on the list, honestly, of prosecutors or defenders, unless you're in private practice, is no real consequence. It this won't you know, I always worry about when when you tinker with DUI. It's one thing, like, you you know, you tinker with murders, and we have you know, we still average twelve, thirteen a year overall in the state. That's how many cases you're dealing with. When you tinker with DUIs, you're dealing with hundreds And and hundreds of so any little tinker can, like, change an entire landscape of litigation. This won't do that. It it just you know, it'll just be the word has to get out to the people who do the work so that, you know, they understand what the calculation is now as opposed to before. I'd like to you know, honestly, I'm one if I had to land on any side, I'd I'd like things to be, like, settled and not changed every couple of years. And so, you know, that would be my only downside of the bill, but I honestly really am about as simple as you could get.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: About what you just said about it'll affect the people who do the work, Who those people? There was some confusion on my part, at least, from the testimony we heard earlier today about how the DMV is involved in a first offense. Like, goes it's on the record. But anyway, who who

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: There are two different there are multiple levels of, like, who gets involved on the state level. From a lawyer's standpoint, when I was in private practice I didn't even know this stuff. But when I was in private practice before I became defender general, I was averaging doing about a 100 DUIs a year. And and I live was in Rutland County, so I was getting a lot of cases off the map, off of Killington, Pico, whatever. And you'd always get 60 of them in a winter there, and then the rest of the year, you know, around the holidays, that kind of thing. And I was doing murder cases and sex cases and drug cases and that kind of stuff. But you'd have a couple, three of them every, you know, ten day at any given time. And then the other legal work I was doing. But the bottom line was that public defense system doesn't do a lot of DUIs, particularly DUI ones. And you've got a civil suspension procedure regarding the license, and that DMV is involved with as to when all of that hits. And then you've got the criminal conviction side that involves the courts and criminal defend the the defense bar. But the kind of the point I was gonna make is I didn't I didn't realize before I got this job that the public defense system represents over 90% of the people with lawyers in the criminal justice system. And there's about, 5% that's that that are kind of the pro se. So they're representing themselves. Usually, it's not like, like, you know, the ones who are, I believe, not doing the right thing and saying, I'm gonna represent myself and turning it into a circus. And it's it's the ones who they just don't qualify for a public defender because it's a fine only case, and there's no chance of probation or, jail time. So you don't qualify for a public defender. The ones who don't qualify because of money are also very small. But I was really, really busy, and I didn't understand that only 5% of the cases were handled by private counsel across the entire state. You know, the criminal court is real it really is, like, the the court of the poor. That's what we you know, that's that's how it kinda ends up. And and then there's that 5% who there's a lot of cases there's in the criminal justice system. So there's enough to go around for the private counsel to make that their living. But, you know, the people who are gonna be impacted, when I look at it from a lawyer standpoint, they'll be the public defense system will have to know about it, but for because they'll get the ones that are the multiples, the twos, the threes, where people are looking at probation, whatever. The people who are gonna also have to be educated about it are the private counsel who are handling all the DUI ones, that sort of thing. You know, it's not this isn't a hard one to get out there. We do a when we do our training in June, we have a couple 100 people come to that. And, you know, the vast majority of them are public defenders, so we have private counsel who also sign up to come with approval. Nobody running for you know, state's attorney gets to come.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: I understand legislators get covered in the best. That's right.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Not allowed. I tried to

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: get myself a little bit.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: Yeah. Wouldn't it be great for us to see That's right. The word gets out about the work we do.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: You wouldn't like it. Might be not maternal. There might there might be commentary that It's offensive. I know. That doesn't even count what I'm saying. You know, at least I try to do it in a humorous way. Know? Oh. Yes. You know, what comes from the what comes from the audience would be less humorous, believe me.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: Yeah. No. They would agree. Yes. They would

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Having been on both sides of the fence. Yeah. And having been to a couple of those trainings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so that's what I have on this one. Is there anything else you need?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: I don't think so. And so we have you coming back tomorrow on s one eighty one tomorrow afternoon. Right?

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Yeah. Why does somebody want me to go testify about a genetic privacy bill?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: I have no idea who and where. Like, how's the

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: commerce and some kind of

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: I if there's a criminal part of it, but I haven't heard that there's a

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: criminal component. I just wanted to honest. I I literally, as I was coming over here, I got this email. Like, wow. That's a commitment. Bill do you have know what

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: bill number it was like?

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: 639? Is that

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: That's six thirty. It's eight six thirty?

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: What did they do? Age. They have

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: to be age. What would they still be doing with It must be in the Senate.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: So is it in the Senate?

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: I don't know if I followed it. Well, it passed

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: the House. So yeah, it's in the Senate. It's in economic development, housing, and general affairs in the Senate.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: And you never even saw the bill?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: No. No. And we would have been flagged if there was any kind of criminal Well, should have been flagged.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Sometimes things are missed. This does happen, that they're confused and think I'm the attorney general. This happens ever so often.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: Isn't isn't Allison Clark send the the Yeah. Would not would say

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: know because she was in this committee.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: Yeah. But she should know.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: We'll have to find out tomorrow when you come back.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Maybe she just wants to see me one more time before she leaves.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: And that could be Yeah. That's it.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: So so are you going to see

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: them tomorrow afternoon as well?

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Or It's

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: still live.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: I think it's in the morning.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary Committee)]: Of course.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: Of course.

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: That's okay.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: Yeah. No. Gotta take a break. Oh, okay. So we'll we'll see you tomorrow on one eighty one. I I don't see any reason to have you weigh in on that right now since we don't know what it is because we've taken it up yet. Okay. Any other questions? I'm sorry for

[Matthew Valerio, Vermont Defender General]: Go ahead.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair), House Judiciary Committee]: All right, so we are adjourned until