Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Hi, welcome to the House Judiciary Committee this Wednesday morning, April fifteenth, and continue to take testimony on S-one 193. And we're gonna start with Emily Perry is joining us on Zoom. So Emily, if you could unmute yourself. Thank you very much for being here. I really appreciate it. So if you could proceed, identify yourself and proceed with your testimony. Thanks again.

[Emily Perry]: Thank you. Good morning to the chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. My name is Emily Perry, and I'm here to testify in support of S-one 193. I'm here as a victim who has experienced the murder of my sister. I know there is a small and specific population of people who this bill is directly relevant to, and I'm part of that population. I'm here to represent my sister's four sons who experienced the murder of their mother, all four of whom were adolescents at the time of her murder. I'm here to represent their father, stepmother, and younger sister. I'm here to represent my brother, his partner, and their twin daughters, and the community concerns and experiences shared with me through the murder of my sister in the state's handling of her case as dictated by the current laws. I'm also here as the daughter of an individual who would be one of the few to find themselves subject to placement at a Vermont forensic facility. These cases involving murder and mental health factors that are after the alter legal proceedings are so rare in our state, and yet their impact is so widespread and devastating to the families and communities that are left to survive them. I not only want safety for myself and my community, but I want safety for my father who has committed murder in a psychotic state. I was here to testify to this committee earlier this year, so I'll try to summarize my experience and also to make some points that are relevant to the committee about ways that this bill can improve the safety and well-being of the Vermont communities that you all serve. I know that this committee and others are hearing a lot of testimony around this bill, I hope that you will ask me any questions that you might have around how a victim, survivor, or community member might be affected by this bill. My sister was murdered on 05/03/2021, as was checking in on my father at our childhood home in West Newbury, Vermont. He shot her through the front door while she held a plate of cookies in her hands. He then dragged her into the house and proceeded to stab her. That was the shared most traumatic experience of my life and those of my family and friends. Our lives are shattered to say and to say that we've had to learn to live again is only touching the surface of how hard it is to come back from that moment in time where we all lost the life we once knew. I cannot adequately convey to you how life altering murder is when it takes your mother, your sister, your daughter, or your partner, and we are all still recovering. On Thursday, April 17 in 2025, I received an email from the victim's advocate at the state's attorney's office saying that on April 2, the state's attorney agreed to a not guilty by reason of insanity plea, and that on the following Tuesday, there would be a hearing and that my father would be released to his home. Because there was no forensic facility, there were no options for where my father might go after his injury at GRI findings. My father at this time had become mostly wheelchair bound, and the forensic psychologist who had evaluated my father originally and then subsequently analyzed him as having recovered from the fluidly psychotic state he was in when he murdered my sister, listed behaviors that could lead to a psychotic relapse, which would endanger himself or others, such as isolation, a poor diet, and a failure to care for his medical health. Yet the plan was to drop my father off in the home where he murdered my sister that was in a rural, isolated setting and no longer livable for him. It was a plan that would set him up to not be able to follow any of the recommendations made by the forensic psychologist for his safety and the safety of others. There would be no notice to his neighbor who had survived the police standoff and murder a mere years before. There would be no notice, no support, no nothing to anyone. And this is the system from which we are starting to address the issues around forensic care in the state of Vermont. There was nowhere in the law of where to send my father after his NGR findings. In some states, because of this, they have written into law that NGRI cannot be used, and I agree with that stance. If the state of Vermont cannot mandate a safe place and plan for handling NGR cases, then it should not be legally allowed to use that as a defense. It would not If we do not have competency restoration, then we should not allow defendants accused of murder to continue to use non competency as a way to delay prosecutions indefinitely. That is something that is outside of my own experience. But now from meeting other victims of murder, I've learned a lot more about non competency, which was not what my father fell under, but isn't important for other victims. Because my family and I fought so hard against my father's release to his home, the defense began to seek alternatives. These included, at first, a nursing home and a hotel, both located close to my home and the home of my brother, both without clear understanding of how he would follow the recommendations of the psychologist who had evaluated him. My family did something that most families can't do, and we completely upended our lives in order to fight for a plan that provided more safety for us, our community, and my father. We need to have a place for these individuals to go in Vermont. I am in support of S-one 193 because I believe it is the first step in establishing an appropriate and safe handling of cases involving murder where NGRI or competency is a factor. I know that there will be a tremendous amount of work to build this forensic facility into a place that does all that we hope: restore competency, rehabilitate offenders therapeutically, and provide safety to families and communities. But I believe that we need to take the first steps so that we can start working towards those shared goals. I understand that there are pieces of this bill which include victims' rights, and I encourage you to keep these pieces. I also understand that the Vermont network will be testifying in ways to strengthen these pieces, and I urge you to adopt any suggestions that might be made by them. I am here testifying about my experience and that of my family and community, but the network can represent the experiences of murder victims across the state, and I believe they are the true experts in what can be done at the state level to support all victims. A victim's right to be heard is necessary for our healing, our safety, and our ability to move forward in the painful process of court hearings involving the murder of our loved ones. In our case, we had to fight very hard for this right to finally be granted, and we are forever grateful that it eventually was, and we got that opportunity. Victims should not have to fight as hard as we did for that right. In our case, because my father was the one who had committed the murder, we not only needed to share with the courts the impact the murder had on our own lives, we also had valuable information about my father's long standing mental health issues leading up to his psychotic break. We had information that the courts could benefit from, and yet at every turn, we were denied again and again the right to speak. Victims deserve this right and it should be at a time early enough in the proceedings that the courts can reflect and take into consideration their testimony. Victims also need to have a right to notifications about significant changes to an individual's status. This is essential so that victims can make informed safety plans. We do not know when my father will be released from his current situation and we do not know where he'll go. But I'm not exaggerating when I say for my brother and I, who live just miles from the childhood home where our father shot and killed our sister, that we cannot feel safe if he returned to our community. Our safety plan might look like selling our houses, leaving our jobs, and moving. We need the right to make important decisions for our lives that would be based on receiving these notifications. As a victim, my experience has unfortunately brought to light a lot of gaps in this process, and I hope that my experience can also help to build some of the pieces to fill those gaps. Thank you so much for your time today and for all the time and effort you are putting into ensuring a safer Vermont in the future. And if anybody has any questions, I'm happy to.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: So thank you very much, Emily. Do have a question and I'll open up to some of the other folks. In the bill, for somebody who's found not guilty by reason of insanity, There is a process where they can petition. There's also a process where right now, it's every six months that there's a proposal to change that slightly that we'll be looking at. But there will be a process where they're gonna look and see if the individual, and the key is whether the court finds like clear and convincing evidence that the person is no longer suffering from a qualifying condition, that upon the person's release would create a substantial risk of bodily injury to another person. So it sounds like your father could possibly be released on that. But I think the key difference from what I understand, I'm just confirming if that's where what you see as the benefit of this bill, is that the person is released pursuant to an order with particular conditions that they have to follow with regards to treatment and that the commissioner shall actively monitor the individual. Is that kind of where that gives you some better sense of safety in addition to the input that you're allowed to give as a victim?

[Emily Perry]: Yeah, it is very hard because honestly, thinking about my testimony today, I did go over a lot of times that was a little bit heartbreaking to think that actually my family might be in the same position that we were in or are in now. And I believe strongly that we need this forensic facility even if it didn't, even if my family didn't benefit from it. There are victims in these murder cases that would. I hope that my family could, and I think that one difference of this, if when they were- one of the problems with not having a place is that it was left to the defense attorney to try to find one. It was left to the defense attorney to try to find money to pay for one. And so, while everybody was trying to do what was best, were really, there was a lot working against them to be able to do that. So, the state's attorney wasn't able to say, this is a place where we can hold them. And the judge couldn't have that as an option. And so, if we had an option, then I think there wouldn't be so much pushback about my father being there. And my father himself knew that actually he's not really able to be on his own. And so, depending on what this forensic facility might look like, I think he himself would be willing to be in a therapeutic rehabilitation placement and know that he wasn't able to do the recommendations that were given to him. I think he did have awareness that he was while he's not psychotic, he does lack an ability to to take care of himself in certain ways that could lead him to a relapse of that psychosis. So my hope for this bill in terms of if it and it can't really because my father's case is already sort of out of that system and process. But if we were going to go back in time and this bill had been had existed before my father's hearings last summer, I think that everybody would have been more amendable to putting him into a place where they could actually rehabilitate him and work with him and that there would be It wouldn't have been such a hard thing for them to pull off. I think that we would have a better outcome because of that. Does that answer your question? Sorry, know that's

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Yeah, what it's suggesting to me is it's not if the person is being released from the forensic facility pursuant to an order that prescribed the treatment that the person's supposed to get and with the monitoring by the commissioner, the missing piece may still be where is the person going to be and are there other options that are lower than the forensic facility in this? Yeah, no, that raises that question. And that's something I guess we're gonna need to explore a little bit further. So I appreciate that. Other questions for Emily? Yeah, Angela.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Hi, Emily. Thank you so much for coming back here and sharing with us your story and experience again. And I'm wondering, based on your experience and what you just shared about being denied. It sounds like being denied the opportunity to provide input at certain points. And I recognize that there are so many different hearings and things. So not asking you to recall each one. But I wonder if you can say a little bit more about that and what if kind of just the processes that you were involved with that were at the points at which you were denied access or involvement? Because I'm not sure if and I and we did receive testimony from the network yesterday, and so we have some some language to look at, but I I'm not convinced that certainly in the bill as it is right now that we've, like, granted access at all of those points. So I wonder if there are a couple points where you felt like it was really important for the for victim rights to default.

[Emily Perry]: I will say, obviously, full disclosure, I have learned a lot through all of this process, and I do not have a legal background, so that makes it complicated. But That's

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: okay. Neither do I.

[Emily Perry]: My case I think our case was a little different because the state's attorney and the defense agreed on a deal, it didn't actually go to jury, which I think is uncommon. And I think if that had happened, there is a, from my understanding legally, is more clear avenues for victims and timing for victims to have a right to speak because they agreed and we were consulted before then that they had agreed to this. The non- the NGRI, there was like no formal place for us to do it. It started when I first got that email, which was on a Thursday, that on Tuesday that my father was going to be released. So, that time, I showed I spent every minute up until between that time trying to figure out what was going on and what I could do. And I showed up by myself that first court hearing, and I was very embarrassed to say that I raised my hand and said, Can I speak? And the judge said, This is probably not the right time. And I said, My worry is that if I come back, that these decisions are gonna be made, I'm never gonna be able to I'm not gonna have I'm gonna have missed. And he sort of said, that's a possibility, and you should talk to all the parties involved, which I had been doing and continue to do. From that point, my ex brother-in-law and his wife and my little brother and his partner and I, we all work together and and met with the state's attorney. The original state's attorney who had agreed to that, the NGRI left the state's attorney's office and we have found ourselves with a new state's attorney. And we basically just begged when will we have the right to speak. And it was particularly disheartening part for me was actually before I had gotten everyone involved and we were working with the first state's attorney. And I said, you told me because before the reason I raised my hand was because that state's attorney had said to me, finally, when he was flustered before that first court hearing, he said, you can speak. So that is why I said I was told I could speak. In the next meeting, I said, when will I be able to speak? And he said, oh, I'm not sure you'll actually be able to speak. And I said, the judge said I would be heard, that I could speak. You told me I could speak. That's the only reason I brought I was able to feel confident in that before that first hearing. And he said, Did the judge tell you that you could speak or that you could be heard? And that was very painful thing to think that the state's attorney was the only one on my side, and that that's how he was treating me. So I do urge you to try to, like, listen to the network. I think they have really good advice how to strengthen that language so that somebody else isn't going to be found where they're trying to describe to somebody the difference between speaking and being heard. You can't really be heard if you don't speak. That's just not actually doesn't make sense. So I do hope and figuring out the timing. And I think that there are other professionals that would have better advice exactly how to work that into this bill. But I really do hope that that is something that is there.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Thank you for that. And then I just have one other question. And kind of big and broad. So you can also just say, don't want to answer that, or I can't answer that right now. But I'm wondering if we didn't have this bill before us, and we were just asking you, like, in your in your ideal world, a very horrible, tragic situation, like, what would have how would you have liked to have seen it play out?

[Emily Perry]: So I am happy to answer that, and I do want to think of it sort of aside from this bill, because I know that these things are so complicated, and a worry that I have is that we sort of never take the first step. That's what I see, is that we get a forensic facility, and then we can figure out, the state can figure out and the professionals can figure out, is this truly a therapeutic rehabilitation setting? Are these pieces working? If they're not working, rework them. But if we don't have that first step, I feel like we're never going to move forward. So I don't want to muddy that water of talking about what my dream would be. But I actually felt all along that we had a really unique case because it was my father that had murdered my sister. No matter how much that wrecks me, I still have compassion and love for my father in a way that a daughter has for their father. And so we had a win win in my mind, where we could have safety, the community could have safety, and my father could have safety because he really is not able to he's never been able to take care of himself. That was an important piece of information is that he had never taken care of his medical needs. He had never taken he had never not isolated. He he was largely not a part of any of our any of his children's lives because he was isolating. So all of these factors, he he was not able to do on his own. I wish that if the state had had a place similar to maybe even where he's at now, and then there could be a long term assurance that we've got this. We're going to monitor him. We're not going to stick him back at his home. We're not gonna put him in a hotel. And for me, like, the perspective, it was I had a lot of hard times with the Department of Mental Health because when I tried to explain to them that he was not capable of following the recommendations of the psychologist and would put everybody at risk, they said sort of, that's not our problem. Housing's not our problem, food's not our problem, you know? And my hope is if they had a forensic facility and they had a place, they wouldn't have to say that because they would have the ability to fill that need. Looking at it from like a truly mental health perspective of the mental health impacts of the community of my mental health in all of this, you know? To look at it holistically, like, let's care for this person that needs care. And assure you that that is if I felt like that is the intention of this agency who's in charge of him, then that would have been the win win for all of us. Because I would have been able to entrust in them that they actually cared about his well-being, actually cared that he wasn't ever doing these things. Actually cared about his mental health and what that looked like for out his life and his. And in in doing so, would have cared for the mental health of I can't tell you how largely this impacted my community. It was unbelievable to me even. I remember during this court hearing last summer, people would stop me on the street and and I would think that, oh my gosh, they're worried about me. And they were worried about themselves. They would say something like, oh my gosh, is he gonna be with my grandmother? And it was kind of shocking to me to hear these things because I thought, like, I I didn't think of your grandmother. I I don't know if your grandmother's gonna be okay. But it was, like, very impactful for me to see how others were really devastated, you know, by this. And and it wasn't just me and my nuclear my me and my immediate family that had felt all of this harm. So I think that we could have had a win win situation where he's in a safe place and being taken care of, and not in a horrible setting. I think that there's a lot of pushback on something like a forensic facility because of this idea that in the past there have been inhumane conditions at these types of facilities. I hope that that's not even something we're considering, you know, that when we build something, it is not going to be inhumane. It is going to be a place where these people can go and get the help that they need and not be released back because it's the easiest, cheapest option. Because really long term, the expense is more there, both emotionally and financially.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: One more, if it's okay. On that on that point, do you have any concerns about this facility being located in a prison?

[Emily Perry]: I do have a concern. Like I said, I feel like it's a first step. Doesn't seem like If people are in jail cells and they're If it is a part of the prison and it's just the exactly same as a prison and it's being called a rehabilitation facility, I don't think that we're being really honest about what's going on. If there's a part of the prison facility that it can be separate and can actually be different than the present setting, then I think that, you know, it would take a lot, it does make me scared, but it would be hopefully trusting that whoever is going to be, you know, in charge of this facility have the best interest of everyone involved and would be doing that and not just calling it something that it's not.

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Thank you. I really appreciate your perspective, and I appreciate you feeling being willing

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: questions, because that's

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: a difficult one. And I acknowledge your position as being quite unique, but maybe not as unique as we think. It's easy to imagine that most victims didn't know their murderer or that their family doesn't have any ties to that person. And I think that might be more common than is generally imagined or conceived of. So I just really appreciate you being willing to answer these really difficult questions and to being able to balance such competing needs and helping us realize that they're not in competition as often as we think.

[Emily Perry]: Yeah, thank you. I think that that's really a good takeaway.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: Thank you, Barbara. Thank you so much. I actually was listening to your testimony all the way here and greatly appreciate, as Representative Arsenault just said, your unique possibly not as unique perspective, but really important given the complicated relationship and concerns it up to your dad. I'm wondering if during the evaluation process of your dad, if the evaluator reached out to family at all as part of that evaluation?

[Emily Perry]: That is a good question. And I don't feel like I can accurately answer that, which seems crazy to me that I can't fully remember. It makes sense, really, from a traumatic standpoint. Very shortly after the murder, we might might we were all in a very traumatic state. And and there was somebody that called, and I do not know if it was this psychologist or if it was somebody else. But there was somebody that called family members and asked very general questions, like, about his violent history. I don't think it was not a formal set- formal setting, and it was not a formal way of getting that. It did- it felt very much like, no, they never talked to us. And and talking to us at that first at that first timing, I don't think that they got any actual information. You know, we were were a mess. We were all a mess.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: Understandably. It's just interesting because certain types of evaluations, like with children, for example, they'll send the teacher an evaluation to fill out, the parents fill out, and that's not related to-

[Emily Perry]: No, but it makes sense, But,

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: right.

[Emily Perry]: And for my father, that was a piece, as they sort of looked at it from the time of he has this psychosis. And I will tell you, I did go to jail and to see my dad during the hearings last summer. And he said he remembered that they tried that the that he was told that they had to do the evaluation really quick because he was having, you know, the most symptoms, and they wanted to get the evaluation done before he didn't have symptoms. That was hard to hear. That was that he was coherent enough to recall that, being told to him that that was the process. But even- but also about this, I think, so even if- I don't know that any of our experiences could have affected that diagnosis of this fluidly psychotic. I think that we all would agree that he was psychotic at the time of his- of the murder. I couldn't imagine hearing a murder like this though and thinking that the person was not psychotic- in a psychotic state. That is how I understand. Like, me, that is my understanding of murder. Somebody was going to do that. But it's the then later evaluation saying he's no longer fluidly psychotic, and I think things seem to have gone pretty quickly in the process after that evaluation. Like, basically, he's- he had symptoms of that psychosis for years. As soon as they're gone, he gets the evaluator back in, they do it, and now he's gonna be NGRI and released. That timing, I think, really would have benefit to talk to the family, because this is where the piece- and for me to be able to speak was like, nobody was considering this lifelong pattern. In my entire life, this is the pattern of my father isolating and doing every single one of the conditions that they said led to his psychotic state. So none of nothing had changed. He might not be psychotic anymore, but nothing had changed to him being able to prevent it from happening again. And I think that we had really valuable information about that, that nobody seemed really interested in.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: Can you say how long he was in the jail for?

[Emily Perry]: It was so it was a total of like four, four and a half years, a little over four years. It was was she was my Stewart was murdered in 2021, and then the court hearings just ended like last October. So that was when he was released.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: And was he mixed in with the general public? Like what were things

[Emily Perry]: As far as I, yeah.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Any other questions for Emily? So Emily, again, thank you very much for being here and condolences in any tough situations. And I really appreciate you being able to speak about this. It's been very helpful for us.

[Emily Perry]: Thank you. I sincerely appreciate all of the work that you're doing. Thank you so

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: much. Thank you. All right, so we will go to Laura Carter from the Division of Racial Justice Statistics. Thank you for being here.

[Laura Carter]: Thank you for having me. For the record, my name is Laura Carter. I'm an analyst in the Division of Racial Justice Statistics, which is in the Office of Racial Equity. And earlier when you guys had us testify on our annual report, you may have remembered me saying that I pinch hit in policy, and I have been following this bill very closely. So we are grateful for the opportunity to testify on it. So a few just big bucket things for consideration. Does this committee or does our state want a system that focuses on public safety versus health care, essentially, is kind of what we're seeing in this bill. We know that prisons and jails are not therapeutic settings. We have to decide if we actually want this to be an extension of the Department of Corrections and what that truly means, if that is a decision that we're making. I've been watching testimony in both committees. Obviously, Corrections has been hearing a lot about this as well. And general counsel Karen Barbara has commented that regarding the setting being therapeutic, it will automatically be so because that's what we've outlined in the bill. And I just want to say that on its face, the bill doesn't change the fact that we are still housing individuals in an incarcerative setting in a jail, despite the fact that it has come up many times that they're already there. Prisons and jails are also known to deteriorate mental health or exacerbate existing conditions. We either want to provide care to these individuals or we want to incarcerate folks. Essentially, We want to echo the ACLU and the Defender General's testimony that this needs to be disconnected. And as we just heard from an impacted individual, and thank you for sharing that, Emily, that this needs to be a therapeutic setting in order to provide therapeutic care. And to quote Susan Arsenault, who you guys heard from last Friday, Of all of the proposed solutions to this particular problem of what we do with people who are not competent to stand trial. This is the worst proposal I have seen yet. And I believe that was right at the beginning of her testimony. We also would recommend the office that the committee, even though corrections is not in your jurisdiction, to potentially take a field trip to one of the correctional facilities. We understand in previous conversations of this bill that part of a proposal is maybe expanding one of the current facilities, likely Southern State Correctional Facility, where a lot of these individuals are currently already housed, just so that you can see what one of our facilities is actually like. Additionally, this bill currently as it is, and I understand you guys are working on language and that there'll be a new version later this week, that some individuals may never be released. We understand that there are some developmental disabilities or disorders where competency cannot be restored. And if the intent of the bill is to restore an individual's competency so that they are able to stand trial and they are able to sentence them, Some individuals will never reach that point, which to borrow a term from Defender General Valerio's testimony, we're just essentially warehousing individuals forever if there is no exit ramp. And I have a quote here from Representative Hedrick over in House Corrections saying, I cannot even contemplate that this is okay, that this is being okay, having this being connected to a carceral setting. Additionally, what we wanted to raise, there were some comments when when both House Corrections and your committee House Judiciary were having your joint hearing that we wanted to raise some points of concern, especially about DOC's vested interest in having this. And I know Commissioner Murat is coming in later this morning. And as I've heard and as we've heard in other testimonies on this bill, he is fully saying that the department has the capacity to do this. But I want to point out that the department has one of the largest budgets already in state government. I believe it's around $240,000,000 and their well path contract budget is between 40 and $44,000,000 annually. And it also costs between 120 to $150,000 per person per year to incarcerate people. And the taxpayers are paying for that regardless of what the decision is by this committee. And by adding this to the Department of Corrections charge, this is going to drastically increase their budget, which could potentially take away from other areas of state government that could need attention and would require potential renovations, constructions or even a new facility. Again, I know there's been a lot of conversations about what has been proposed to do with this. And as a related side note, the women's facility that they've been trying to build for a really long time now has been allocated over $15,000,000 and has been on hold due to a lack of building site for, again, over three to four years. And so our question is, do we expect this really to be any different regardless of a plan to expand the existing facility or if we're finding a new location to build? So then therefore, that prolongs obviously what we're talking about. And then we also have some concerns about WellPath, which I know you guys have heard a lot about already as well. We know that they are a private contractor with also a vested interest in maintaining their contract with the Department of Corrections. As I indicated, their budget actually was increased this year. And as you heard from Dribitt, Disabilities Rights of Vermont, and also Matt Valerio about the Prisoners' Rights Office, There is a responsibility to investigate medical concerns in the facilities. And there was two deaths in the last month, an individual, Jose Luis Gonzalez, who was 51, and a man named Jonathan Stone, who was 37 and spent over two weeks in medical care. Both of these individuals passed away due to medical related concerns. And this was an article that was published by VPR at the March. So we also heard the office literally last night in the racial disparities advisory panel meeting about concerns of medical care for somebody, impacted community member's family member who's currently housed at Northern State Correctional Facility. They have stage five kidney failure, and there have been no efforts to release this individual or provide additional medical care to this person. And they've had a really hard time getting in contact with the department on how they can even move forward to address this. And this is not even an individual that we are talking about in this bill. Right. So that's just general picture there. Additional thing that was brought up in this dual hearing was the capacity. And again, despite Commissioner Murad saying that DOC does have the capacity to do this work, we know that DOC is actually overcapacity in all of their facilities. The daily population reports that indicate that our population is over 1,600 people. I checked this morning. I think we have sixteen fifty four individuals in our custody and the women's facility is up to 181 individuals, which if I'm doing my math right, is I think 180% overcapacity for the women's facility specifically. And I know the men's facilities are also overcapacity. So again, people are dying. This is real and this is not related to competency. This is just general what is happening in our partial settings here in Vermont. And if the resources that we have in this area are already stretched so thin, we are furthering the limitations of their actual capacity to do this work, which means we're opening ourselves up to creating further disparities and exacerbating existing disparities that can cause harm to the individuals that this competency program is supposed to address. And as an additional side note, if the DOC already has too many people with acute needs, I. E. Just using the examples of the two deaths that happened at the March, This is contributing to expanding the gap of care and not actually closing it and opening the door for requiring more money. Going back to the budget piece, they already have one of the largest budgets in state government. And our question is, how do we measure success when the program doesn't have an exit ramp? Which again, know that you guys are working on language and there'll be a new version at the end of the week. Additionally, to add in the racial equity component, we know that nationally, people of color, specifically Black men, are sentenced more often and more harshly for violent crimes than their white counterparts and wanted to highlight that we already operate in a racially inequitable system. And as of 2025, there's approximately 19.6% of the total in state and out of state incarcerated population that identify as people of color, despite our state population being less than 10% of people of color. And I wish I could have had more recent statistics for you guys, but they, meaning the Department of Corrections, have not had their population dashboard up since the November. And that has been on hold. Obviously, it's April now. Perhaps Commissioner Mira can address why that's been taken down. But the only thing on their website for population is just daily counts. One of our additional concerns is AHS operating in silos despite presenting as one agency. Obviously, you guys have heard from the Department of Mental Health. You've heard from the Department of Corrections or will be hearing from the Department of Corrections. You heard from Dale yesterday, which I was excited about because we feel like they have been they should have been leading this conversation rather than the Department of Mental Health, because literally the Department of Disabilities, Aging and Independent Living led a working group on this in 2023, which I will say did not include the Department of Corrections as a working group member. And I understand that this has seen many iterations over the course of time. There are other individuals in state government that are much more familiar with the forensic facility history than I am. But having been around for the last few bienniums, I know and as a part of the working group in 2023, that corrections was not always part of the plan. And we feel that DMH has led much of the conversation but are also emphatic that they are not necessarily responsible for this issue or for this population, which I think exposes other larger systemic issues in Vermont that should be addressed. Additionally, this is something I've been thinking a lot about. If we can write it into law, certainly we can unwrite it, correct? These are policy decisions that your committee and House Corrections are going to be working on. Despite these individuals being housed with DOC already at this time, both DMH and Dale mandates include protecting these individuals from themselves and others, which is included in the bill language that you have now, understanding that that's not directly a public safety charge. It is the population that they are mandated to be the custodians of in their statutes. So if this bill expands the capacity and puts the onus on the Department of Corrections, why would it also not expand the capacity for the Department of Mental Health or Dale? Again, if we can consider expanding that, there have been other locked and secured facilities that these departments have run over the course of time, either themselves or through designated agencies. And I personally feel and we feel that using the excuse that we don't have the capacity doesn't mean that we can't change that. We have the opportunity to change that now rather than utilizing the punitive measures of the Department of Corrections. And then I just have a graphic because I wanted to kind of put into context that Vermont has a really deep history of institutionalization and incarceration and that this can look different. I'm trying to join the Zoom link now. And I'll just pull that up, and then that'll be the end of my speech.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Is it like

[Laura Carter]: It's loading. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. And then I'll just share my screen. Thank you, Nate. I should have had it prepped before, but but, you know, anyways.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Join. Well, as it's loading, see if there's any questions. Absolutely. So

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: thank you for your testimony. I think we have a little problem about finding a place that we can build a facility. I mean, we can't even build an Amazon facility in Vermont. Nobody wants in their backyard. So everybody in this room, except me, probably buys from Amazon. So so you grouping I I don't know. I'm kind of not very with it, but it seems like you have a strong feeling against jails or whatever you wanna call it. But I don't think these individuals in any way, shape, or form are gonna be treated as an inmate. They're there for for treatment. And the thing is, is these buildings are already in place. We can't put them anywhere else. They're gonna be treated differently. So, and I don't believe they're going to be somehow or another, it's going to be that what I'm hearing is this gonna be blocked off. So how does this interfere with all that? And I have more questions before I get interrupted.

[Laura Carter]: I think the thing is that jails aren't therapeutic settings. So even if there's

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: a It's not part of it. It's

[Laura Carter]: But if it's a separate wing of the jail, it's still part of the jail, and the Department of Corrections commissioner is still responsible for providing the competency restoration program that is therapeutic for the individuals that are placed in their custody. When I know Karen Barbara mentioned that there's a facility and I know I can't remember the name of it, but a lot of folks have brought that up and she was saying that it wouldn't work. I do think that if facility exists, that there are other options. And actually, this is kind of what I wanted to show with my graphic, which I hope is displaying now. So this is a legislative tracing that I did several years ago that outlines all of the institutions of the state of Vermont and the individuals, what they called them in state custody. This obviously doesn't include the Department of Corrections, but you can see the color coded in the light green. It's anything anybody with mental health illnesses. So we have all the way starting from the 1834, the state asylum. And I understand Matt Valerio has said that we did have a competency restoration program with the state hospital, but echoing that that obviously was not working despite Irene removing what we did have. However, again, that was set up in the mental health system. The yellow column, that was all run by the Department for Children and Families or Social Rehabilitation Services at the time. And then in the blue, that would be what Disabilities Aging and Independent Living would be responsible for now, so our individuals with developmental disabilities. And the bubbles on top are a digression that I can get into if you guys have questions, but these are actually terms and statutes that we would call these individuals placed in these institutions.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: I believe Matt said that Waterbury the was working very well before a gun blackout was You just said it wasn't.

[Laura Carter]: Well, so I've been listening to a lot of testimony. I know Matt Valerio said that it was, but I also know that Susan Arsenault said that there was a CMS investigation prior to the flooding, that obviously there were a lot of issues with the program, even though it did exist. So one thing You

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: just changed the name from you said originally, you said Matt, and now you're changing it to another person. So I I just want clarification on that.

[Laura Carter]: Yeah. So there's been a lot of testimony, and I've been watching it in both committees. So So I haven't I. Okay. So Susan Arsenault was here last Friday, and she said that defender general Valerio's point was actually not as strong as he was making because of the CMS investigation. So I'm saying, though it existed, it was probably not the best. It was still something, which right now, from my understanding, is that we have nothing. And our office agrees that there is a gap and that it needs to be addressed. But the Department of Corrections is not appropriate location to do that because inherently being incarcerated is not a therapeutic rehabilitative setting.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: So you don't think this is a different level? I won't even use the word incarceration. I think it's it's a it's a it's a different different level of mental health that just happens to be in an existing area or possible attached or possible part of the facility that wasn't used to go and help these people.

[Laura Carter]: I think that incarceration and institutionalization are different things, and I think that you cannot rehab someone who is in an incarcerative setting. And to your point of it being in a separate part of the facility, the facilities are at max capacity. We have women sleeping on the floor in the gymnasium because we cannot build a facility somewhere else to house them.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: Maybe we shouldn't be doing so many crimes.

[Laura Carter]: Maybe we should think about poverty and mental illness and addressing those concerns as well.

[Unidentified Committee Member (House Judiciary)]: So you don't think we're doing that?

[Laura Carter]: I don't think we are. Really? Correct. Yes.

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Oh, okay. Thank you. You're welcome.

[Laura Carter]: Angela. I was wondering if

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: you could say a little bit more about the population deaths that may be missing from the DOC website.

[Laura Carter]: I probably cannot actually answer that. I do think that Commissioner Murad can. From my understanding

[Rep. Angela Arsenault]: Sorry, let me rephrase. It was there before.

[Laura Carter]: It was there before, yeah. And it's been there for a long time? Yes. They have had this interactive dashboard for years. I think there has been some discrepancies in their data, and so they're trying to figure that out. I'm not sure what those are. Maybe he can address those. Thanks. Any other questions?

[Rep. Martin LaLonde (Chair)]: Don't see me. So thank you very much for your testimony. Commissioner Murad is supposed to be here by ten so you can just go off live and you can stick around because we don't have the commissioner for that long. We're gonna at 10:45, we're going to have hopefully a quick look at the new amendment on the S-two 18 with Michael Brady summary table trial home surveillance association. So we'll just go off live and