 Good morning and welcome to Vermont House Judiciary Committee. It is Thursday, May 20th, and we'll be starting with S3, which is actually leading to insanity and competency to stand trial. Just by a little bit of background, the House passed S3 last week, just last week, and it went back to the Senate. And I thought we were finished with the bill, but I looked at the Senate's calendar, I think it was probably Tuesday night and noticed that there was a further instance of amendment and asked legislative counsel as well as some of our colleagues in health health care and health institutions, questions and institutions that we've been working with to take a look at the Senate language as it was coming over to us to see if we could concur with that because that would be our next step of action. And there were sections there that at this point we could not concur with. So yesterday, again, some of us from Judiciary as well as the other two committees met with Ledge Council and had a proposed amendment, further instance of amendment, that I hope the committee will support and that we will recommend to the House. And that is what Attorney Katie McLean is here to walk us through as well as give us a sort of a high level understanding of what the Senate did pass. And it's actually on our notice calendar today. But I'm hopeful that we could take it off the get real suspension to get it off the notice calendar because it is a very, very important bill to many of us. So with that, good morning, Katie. Welcome. Good morning. Thank you. Katie McLean office of legislative counsel. So can you remind me, is it okay if I share a document or share my screen in this committee? That's fine. That's fine. Okay. Yeah, thank you. So I will pull up. I've put together a side by side summary. And I thought for our purposes this morning, this might be the best way to kind of see quickly the changes that the Senate made to the House version of the bill. So just to kind of show you where we are, this column is the as past House version. So this is what the bill looks like when it left the House. And then yesterday, the Senate adopted a concurrence with for with further proposal of amendment. And that's what is in this last column. So if you remember, the House added many members of the to the forensic care working group, and they removed the House removed representative of BGS, the Senate's proposal added that representative of BGS back in. Next, actually, excuse me, Katie, I'm sorry, Representative Marcy has her hand up. Oh, I just wondered if that this document could be emailed to me please. It shows the differences. Sir, I can do that. That would be great. Thank you. Okay. Let's see. I could do it when I'm after I'm done sharing my screen or maybe Evan is able to do it now. Evan is able to do it now. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I and I also if they're not posted already, they will be posted to our website, but I think they're they're posted on our committee page. So thank you. Go ahead, Katie. Thank you. Thank you. So the next piece of this section six was a study that looked at the overlap in the mental health and criminal justice systems. And the the original Senate version had kind of a one time report back in the house as you remember changed the structure and created more of a tiered decision making process with a first and second preliminary report and then a final report on a number of particular components. And kind of the concept behind that was particularly with regard with a forensic treatment facility determining whether a facility was needed before looking at you know the size and scope of such a program and facility. So the Senate changed that structure. And instead of having two preliminary report backs before the final report, there's only one preliminary report. And the focus of that preliminary report wasn't providing recommendations, as was the House version. It was just to give a summary of the work to date. So both the first preliminary report that came out of the House version and the only preliminary report that came out of the Senate version both have the same due date of January 15, 2022. However, the final report date was different between the two. So the House version had a due date of September 15, whereas the Senate version that was adopted yesterday had a due date of August 1. And then with regard to some of the specific components in the report, there were changes. For example, the House version asked that the work group look at any gaps in the current mental health and criminal justice system structure. And then the Senate added related to individuals incompetent to stand trial or who are adjudicated not guilty by reason of insanity. Also, in the House version, there was a component about looking at competency restoration models that Senate and their amendment chose to remove that from this particular report structure and have it stand on it by itself as its own standalone report with a later due date in 2023. The House, the Senate accepted many of the changes that were made in the House with regard to the different components of this mental health and criminal justice report. However, with regard to forensic treatment facilities, the House had added language, excuse me, not facilities, but models for forensic treatment. The House had added language including inpatient community based or other treatment models. And instead the Senate sent back models for forensic treatment, including the size, scope and fiscal impact of any treatment facility. So again, that's sort of the piece where we're removing that tiered decision making. And instead of assessing whether there's a necessity for a facility, including as part of the ongoing report, what would a facility look like? What does it need to have to be functional in Vermont? And then there was Senate, excuse me, House language about additional recommendations and it had qualifying language and the Senate removed that to just say any additional recommendations. So I think we've already covered. Excuse me. Representative Marcia, your hand has been up. I just want to make sure you don't have any questions. I'm sorry, I didn't get it down. That's what I thought. Okay, thank you. And I still have not received from Evan the document. I just sent it a minute ago. I had to download the document myself for some technical things behind. Thank you. Okay. So we pretty much already covered this forensic treatment facility piece. The House had a second preliminary report focused on whether a facility is necessary. The Senate deleted that in their proposal yesterday. There was language in the House version and in the Senate version, but a standalone report on notice to prosecutors regarding orders of non-hospitalization. The Senate kept that language. Again, we've already covered this for the competency restoration models. It's now in the Senate version in its own standalone report that's due January 15th, 2023. And then really the rest of Section 6 was the same. There are a few little technical changes to make the different pieces work, but substantively the remaining sections were the same of the Senate proposal. The biggest difference was in Section 7. So the House version of the bill added two members to the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee, one member from the House Health Care Committee and one senator at large. And the Senate deleted that whole section, meaning that the committee would stay the size that it currently is. So those are the changes that came to you from the Senate yesterday. So I'll stop sharing this document. And if you'd like, I can jump to the latest language with the House proposal if that will work. Thank you. I'm not seeing any hands. Thank you. Okay. So this is the proposal on the table right now from the House to go back to the Senate. And I've highlighted the changes to kind of give you a sense of what the moving pieces are. So as you remember, the Senate yesterday added a rep from BGS back in that has been accepted by the House in this version and that language remains. And then we move into the language about this criminal justice, mental health kind of structure report. You'll see that the August 1st date that came over from the Senate was accepted. And then we move into the different components of what would be included in this report. So noteworthy here, remember that the Senate took this competency restoration model piece to get out of this report and had it as a standalone report that was coming in at a separate date in 2023. This is back in the big report that's due in 2022. So that has been moved. Much of the language changes have been accepted here, including limiting subdivision 8H to any additional recommendations. In G, the language that the Senate sent over about forensic models for forensic treatment, including size, scope and fiscal impact of a facility has been accepted. However, there's an sort of an extra layer on this particular piece that we'll get to, which is why it's highlighted to kind of draw your attention there. So, Katie, so this is the final report. And I just I wanted to make sure committee members and others who are watching understand that this is the final report. And the way it's structured is that we look at the final report first, and then we'll look at reports that are submitted before that. So I want folks to keep that in mind. Thank you. Yeah, that's not structured in a chronological order because in this subdivision 2 that we jumped down to, now we're talking about the preliminary reports. So this report, January 15, 2022, comes in before the final report in August of 2022. And much of the Senate's language has been accepted with regard to this preliminary report summarizing the work completed in subdivision one that we just went through, except the preliminary report is not going to touch on the work completed with regard to the forensic treatment facility. So that's a change in this draft. This forensic treatment piece is carved out from the preliminary earlier report. And I see there's a hand. I don't know if you'd like me to pause. Yeah, thank you. And actually, before I call on Martin, what we're looking at now is very important piece to the House because the idea that any decision or recommendations or anything about a forensic treatment facility would come later. First, the other recommendations, considerations needed to be looked at first. And so that's why there's this separation and the preliminary report excludes the language in NG regarding the forensic treatment facility. And I know that that was important to some committee members here as well. Martin. It's a simple question, I believe. I just am confirming in the House passed version that we sent out last week, the subsection B, that was the preliminary report. And now this has changed to a final report. I just want to make sure. So I believe the structure is the same. Oh, so sorry, you're talking about the original House version that went over. The Senate changed that one to the final report. Right. So, but your question is about the House version that left last week. I'm looking at that we had on January 15, 2022, that it would be a preliminary report and now that has turned into the final report. I don't think I'm following. So B1 is the final report. And that's due August of 2022, August 1, 2022. August 1, it is. It's just, just looking, and I suppose people won't be looking back at the what we passed out last week, because B1 was a preliminary report. We have a different structure now, in other words. It is a different structure. So the version that the House passed, the preliminary reports were much more substantive. They contained recommendations, and the final report was only really fine-tuning those recommendations. So that was structured in chronological order. The Senate's version that they sent back and that you're amending here kind of flipped that, because the final report is where all the substance was located, and their preliminary report was really just a status update on the work. So that was kind of almost a tag on at the end. So that is sort of why the structure has been flipped, but I hear that it is confusing to follow along and see the final report first and then get to the preliminary report. So I'm going to keep moving along. So we've covered that this forensic treatment piece is carved out of the preliminary report that's coming back on January 15th. However, there is another report that is required by this language, and that is the O&H, the prosecutor notification on orders of non-hospitalization. This was in, I think, every version of the bill so far. What is changing here is that we've kind of separated this out to be part one of the report that's coming on January 15th, 2022. And now there is a new subdivision C2 due on February 15th, 2022. And this is sort of the preliminary report for the forensic treatment piece. And you'll note that because it's coming in a month and a half, is it a month and a half or a month, a month later than the first preliminary report, then the work of the first preliminary report can be used to kind of inform the work that's coming in with regard to models for forensic treatment facility. So this summarizes the work completed to date by the working groups regarding models for forensic treatment, including the size, scope, and fiscal impact of any forensic treatment facility, pursuant to the subdivision up above that we looked at. So it's kind of, again, tearing that decision-making with regard to the forensic treatment models. From there, we have mostly technical changes to make the different pieces work. The version that came over from the Senate had a section D that has been removed and everything's been renumbered. That was the competency restoration piece. So these highlights with regard to subsections B and C are just meant to show that reference to subdivision D has been removed. And then sort of a similar thing is happening here. We have language that final, the final report that's coming in in B1 is to be, include proposed draft legislation. And that requirement also applies to the preliminary or to the report on prosecutor notification for orders of non-hospitalization, that's C1. But C2 is not included because it's, C2 is the preliminary report on the forensic treatment piece. If there's any proposed legislation needed, that would be captured in B1 when the final report comes in. And that is really it for changes. I will take this document down so you can see each other. Thank you, Katie. I appreciate Katie was available quite late last night. So I really, really appreciate you working so hard and long on this to help us hopefully get to the finish line. Coach. Katie, can you give us a little, at least your observation as to section seven, the Joint Legislative Justice Oversight Committee and the fact or what was the rationale behind not adding that additional membership that the House suggested? Sure. So members of Senate Judiciary and Senate Health and Welfare met yesterday morning in a, in a joint committee meeting. And I believe at that time some of the comments had to do with the fact that the House does already have an at-large member and it could be up to the speaker's discretion to appoint somebody from House Healthcare if that seemed like the expertise that was missing from that particular committee. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Barbara. So the draft legislation piece is new. Is let's counsel on this or who was envisioned drafting this legislation? So just for clarity, the draft legislation piece has been there for every version that's been adopted so far. Thank you. And yeah, that sometimes it's not uncommon to see language like that when a report back is required to come with proposed draft language. I believe I am frozen. You are, but we can hear you. Can you hear me? Yeah. So was let's counsel staffing, I forget if let's counsel was staffing this or not. Do we have we both Barbara and Katie are now frozen? Am I right? Oh no, Barbara's back. I'm unfrozen now. I don't know if you've heard the rest of my response. We didn't. Thank you. Okay. I said that the language about including proposed draft language has been there since the beginning. And I also said that it's not totally uncommon to require proposed draft language. It doesn't specify, of course, that it's coming from the office of Ledge Council. But in this case, since the report is coming from DMH, it would likely be proposed through DMH. And if members chose to introduce it would come to Ledge Council at that point. Thanks. Thank you. Any other questions? So Deputy Commissioner Morning Fox, I'd like to welcome you and give you an opportunity to comment if you'd like. Thank you very much, Chair Gradd. For the record, Morning Fox, Deputy Commissioner Department of Mental Health, starting to feel like we should start paying you folks rent for being in your committee, Senate Judiciary, back and forth. It's been a long haul. And I think kind of our perspective right now, I think we're good with this language. We had some of this conversation with some members of, with Health Healthcare yesterday and such. And I think it's our hope that we're able to find some language that works between both the House side and the Senate side because this is such important legislation. And I know we're talking about some technical pieces within the studies here, but I don't want that piece to overshadow sections one, two, three and four of this bill that have some really important legislation in them. But we are in support of this. We'll make do with whatever timelines we really have to make do with. We recognize that we don't want to push things out too far because this is such an important topic and has been something that we have testified and has been issues for a number of years. And as we, we like, like both the Senate and the House do not want this to go out longer than it than is necessary. But having enough time to do thoughtful and articulate research and study to provide clear and concise information back to the legislature with potential legislation proposals, it's important that we work on, you know, having those reasonable timelines. And so, you know, as I mentioned in House Health Care yesterday as we were kind of talking about some of this is we're good with the timelines and we ask folks to you know, have the grace, you know, that this is one of the large Now you're now you're frozen. Must be. Yeah. We've been asked to really do work opinion. And so we're definitely in support of this and we'll we'll do everything within our power to bring back to the legislature, both for the preliminary reports and final reports, the information that you all need to be able to move forward with any other pieces related to this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. That's any hands, Bill. Give folks a minute. Any questions? Martin. Yeah, a quick, I think that's a quick question. So we in one of the preliminary report due on January 15th, we don't have a preliminary report on the models for forensic treatment. Instead, we have that under now C2 for the preliminary work. Is that just to give a little bit more time on that aspect of the work? Is that is that the idea for that? That's my understanding. Yes. All right, thank you. Yeah, it's and that's an important that's an important point because you know, to have some separation between those between those two times because this committee had spoken about not wanting a sort of assumption or foregone conclusion that there will be that there is a need for for a facility and wanted to have some more more thought and research put into it. And so that's what the hope is that by getting some space between those dates and reports, it'll it'll allow for some some groundwork to be done before before any decisions or recommendations about a facility. Thank you. Any any other questions? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. So if there aren't any other questions, I would entertain a motion that we approve draft 2.1 dated 519 2021 of S3. And this is a this is an amendment offered by Representative LaLonde, who's the reporter of the bill, that we concur in the Senate proposal of amendment to the House proposal of amendment with further proposal of amendments, which is what we are looking at in draft 2.1 of S3. I'll make that motion. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. And Ken, let us know when you're when you're ready to call the roll, please. Try and just give me one second, please. That's fine. Let's just take your time. Okay, you ready? Okay. Um, Chrissy? Yes. Colburn? Yes. Donnelly? Yes. Ghostland? Yes. LaLonde? Yes. Lefler? Norris? Yes. Nott? Yes. Rachelson? Yes. Burdick? Yes. Madam Chair? Yes. Thank you. Is Representative Lefler going to be around this morning or? I don't know. I haven't I haven't heard, but why don't we hold it open for a little bit? Okay. Well, thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, everybody. Okay. So with that, that does give us time to move to the question of whether or not to send a letter to the judiciary regarding six person juries. I said it was a major shift in what we've been doing, but we do have a proposed letter on our website. I'm just not remembering. Maybe Evan, if you could help me or Eric, where it would be? It's under your name and it's posted to today's date. Today. Wonderful. Thank you. There we go. Okay. All right. So seems like a long time ago, but we had discussed the issue of six person juries in the context of the pandemic, but also in the context of access to justice, post pandemic, helping with the backlog, and whether or not we looked at legislation and we looked at concerns about constitutionality. We discussed the authority of the judiciary to do this on their end through their, through their rules. And the letter here is to ask them to continue to, to consider that. And actually, Eric, if I can turn it to you just to give us some more background. Also, the Senate also sent a similar letter, a little different, but if you could, Eric, if you could just give us some background and set the stage for, for this letter that I am asking the committee to consider, please. Sure. Eric, it's Patrick with the Office of Legislative Council here to talk with the committee about this possible proposed letter to the judiciary regarding the six person juror issue. The sort, the background, I think that you're referring to Representative Grad is the notion that the letter proposes to ask the court to use its emergency authority to, to implement the use of six person jurors, six person juries, at least during the period of emergency. And the, the understanding there, or at least the, the thought is that you may recall that H417 didn't ask the court to implement the six person juror approach by rule, but instead proposed to establish it by statute. And that's an important distinction because there appears to be a potential constitutional problem with requiring it by statute that could be avoided by having the court do this by rule. And that's because of a case mentioned, I mean, it's sort of not just because of the case, but a helpful point on that is a case that's referred to in the letter itself in which the court has done this before. This was in 1990 when, when there was a, an emergency as a result of a, a economic crisis, a financial crisis. And there was no money left to in a lot of branches of the government and there were rescissions ordered by the governor and by the legislature. And in the context of that, the court ordered the suspension of all jury trials for six months from January of 1990 to the end of the fiscal year on July 1st of that year. So that the constitutionality of that was challenged. In this case, the court said it was okay under its emergency authority and under its authority to administer the courts and the Vermont constitution. So the idea is, you know, if the court has the ability to suspend jury trials completely, then one would think that they would have the authority to take the less drastic, less severe step of saying, well, we're not suspending them completely, but for a period of time during an emergency, six person juries will be used. So there's some authority for the court doing this by rule that would avoid the constitutional problem that in non-emergency situations, it appears that jurors, juries have to be composed of 12 people. So that's the, I think the rationale behind asking the court to do this by rule rather than passing a statute. And as the chair mentioned, the Senate Judiciary Committee had sent a somewhat similar, not entirely similar, didn't focus on the this court case, which I think is very helpful. But the Senate letter was a bit more of a bigger picture letter in January, also asking the court to implement a six person jury procedure. Didn't do that at the time, but this letter proposes essentially that they take another look at it and do it now. I think that's kind of the summary of where the background is. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Tom. Sure. Thank you. First off, it's hard to believe that 1990 was 31 years ago. Right. Eric, I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but I'm going to assume that back then when they went to six person that it wasn't challenged. You mean in 1990? Yes. Yes. Well, actually in 1990, it wasn't even, they didn't go to six persons. They suspended jury trials completely. Oh, right. Right. Okay. Okay. And it was challenged. That's the case that's referred to in the letter, some litigants challenged that as being a violation of the constitutional right to a jury trial under Vermont Constitution. And the court said, no, it's not a violation of that right, because this is a limited temporary emergency step that the court has the authority to take under the portion of the constitution that gives the court administrative control over the courts. Okay. Sometimes I need to hear things two or three times for it to sink in. Oh, that's fine. Yeah. No, thank you. Yep. Ken and then Kate. Hi. Good morning. I could see sending this letter if we were still operating under January guidelines, where about all the restrictions are about to be lifted and all that. I really, I think we're opening up a big can of worms doing this and I don't see the reason to do that. That's just my opinion. We're very close to June 1st. And the governor already said by July 4th we're going to be open. And we've already done the court's backlog. I'm not sure it's because of juries. So I'm having a problem with this. Thank you. Thank you. Kate and then Martin. Thanks. I think I support the letter. You know, I do think, you know, while restrictions are shifting, I do think that everyone has sort of varying degrees of sensitivity to their own health needs. And I think this is going to be a transition for a while. I feel like when we were listening to testimony on this, where my mind went was like putting our energy into trying to figure out a virtual method of jury selection and meeting, which sounds like they were starting to work on, and doing sort of like 12-person virtual jury versus like moving to a six-person jury. And so I guess, again, it's not that I don't support this letter. I think that I do and I would, but I guess my concern is that it would like disincentivize the courts from continuing to pursue a virtual method, which I think seems like it would be wise to continue to pursue that just moving forward. As I imagine we're going to kind of be moving, as we move through this pandemic experience, I think there's probably going to be some like fifths in the start. So I guess that would be my thought. I don't know if it seems like it makes sense to stick something in the letter. Like, you know, we're encouraged to hear that you're working on virtual jury selection and we would hope you continue on that, you know, track or something on those lines, but I guess that those would be my thoughts. Okay, I appreciate that. Martin, Selena, can I see your hand up? I don't know if this is from before. Coach, go for it. So Martin. Yeah, actually a response to Ken and also to Kate. So the last couple paragraphs, not the very last one, but the two before the last paragraph, address that issue that Ken brings up, that even the relaxed rules that they have don't apply to the close congregate settings, which definitely a jury is. They are together in small jury rooms for extended periods of time. And the court, you know, they have their own path and own guidelines, as far as for the public safety, that don't necessarily have to follow the governors, you know, as a separate branch, they're making up their own safety rules. So to the extent that this continues to be a concern, as far as the close congregate setting, they may still really limit the trials that they can have. And also, you know, this puts, you know, this isn't forcing anything. It's just really a recommendation from us. And it's also a suggestion to help, you know, forgetting about the close congregate settings or any of those things. We did hear Pat Gable did agree that six person juries could be more efficient, could be more expeditious, because you're drawing smaller juries, you open up more space, etc. So I think even with the relaxing rules, which I'm delighted is happening, I think that the court still have to really take heed of the safety concerns and the concerns of jurors who may be reluctant to serve because of their own risk tolerance. So that's one point. The other point, as far as I think that we probably haven't heard enough on the pluses and minuses of virtual jury trials and whether that's going to be possible. I mean, if it is something that's workable, then that's great. And they are going to be doing a test run. And certainly they can, they can decide on their own whether this letter is sent to them or not, that that is instead the approach to take. So I don't think we necessarily have to get into that, given our level of knowledge of really how well virtual juries would work one way or another. So thanks. I want to make sure I get this right. I have Selena coach will, and then we will wrap up soon. We're not going to take any action on this today, because I do see that there's quite a bit of discussion needed. And I want to make sure that we have time for all of it, which it doesn't look like we will today. Selena. I support the letter sending the letter. And especially, you know, I mean, if it's clear, and maybe there's maybe there's some slight edits to the letter that would help with this, but that we're really just asking them to look at it and consider it, which is all we really have the authority to do here. I do think there's some really good points in the letter about even when things get quote unquote back to normal, that we heard that in civil proceed, we heard testimony that in civil proceedings, you know, the six person jury could really speed things up and start to clear that those dockets out more quickly. And I think there's also really good, and this may be redundant with what others have said, but just to be on the record with my support, I think there's also really good points there about sort of the way that courtrooms and juries in particular kind of overlap with some of the congregate settings where those guidelines aren't going to be necessarily relaxed in the same way on the same timetable. And so for those reasons, I support, I support just asking the judiciary to look at this. Thank you. I appreciate that. Coach, and then Will. Thank you. I won't reiterate a lot of things that other people have said, but I will share some of the things that came to me. One, during the testimony, we heard very clearly that Justice Eaton is heading up a group to do the preliminary hybrid trial model. Okay. And my understanding is by the end of the month, we'll know how, you know, there'll be a response back to itself, basically. But the bottom line is they're proactively looking at a hybrid. All of this, I think, is a hybrid. And it's critical because there are going to be jury members, or jurors, I should say, that could actually ask to be not there because of that setting that Martin mentioned, you know, in his comments. And one of the other things that came up during what the testimony we heard, and I just wanted to kind of remind folks, the example given of the Wyndham County Courthouse, that's one of our newer courthouses. And like Rutland, remembering that setting, and the smaller ones are just kind of out of the question in a lot of ways. But there's only three or four physical structures that allow for full 12 person jury settings. And remember what Judge Greerson and others shared with us was is that in order to do a trial, it would take three courtrooms to do that. So in Brattleboro, that's three floors. And so you're committing basically almost, you know, 78 to 80 percent of the infrastructure of the courthouse to that one trial, when normally you'd be having four, five trials going on at the same time simultaneously. So I think they're being very responsive. And what our letter is doing is supporting some things, asking for a few considerations based on the testimony we've heard. And also reminding them that we're in support of looking at hybrid. Because basically even with the Governor relaxing those space requirements and mass requirements, they still left it up to the individual entities as far as businesses and entrepreneurs to follow their their best science. You know, so we've seen it already. Some businesses are saying, look, because of our close congregate settings, like the tattoo artist that was on the news last night, they still use full fledged protocol because they have non vaccinated children coming in for ear piercing. You know, so I mean, there's a lot of individual pieces that are moving here. So we just kind of have to be allowable, I guess, would be the thing. So thank you. Yeah, thank you, Coach. Grace, a lot of very important points. I appreciate that. Will and then I'm going to wrap this up for now. Thank you. Thank you. I have to admit to having extreme level of discomfort with the letter. You know, I understand the situation and I think it's been spelled out for us. And just a couple of thoughts. One, I by no means want to discount where we are in the pandemic. Personally, I haven't been vaccinated yet because I am in the window. The CDC recommends between actually having COVID and when they recommend getting the vaccine. There are there are people out there who cannot be vaccinated. And I don't want to discount that. But that said, I mean, we I believe it's been expressed that what's proposed would not be allowable under the Vermont Constitution without an emergency order. And while the pandemic is still with us, it is definitely changing. The number of people vaccinated is moving up. So I feel like I'm not certain using that as the justification for for this emergency order balances the scales for me. Because for me, where the scales are really tipped is my concern about cutting jury size in half. I mean, we know that Vermont is not a diverse place. We're going to see in jury pools, lots of people with similar life experiences with with with similar thoughts with similar backgrounds. And I worry that by cutting a jury from 12 to six, those two, three, four opinions that that could change an outcome that could be the important perspective in the room, those may be lost. And for me, that is the part of this proposal that I am the most uncomfortable with and the part that, even with the circumstances on the other side, I just can't get past. Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you, everybody who who weighed in. Let's appreciate the the feedback and certainly need more more discussion on this. So thank you. I do want to adjourn. Very soon, I am hoping that s3 will be up this morning. So that way, assuming there are rural suspension, we can get it over to the Senate ASAP, because it is such a such an important bill. The other thing we're watching is s97 that we did message that yesterday. So we need to need to see what, if anything happens, changes with that. And I think that's all that we have sort of up in the air. But again, we never know. So before anything else before we adjourn. Nope. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Evan, and just stay tuned for emails and I'll I'll work on building a new list text text list. And yes, we may need to come back together. I hope we'll come back together. So even if it's just to just to say hi. So thank you.