 That's 261, and reduced by Senator Stearns, Maruth and White. Yeah. We hope it'll be referred to the Committee on Judiciary when they haven't wasted our time. Not at the end. But, um, Lawrence and August threw the bill, and then, um, we're going to hear a testimony. I'm going to leave at 11, and I have heard the testimony earlier in Justice Holdings' life. I'm choosing Lawrence this year from California, everyone. Welcome to the warm weather. All right. All right. Good morning, committee. Nice to be back. Thank you. I'm here to walk you through S-261, which is the life of Capitol Hill. There are two suggestions I'm going to make for amendments to this bill for the committee to consider, and I'll talk about those as I go through the bill. The first one I'm going to talk about right away. So, Section 1, this is the penalty section for first and second degree murder. Um, 2303 of Title 13. So, the changes here in subsection A would change the penalty for first degree murder, um, from a minimum of 35 years to a maximum of life without parole, to a minimum of 35 years and a maximum of life of a life sentence. Similarly, in sub-division 2, it changes the penalty for second degree murder from 20 years to life without parole, to 20 years to a maximum of a life sentence. Um, so you'll see those changes, um, on the bottom of page 1 and the top of page 2. And this is all approachable. Yes. Um, you can see that on line 6 on page 2. So, um, one of the changes that I'm going to float, um, and I made one here testimony from some other witnesses from the, um, Senator General's office and the state's attorney, the attorney general, is to strike, um, subsections B through G. And if you turn to page 2, you'll see subsections B and C. Um, this language is the former 2303. Uh, this was like the former penalty section for first and second degree murder. Um, and it was declared unconstitutional, um, by the U.S. Supreme Court and, er, by the Vermont Supreme Court in progress in 2005, and the legislature amended it the very next year. So this language that appears here is not unconstitutional, but it was changed, um, in response to that provoked case. It was amended by Act 119 in 2006, and it applies to murders that were committed prior to the effective date of that act, um, which was May 1st of 2006. So these sections of law, B, C, and on, you can't see all of them, they're not all included here, only apply to murders that were committed in, um, a particular period of time. So I, um, am floating the idea of striking that section because if you read them, this is, um, the language is pretty complex. It talks about how the jury has to find, um, evidence of aggravating or mitigating factors, um, and then the court can determine sentencing based on those factors, um, that the jury finds to be on a reasonable doubt. But again, because the language only applies to, to murders that happened prior to 2006, um, I am floating the idea of striking that section and simplifying the statute so it would only be subsection A. So, if I understand, if this is prospective of anything, doesn't that move this? In other words, we're not changing anybody's, uh, life without imprisonment status prior. Um, for purposes of applying that statute, yes, but I'd like there's, I'd like to go through the rest of the bill because there is an opportunity. Yeah, because I'm confused now. Okay, I'm sorry. Me too. Okay, so let's move on to section two. Yeah, thanks. We'll, we'll get there. So this is the executive sentences statute, entitled 13, this sets forth how consecutive and concurrent sentences are imposed when an offender is convicted of multiple offenses, um, for which an incarcerated sentence is imposed. So the court makes that determination of whether or not to impose those sentences consecutively, um, back-to-back or concurrently, meaning they run at the same time, at the time of sentencing the court makes that determination. So on page three, you just see some limiting languages added to those first two subsections of the section, referring to a new subsection D. Page four, none of this language has changed. I can talk to you about what, what it means. Um, it talks about how terms run concurrently and how they run consecutively. Um, if you look at, um, lines of six through twelve, when terms run concurrently, the shorter minimum terms merge and are satisfied by the offender serving the longest minimum and then the shorter maximum terms merge and again, they're satisfied by the offender serving the longest maximum. So that's when they run at the same time. Um, when they run consecutively, the minimum terms are added to arrive at an aggregate minimum and that is the, the aggregate minimum is what serves as the minimum sentence and then the maximum terms are added to arrive at an aggregate maximum. It's equal to the sum of all those maximum terms added up. Okay. That makes sense? Okay. So if you turn to page five, there's a new language in subsection D. So that provides the... This is a policy, this choice that the committee can make. Um, the problem that we try to address here and Brittany and I talked about it is what happens when there are multiple offenses and they want to run a consecutive on a person and that would, let's say you were 50 years old and you've got two sentences of 20 years to life. Well, if you run them consecutively, you've now got 40 years and you're, so you're 90 before you're even eligible to consider them all. So that would nullify the life without the role of the sentence. So the idea here will say, okay, if you're over 25, you could have a consecutive sentence. If you're under 25, you wouldn't. And the thinking there is all the information we had about those under 25. If you remember back, we took, we made an attempt to separate them in our prisons and we tried to look at emerging adults differently from other adult offenders. So that was the problem. I just flipped the coin and that's what we put in the committee as well. You're a testimony of whether that should stay or not or what we should do. The second policy choice was to not make it retroactive. Part of the reason for that was that you have a number of cases where somebody may have pled guilty in order to avoid being charged federally and facing the death penalty. Or who knows what the plea bargains were and what things happened. So rather than going back and trying to do it retroactively, I believe there are, at the time that we talked about this the first time, I think there were 19 people in Vermont who were incarcerated for life without parole. I think it's actually fewer now. So it just seems simpler to introduce the bill that way. I did talk with the attorney general about it and he felt much more comfortable with it without having it be retroactive. He'll be tested, there's somebody from the attorney general's office who will testify next week. But I think there's a lot of concern about anything. You try to do retroactive to, you know, for whatever reason. I think it just... Anyway, those were two policy choices that Bernard and I talked about when draft and just sort of joined. Although I do find myself thinking about somebody who's been in prison for however many years, let's say 30 years. Yeah, I'm happy to listen to testimony on both sides of these issues, but the purposes of introducing the bill, those were two areas where we thought there maybe the other is the guy who caused all this trouble. Welcome back, Scott. Thank you very much. Welcome to see you. Good to see you back. Can I throw out another... And I don't know that this is even possible and I'm not sure that I completely understand it, but I would like to know what constitutes first degree and second degree and look at the question of minimum sentences for those, because I'm... I mean, I don't know if... a minimum sentence of 20 years is pretty hefty and I'm not... Minimum or maximum? No, minimum. So that's why I need to understand what first degree and second degree mean in terms of why we would impose a minimum sentence on those. And I... There are some that might warrant that, but I don't know that they all do. Can we have that discussion afterwards? Because that would be a much different discussion. If we would have changed the minimum... I realize that. I mean, sentences would be a much different discussion. From 35 years? Well, I realize that, but as long as we've got this bill, I just circled minimum. I anticipated we'd be discussing them. I'm happy to give you the statute and talk to you. Yeah, we probably should understand what the elements are of both crimes. I'm glad to talk about that now. No, I think we should... If there's any time afterwards that you can... while the testimony is going on, you can get copies of the statute. Right, I just realized that. Absolutely. I might have to... If you'd like to know the difference between first and second degree murder, it's easy to... I can print out the statute. You can take a look at it. Might be helpful if I put together some information of the elements if you want to go into it. Yeah, we're going to take this up again next week and get testimony from state attorneys, defense bar, the whole, you know, the whole legal suspect. I think we can certainly look at this. Yeah, I didn't mean to have the discussion now. I just raised it as something. If you can come up with the elements and some examples of when it's first, when it's second. Thank you. Sure. Okay. Okay, so yeah, so Senator Sears did a good job explaining what that language and the subsection deeming at the top of page five provides for people 25 or younger if they are... if multiple incarcerated sentences are imposed on those people, the court can only impose those sentences to run in compliance. Section three is the life without parole prohibited for people who are 18 or younger. The legislature amended or added the statute in 2015 that prohibited life without parole for minors, and this change just makes it prohibited across the board. That's relatively straightforward. Section four, another pretty straightforward change. This is the statute setting forth the purposes of the Department of Corrections. If you look on page six, there's just a few words struck. I just want to add one thing to your... I remember reporting that bill in the floor eliminating life without parole for those under 18, and we had two no votes. That was a roll call. It was an interesting discussion, but I will point out that one of the things that I sold that most people were sold is the fact that no one has ever been charged those under 18 with life without parole, it's never been convicted in 200, whatever years from on history. It had never been used on anyone under 18. I found that interesting. We have laws in the books that have never been used. Probably good. Probably a lot of them, yeah? Right? Anyway. So the change in the section is on page six. It just changes the wording of this sort of policy statute to require that the department ensure that anyone, any offender who's sentenced to a period of incarceration be given a plan for returning to the community. It just strikes those words a little more quickly. And lastly, section five. This is more entitled 28 Now, Eligibility for Parole Consideration. The new language on page seven. And it provides that if an inmate was sentenced to life without parole, that inmate should be eligible for parole consideration during the 2050 year of preservation of incarceration. I thought we decided not to make it retroactive. So I looked at our last email and I think this is how we left it, but we don't. If this is not how you wanted to move forward. Well, that's not consistent with the retroactive. That's right. This would make it applicable to people who are currently serving. Yeah, I don't want to do that. Well, we could discuss that, but I was under the impression that I wouldn't be in there. Okay. I guess I didn't read it carefully enough. So what I'll do when I come back next week is come with a committee amendment that will strike the section and it will just get a new bill for the next year. Okay. I would like to have the discussion of this going forward. I understood. Because it in a way reminds me of the legalization and what you do with people who were sitting in prison for something that we had then legalized. So here, the only thing that we would be denying the person is the right to make their case to a parole board. We're not freeing them. So it doesn't seem like I understand politically it's a bigger lift, but if we could just reserve the discussion for at some point this this language was good to me in other words. So if it leaves this draft I'm just wondering if we can at a later point have a committee discussion about it. I think we need to hear from the victims of some of the crimes that you know for example what I was hoping to avoid was having a discussion of the Laura Sobel case or have already heard from her family who are very worried about having any re-discussion of opening up that whether or not she murdered four people. That's where it seems to me that if we want to do a bill that's where I have real concerns about doing that knowing what the statement for that. No, I can see that. And some of the others are pretty gruesome so they went under a different circumstance. I hear what you're saying. Because going forward I mean God forbid but if past is present we will have other gruesome events in the future but life without parole won't be available. I would not have introduced I would not have sponsored the bill if it was retroactive just to make clear. Okay. I'm just asking where we have the discussion. Co-sponsor if you want to have the discussion but I personally don't support retroactivity. So I'll plan to bring a new draft the next time this bill is scheduled and maybe we can just put five minutes for me on it beginning with the agenda because we're... You're already on it actually. I was going to thank you off but... No. Right now I'm just going to look at this Thursday. I know. Yeah, next Thursday. Thursday at 8.30. So yes, you'll be first. Great. I was going to take you off but now I'll put you on to make the amendments and you could offer that amendment also that you wanted to... I'll do that. Maybe try to explain. I will and I'll get in touch with some of the other people who are testifying and you can maybe have some sense as part of it. Would you send out that redraft ahead of time so they can respond to that redraft right in this? Thank you. Thank you. It's good to see you again. Nice to see you off. I'm going to step out of this chair because number one, I wouldn't be able to see the presentation. And number two, I've got to go to another thing at 11 but you could take the witness chair Susan and welcome back Susan Lawrence. Thank you. Who was here, I believe, to go to the justice, was it justice over this thing? Yeah. And I'm going to kind of turn it over to you Susan Thank you. I'm not sure what that was for. It seemed pretty fancy to me. You know actually I'll just need somebody to start the video. Do you want to do the video now? Yeah. I just want to say a couple of things. Sure. I don't think we saw the video. Yeah. No, we didn't. No, we didn't see it. Yeah. Let me see it now. I can see it today. So, so I'm really glad to be back here. My name is Susan Lawrence and I'm the founder and CEO of the Center for Life with That Pull studies based in California. And our work is to end Life with That Pull throughout the country and starting with Vermont. So I'm very happy to be here and to give you this information that I think will help you with your legislative efforts. Can I ask a question? Yes. Why did you decide to start with Vermont? Oh, why did I? Why did I say that? Yeah, why did you? Well, actually I was thinking about this even as far back as 2016 because Vermont is arguably one of the most liberal states in the Union. There's only 15 people serving Life with That Pull in Vermont. Vermont already has very progressive criminal justice policies that don't exist in the rest of the country or to a more limited degree. So I felt it, it had the best chance. I really felt it had the best chance to, you know, do this to be the first state in the country to affirmatively end this cruel and incoherent sentence and then it would have a ripple effect on the rest of the country. So that's why. Thank you. Just wondering. Yeah. So before I start my presentation, I do have slides that I guess they're going to follow along on the paper slides. I can probably try and pull them up here, but I think it'd be very difficult to do slides from this. Yes. Because it's kind of small, but they do have a handout. Yes. So I think it might be easier. I can see that, but we might want the paper right off the note. Oh, we have it in here. So everybody has paper cups. Oh, okay. I think that might be that this is kind of small to be reading. Yeah, but I do want to start with the short video that I made, kind of an overview of the subject and so we can start that now. I'd like to tell you just a little bit, at first I'd like to point out that we do have these slides and the pathics that we're handed out to you so you can follow along if you'd like to. I'd like to tell you a little bit about myself and how I got involved in this work. So I'm a physician and a lawyer and I started out my career as a board certified internist and medical oncologist. And until 1993, I had a private practice of medical oncology in Lancaster, California. Then in 1993, my husband died of AIDS and that changed a lot about my life. The year before he died, he said to me, you know, Susan, he said, I'm not dying of AIDS, I'm dying of the delayed effects of child abuse. My husband, Sunny, had come from a really difficult childhood and for many years of his life was an IV drug user and that led to his getting AIDS and dying at age 47. So he made that connection and it was such a profound thing to me. I had never really thought about it before I had treated people with AIDS in my practice because the treatment in those days was similar to cancer chemotherapy. But I had never thought about it like that way before and it really changed the way I viewed not only the AIDS epidemic but the world. After he died, I found in an organization called the Catalyst Foundation, which was at that time dedicated to helping people with AIDS in our community and doing HIV prevention. And through that, I started working with teens in prison. And they kind of taught me they opened my eyes to the rest of the problem which is it wasn't just AIDS that was the outcome of unhealed childhood abuse and trauma but it was drugs and gangs and violence and really most of the most serious social problems that we face. And then in 2004, I started doing a program at the adult person in our community called Creating a Healing Society and it was focused on helping the people inside to understand the root causes of the crimes that they had committed by looking at their childhoods. So, and that's where I started to learn about life with that role because in this particular prison where I was working, the vast majority of people there were serving life with that role. And they had been in there some of them for decades. Most of them had been convicted when they were between the ages of, you know, 18 and 25, 26. You know, that time period where the brain is not fully developed yet you're held fully accountable for what you do. And now they were 40, 50, some of them 60 years old and they bore no resemblance to the child, the young person they were when they committed whatever they did. And these were people I would not hesitate to have as my neighbors. I felt safe with them. Many of them had extraordinary insight into the driving forces of their crime. But they were stuck. No matter what they did, no matter how they could prove their rehabilitation and reduction, they would never again walk free. And the agony and suffering that I observed among them was just astronomical. So I came to see that life without a role is a human rights violation that we conduct in plain sight in our country. Nobody hears about it. Although in the years since 2004 it's become a tough subject that is much more talked about. It's probably one of the reasons that I'm, you know, unable to be here today. But, you know, I feel it is a human rights violation and it is something that I hope that we can all, you know, work toward to eliminate in our sentencing schemes. So that's a little bit about me and how I got to this point. So I'd like to give you a little bit of a history of life without a role in the United States. So the sentence actually dates back to 1851. Then a man named William Wells convicted murderer was sentenced to die by hanging. But President Miller Cromor commuted his sentence to life without a role. And Wells apparently did not like that and he appealed the new sentence saying that the president didn't have the authority to add a new condition when he was getting a commutation. It went all the way to the Supreme Court in a case called Ex-Parte Wells. And the Supreme Court held that yesterday the president had the right to add an additional condition. But one thing that was very interesting about this case was Justice McGeeley made a very prescient comment something that still today many people don't think about. And what he said was an act has been done an entirely inconsistent with reprieve as that only suspends the punishment for a fixed period. It is a perversion of the facts to say that Wells has been reprieved by the president. In other words, Justice McGeeley saw that life without a role is simply another form of the death penalty. So the president had just changed the form of execution or the manner of execution but not the fact that it was still an execution. So after Wells, Elwok remained a rarity for over 100 years until 1972 when the United States Supreme Court in Ferdinand versus Georgia had temporarily ended before the traditional death penalty in this country and the states responded against public pressure fear of these convicted murderers of being let out of prison responded by implementing Elwok sentences. So Ferdinand versus Georgia actually brought about unintended the unintended consequence of an enormous rise in Elwok sentences which you can see on the slide here which is from the sentencing project. So in 1992, so in 1972 was Ferdinand versus Georgia where there was maybe a handful of people serving Elwok at that time. 1992 there were over 12,000 Elwok sentences. 2003 there were over 33,000. 2008 there was over 41,000. And the latest statistics that we have also from the sentencing project 2017 papers still live there were over 53,290 people in this country serving life with that bull and that doesn't even take into account people serving de facto Elwok which are sentences which exceed the human lifespan of carried out in full and there's 44 people who are serving those type of sentences. 44,000, sorry, thank you. 44,000 people serving those type of sentences. So in addition there's racial disparities as we know all throughout the criminal justice system but nowhere except maybe in traditional death penalty sentencing are the racial disparities more prominent than in Elwok sentencing. So in nine states African-Americans make up two thirds or more of the Elwok sentenced prisoner population and these states are Alabama Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey and South Carolina. Among people serving de facto Elwok people of color comprise over 65 percent with African-Americans more than half and Latinos nearly 12 percent. Then there is a it's kind of counterintuitive I guess to people who may not have thought about this but kids who are working to end the traditional death penalty often complicate the policies that expand Elwok and make it even a harsher sentence than you can imagine. So many traditional death penalty abolitionists and when I say traditional I make that distinction because Elwok is a death sentence as well. So many traditional death penalty abolitionists believe that the only way that they can get people to get traditional executions to stop is by assuring the public that these people will never be imprisoned. In other words that they will be sentenced to life without parole and they will never have an opportunity to go to the parole board. So in 2008 I was instrumental in working with a group of Elwok prisoners at that prison where I was teaching and to help them found a project called the other death penalty project. And for 10 years after that I was their free world leading son. In so doing I attended meetings and talked with many death penalty abolitionists including Mike Farrell. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Mike Farrell. He's an actor and an activist. He played in MASH and he's in California. Yeah he's a leading PGM. Yes that's right. Yes. And he's a leading death penalty abolitionist in California and he introduced an initiative in 2016 and was active in an initiative in 2012 to end the death penalty, traditional death penalty in California and really made Elwok a much more harsh sentence. And I met him at a meeting and I said to him you know are you, what do you think? I mean are you aware that Elwok is a death penalty? And he said yes I'm aware of that. But you know first we have to, it's a stepwise thing first we have to eliminate lethal injection then we'll go back and eliminate Elwok. And I said well you know really that strategy isn't going to work because it's very difficult to go back to the voters because in California it has to be an initiative for reasons I'll explain in a minute. But it's very difficult to go back to the state, I'm sorry, the sentence that Luke just told you was a just and fair sentence now we're saying is inhumane. So that's really not going to work. So that's been a stumbling block a lot in dealing with death penalty abolitionists and Elwok. It's a question and it's not an issue that we have in Vermont because there is no true death penalty in Vermont but in states that have both sentences it is so as well another thing that has contributed to the expansion of Elwok I believe is the prison industrial complex because there are so many companies for-profit companies that profit off long people who are in prison for long periods of time and they have very large companies they have a lot of money a lot of resources and they're able to lobby effectively for policies that support their growth and expansion such as the project prison companies Core Civic and Geo Group although at least in California for profit prisons have been banned I think that goes into effective 2024 I believe but they still are active around the country I believe even here in Vermont I think Core Civic is one of the companies that runs a prison that some of the longer term Vermont prisoners go to I believe just a quick question is that banned going forward or is it an elimination of all private prisons? In California it's supposed to be an elimination of the use of all private prisons in other words the state prisons cannot contract with yeah yeah so over the past 14 years the Geo Group gave almost $1 million in campaign donations including to open editorial candidates in states that have the largest prison population which Texas and California over the past 19 years Core Civic contributed over $5 million for the same purposes and they hired both companies hired tremendous numbers of lobbyists Geo Group hired 326 and Core Civic hired 462 that's a lot of power that they have so it's much less so now because the prison population has been reduced so dramatically in California the Guards Union was a very powerful source to keep the prison population large and to keep people in prison for longer periods of time so that their benefits and their salaries and all of that would not shrink but it actually has shrunk in the past I would say decade so I would like to talk a little bit about childhood trauma which as I explained earlier is kind of how I dock into all of this and I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the adverse childhood experiences study but I'll tell you just a little bit about it and then some additional studies that have come out more recently that focus more on criminal justice system the adverse childhood experiences study actually the adverse childhood experiences study provided scientific proof of what my husband's study said intuitively that he was dying of the delay in the effects of trauma and that's exactly what the study showed but it was a medical study it was conducted by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente published in 1998 in the American Journal of Public Health involved nearly 20,000 participants and what it found was there was a powerful connection between childhood trauma and the leading causes of mortality in this country so in the original study looked at just certain things that they considered to be trauma although now we know that there are many more situations that are traumatic to a child but this study looked at recurrent emotional, physical or sexual abuse recurrent emotional or physical recurrent emotional or physical neglect growing up with a family member who is a substance user alcohol or drugs growing up with a family member who is or was incarcerated family member who was mentally ill domestic violence situations which for whatever reason was limited to the mother being treated violently I mean it's an old study so it didn't take it to account other situations families in which the child has one or no parents and the more subtle forms of trauma that we now know can be so devastating like a attachment trauma which can be very subtle we're not included in this study I don't think there was a lot of awareness at that time but probably a more accurate current description of trauma would be a unique individual experience of an event or ongoing conditions in which the person's inability to cope the person's ability to cope has been overwhelmed for a disruption of an important relationship like a parent-child relationship without repair Susan can I interrupt you just a second I'm due upstairs at 11 o'clock so I'm going to leave but I just want to thank you for coming oh thank you so much thank you thank you can you fix it in here okay yes I guess we'll do a matter okay over there yes so okay so the eight study findings showed that childhood trauma even as they defined it was extraordinarily common in our society and that was really a revolutionary finding in those days more than half of the of the Kaiser participants and these were mostly middle class people who could afford insurance had at least one of these ACE factors that I described a quarter had two a sixteenth had four or more and so it really showed how commonplace these things are and if you look up on your handout another thing that was very important was the higher the ACE score in other words the more factors a person had the greater their risk for the leading causes of death in this country for example one of the most common things was the higher the higher the ACE score the higher the risk for cigarette smoking cigarette smoking is the cause of heart disease cancer stroke chronic obstructive terminal disease and that's how they made a connection between childhood trauma smoking and both the leading causes of death in this country but this was a medical study so it didn't focus on outcomes as far as crime, violence or life or death in prison which I believe is one of the clearest examples of the impact of childhood trauma in our society so more recently in 2013 there was a smaller study published in the Kaiser Permanente Journal which was conducted by the Correctional Service of Canada and Intracecate a small nonprofit in San Diego and this was a small study only 151 participants but it concluded that childhood trauma is strongly associated with adult criminality and college for more extensive studies to be done and probably and this is also included in your handout the article that this question is from this is a quote from James Garberino who was from the Center for Human Rights of Children at Louisville University in Chicago this quote really sums it up it makes it so clear the best starting hypothesis in dealing with most killers is that they are untreated traumatized children inhabiting and controlling the dangerous adolescents and adults that stand accused of murder I think that really says it all and to kind of of to kind of put a face to that I would like to share a little a story of someone I know who I've been working with on a commutation application in California he's probably in his he's in his late 50s and I grew up in a home that that was let me just back up a little bit as part of the commutation application I asked him to give me some photographs of his childhood and he had very few of them so I have a few photographs of his childhood I have his booking photo in 1995 when he was convicted of murdering a man in a kind of a drug fueled horrible situation shooting a man to death and then the last picture that I had was of him in prison graduating from college shaking the hand of the warden at the prison so what happened was this gentleman grew up in a family where his father was a very violent alcoholic and he had three older brothers who also were very abusive toward him and the photographs included him at one year old in a one of those little those bikes you know that little kids can can ride a picture of him at three with this innocent face and then there's a picture of him at age five where he's wearing a cowboy hat and he's like in the background and his three older brothers are like looking down at him and he wrote on the back of his photograph that his the cruelty inflicted upon him by his brothers was such that it cost him to withdraw until he got to the point that he vowed he was never again going to be a victim which he did the following year at age six and at that point they were afraid of him and stopped tormenting him so what his brothers used to do is they would tie him up and they would put him in a closet for hours at a time and when he would cry out and he would just be crying and no one came when he would go to his dad and say please help me there were two comments that his dad made that were like striking to me his dad said are you looking for sympathy? that's in the dictionary between ship and syphilis go look for it there and then his dad would say did we hurt your feelings? that's what you get for having any so there was that one day where he was able to free himself from the closet when he was six years old and when he burst out of the closet he said never to himself he said never again will I be a victim and you can see from those the early childhood pictures and then the booking flow and you can see the transformation of what this child had to do to keep himself safe and never be a victim and his father also encouraged violence and he would get paid 25 cents if he had a fight at school and gave somebody a bloody nose 50 cents if he had a fight at school and hurt them more severely so you could see how he was by the time he was eight years old or whatever it was inevitable what was going to happen it was seven motion and he got no help with that at all so so then you know he went to prison and started taking very qualitative programming classes and he discovered a love for learning and a love for helping people and this man dropped out of school in the sixth grade because he was already addicted to heroin and alcohol and by age eight he dropped out of school he just graduated from college he's a brilliant man so much potential you know he's an excellent writer if he's able to get a commutation he wants to become a social worker he's gotten a degree in human services for the emphasis on social work so this is an example of someone who has been warehoused for decades because of unhealed childhood trauma who has clearly rehabilitated themselves to the point where they are safe to rejoin society who has no chance of ever doing so to me it's just it's heartbreaking to see so anyway so and I should say also in addition to the childhood trauma aspect there's also the generative all aware of the fact that people between the ages of 18 and 25 or thereabouts essentially they're not dealing with a full death their brain is not fully developed you know in the 2012 Miller and the Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court talked about the immaturity the inability to extricate themselves from crime producing situations you know the recklessness the inability to plan ahead of young people and so you know now sentencing a juvenile to like a mandatory life of that role for homicide is uninstitutional which you know I know you guys only that so why should we end Elwap you know it's a death sentence which is imposed with enormous racial disparities it's total deprivation of hope regardless of degree of rehabilitation is cruel and inhumane and it is the antithesis that restorative justice and of course ending Elwap does not mean all people will be released only that they have the chance to be prepared for parole and I also wanted to point out to you that in your packet is a report about the hunger case I don't know how many of you are familiar with the hunger case so in 2000 it's like a natural experiment that shows that people who have been imprisoned for decades for serious crimes and safely released with enormous savings to the government so in 2012 in Maryland there was a case under this Maryland where jury instructions were found to be unconstitutional and so about 185 people were released their sentences were overturned they were released these were people convicted of very serious crimes murder and rape and hadn't really particularly received a lot of rehabilitation but they were released in 2012 in November 2018 a report was published by the I think it's the Justice Policy Institute you'll see it on your papers that showed that during that period of time only one person was returned to prison the other people were integrated into society with no problem you know kind of seamlessly integrated into society they all got reentry services kind of more enhanced reentry services to assist them in their recovery but you know it was kind of a natural experiment that showed that releasing people in those circumstances even when they haven't been preparing for their release for decades and trying to rehabilitate themselves it's still in the interest of public safety to do so so and bottom line you know how do we want to treat the children and the bodies among us who really our society failed them when they were little and they were being abused and they needed help our society did not protect them our society failed them and then they're an adult and they engage in behavior that is really going to look at it the natural outcome of what they want for we've locked them up in parallel but we would strive for a society that was more compassionate than that or more understanding of that can I ask you a question because we, Senator White and I were touching on this earlier but you saw the language that we're looking at which eliminates life without parole but leaves 35 year sentences minimum sentences is that something you're concerned with as well the length of time the minimum the minimum 35 is it's pretty long on the other hand I think it's it's very important to do what has to be done in order to get the life without parole sentence I would be more comfortable with something like 20 years or that's just me personally I still feel if someone kills someone there is they do need to be held accountable for that and have pretty significant time in prison obviously not forever so I think something about the length of time is something that can be debated and talked about 35 is kind of long but you all feel that that's what is necessary to get this bill passed if you get passed with a low amount 20 25 it's a similar political strategy to Mike Farrell's where he's saying let's worry about if we can get traditional execution done without touching life without parole from this point of view that makes sense I guess I kind of worried that we would do a similar thing here where we'd say you ought to get rid of life without parole we'll leave the 35 years in place the minimum and you know 35 years is a lifetime exactly I would be all for having a discussion about 30 years isn't that big a change but for that person it's a massive amount of time so yeah also in California we've done they've made other laws that once a person is not doesn't have a law anymore they say they've got a commutation they don't have a law anymore there's other laws that soften the sentence that they will give for example we have an elderly parole law which obviously is a lot of people in Elrond but someone has served 25 years and they're 60 years of age they're eligible for parole and there are similar things for people under the age of 26 there's juvenile authentic parole that's a good point we've been and you know Senator Sears has been groundbreaking in a lot of these areas especially around youth offenders and modernizing and making more humane or real than but you could say the same thing about inmates who have gone to the end of their lives and you know if somebody's 60 or 70 shouldn't we be formalizing an approach that recognizes that you know is this person who committed this crime when they were 24 at 64 going to still represent any kind of the same risk well I think from the hunger case you can see that they really know yeah exactly exactly so I think what I try to say by saying that I think there is some there may be some way to once a lock is off the table there may be some way to pass other laws that address that there is a bill in here called compassionate release and I sponsored that but and it can be tweaked it's just the way it is now I don't think it's the way we want to end up with it but it would address some of those situations people who served not even their whole minimum but if they're of a certain age and they have I mean we have people I mean I'm doing this on behalf of a constituent that is how it came up whose husband actually shot somebody after being bullied mercilessly actually went to the place to confront the guy and then shoot himself and he started the guy started bullying him again and he just so and now he's in he's not a danger to anybody at all so anyway that's the impetus for the bill but it could it could be expanded to deal with other situations so it's not just about our terminal oh okay it's called compassionate release and to be quite honest with you I'm not even sure what it says because but it is a placeholder for us to have the discussion about what we want to do with people who really don't pose any threat anymore that's awesome um why should we end Elwep in Vermont you know I think we've already talked about that one thing I didn't mention is about restorative justice being the law of the land and Elwep is really the emphasis of that I also wanted to mention that there is a recent report by the Alliance for Safety and Justice I don't know the exact date but hopefully the report actually didn't mention the date it is on their website and it's the first crime survivor speak first ever national survey of victims use on safety and justice and what they found was that the overwhelming majority of people who have been impacted by crime feel that the criminal justice system relies too heavily on incarceration and they strongly prefer investments in prevention and treatment in other words rehabilitation by two to one margin so I think we all know that the views of people who have been victimized or impacted by crime are very diverse but this study shows that the majority of them actually would prefer rehabilitation and you know and prevention they used to prevent the crime from happening in the first place do you have that report on the slide too? I wish I did I just looked it up last night but yes it's the Alliance for Safety and Justice so if you just google that website and then the name of the report is crime survivor speak yeah it's really good I wish I had thought about including it earlier so and I think earlier on I talked about why should Vermont be the first state to affirmatively end LAW and these are some other things that I didn't mention so LAW for juveniles was already removed from the criminal code in 2015 you know the criminal justice policies and there's only 15 people serving LAW and so I think that pretty much pretty much ends my presentation so anybody has any questions or is already happy to answer just might not be a question for you but where does the opposition to this come from? well I think if not addressed I don't want to say appropriate but addressed in a way that is like open hearted and compassionate it may come from people who have been victimized about crime and who are still suffering from the impact of that I think it may come from from that it may be coming from I can't even say that in Vermont because I know Sarah George is opposed to LAW sentences but it may come from prosecutors who feel that they owe it to the families of the victims to put the perpetrators away forever to provide some kind of healing for them they come from that but otherwise those are the only two places where I can think of where it would come from I can think of people who have said if you don't have life without parole you should have the death sentence because people are afraid it's fear it's fear that's another reason I feel to continue to humanize people who are in prison who have sometimes really horrible crimes but have done the important work on themselves I guess the other thing I want to say is that life without parole creates victims across the board it's not just the person who was killed or seriously injured or the family members of that person the family members of the person who was incarcerated they have a life without parole sentence too it's also that person who most likely experienced severe trauma that they're still suffering from so the whole thing is like a trauma vortex and if there is a way to communicate to people that we need to look at the root of it we need to create strategies for healing a trauma in our society that's like a huge undertaking I think that also there's a lot of misunderstanding that if you get rid of life without parole it automatically gives people parole and that isn't true they still have to go before the parole board and they have to and as we begin to rely more and more on kind of risk assessment that people who remain a risk aren't going to be given parole but I think there's a lot of misunderstanding about that that it means that they'll automatically they'll automatically be paroled I know in California Governor Brown issued a lot of commentations for people that left before he left office in 2018, I think it was something like 78 people really unprecedented and I know a good number of these people and a substantial number went to the parole board and were denied the first time even with the commutation from the governor you know so yeah it's not like it's going to take it out it is a misunderstanding I think and it's important as we deal with this that we get the real story about what we're going to be thinking about and because people are afraid I mean your point is really well taken it's true people are afraid and in some circumstances you know they should be perhaps you know building in some some additional safeguards as far as the parole process that would help people to feel more reassured that the you know like the criminal justice system is the one that happens them in the first place so we should be a little trust criminal justice system to decide when they're ready to be released but maybe some people need additional reassurance as far as the length of time of parole the kind of supervision maybe there should be some enhanced services for victim families for you know for them to be able to process the fact that whoever injured their family is up for parole I don't know just like kind of throwing some of these ideas out there are a lot of things I think that could be done I think the other thing is one doesn't know if the person has gained insight while a person went through some programs went through anything that has gotten them beyond maybe their character flaws that were there when they committed the crimes the parole should be able to determine that but I mean not all but the person doesn't know if you're injured you're saying doesn't know right and maybe not not everything is offered in person that might have enabled somebody to think differently about themselves that's true and that's another reason why more programs need to be offered and it is going to be a case by case basis and the person that I'm thinking of for example we've asked if they can't have an electronic monitoring bracelet on bracelets because they're on their ankles but and so he would he would be monitored he would be at home with his family people don't have confidence in that I'm going to tell you that it's very good part of that is because of the way we've done it now but when it was under the sheriffs they had the victims had it was only done in conjunction with the victims and it was a lot of monitoring and it was a really well run program and people had confidence in it it just doesn't now because of the way we run it but anyway that's a different topic that I feel very passionate about so thank you thank you it's a pleasure to be here and no doubt I will see everybody again because I intend to keep coming back and working with my collaborators Tom and Skyler for my you know we're all a team without them I would not be here so thank you are you guys testifying? because I would like to ask you Skyler how you as a young student got I mean I remember when you came before I talked to us but you got so involved in this topic that would be thanks to the guy I'm sitting next to right here well I came begging for some work and I got all that I asked for and more so I said I have a project for you alright on the topic of parole probation Charles Manson had life with parole but he never got out because every time he comes for a parole board there was no way he was going to be able to establish an a burden on the person he had the evidence to convince them that it's safe for them to be reduced and so obviously he was never able to reach that bar so and this is a Skyler point is that we should trust the system if we trust the system to convict people and lock them up for decades we should trust them to also go through a process and to determine whether it's safe to let them out and there's a lot of fear on the part of parole boards about making mistakes and they tend to be conservative and I think the point that Susan was making about for the idea that we which we talked about of having enhanced services for people that are coming before the parole board with various serious crimes that would give extra resources for assessments and evaluations by psychiatrists that type of thing enhanced reentry services and enhanced services for the victim and so that they can be you know in the department process that access to mental health counseling if that would help them through the process and also the restorative aspects of you know, Vermont is very committed to restorative processes but there are some programs in other states that are working with really serious crimes like we're talking about that have successfully used restorative processes and you know I was part of the committee that was looking at using restorative justice for domestic and sexual violence and stalking it's another example of where the victims are not feeling satisfied with the current system and actually often feel better about a restorative process and so you know there's a diversity among victims of what works for them and so we should have a diversity of options for them but you know we definitely all of you responsible about how things are implemented so I think those are some of the ways that that might be enhanced we were told that the electronic monitoring system would not be applicable to domestic situations and I know our sheriff worked with our state's attorney and the defense down there and in fact it worked really well the victim knew exactly what was happening so we make assumptions that are, well assumptions are we know what that spells out right but okay I think this is an opportunity to continue to reframe what is truly an interest of public safety and you know taking violent offenders and locking them up with no you know impetus to rehabilitate themselves opportunity to is not really truly an interest of public safety you know for society outside of prison but also for the community that's inside of prison as well and we're all going to be better off economically you know societally if we're able to rehabilitate people and if they're ready to come back in society great then we have another contributing member of society but if not we at least you know made people inside of prison safer and contributed to not you know supporting practice that is about to torture us you know Susan talked about and so I think this along with other criminal justice reform legislation is contributing to reforming and reframing that conversation about what is truly an interest of public safety have you decided to go into either law enforcement or judiciary or law or something okay and Phillip did you have anything you wanted to say I just wanted to say I think there's there's our schizophrenia where we say we're going to send you to life without parole and then we're going to have guards watching to make sure you don't injure yourself and we're going to give you healthcare to make sure you live as long as possible with the idea that you'll never be allowed to leave this facility that makes sense to me if parole is a possibility but there's a weird sense of which to extend your life as much as we can with basically armed cards around you and we will never let you out no matter how long you live if you think about it as a rehabilitative process potentially for everybody so everybody has the whole 30 years out 40 years out and then it makes sense you know we're preserving your life because we think it has value and you may one day offer that value to society but we're going to prison your partner you might offer that value to society in prison well there is that you know there is that that people can in prison send their words out yeah and there's a lot of work in prison for some prisoners I know that it's a lot of difficulty to be elderly and firm it's totally true but still these people with with such potential you know in California we do use restorative justice for even enforced crimes and there's one program that is in many of the California prisons we have 34 prisons it's called the Insect Prison Project and they run a year long weekly program victim offender education programs and it helps the prisoners get in touch with what is the driving force of their crime what are they going to do with their life now to develop empathy for the people they've run and some of the people who are taking these courses and not the syllogists are just extraordinary but at the end of the day they go back to a cell which is six by nine that they share with another person you know that's my my guy he is doing everything he's working in the library and he does all these things and he mentors people and he's he's just a wonderful no he does not have life without parole but given his age and everything it's and in the meantime he goes back to his cell and he can have a hug from his wife once a month that's hard which is an improvement because until a couple months ago he couldn't have any hugs from his wife any physical contact at all that's touching on the tragedy vortex that is this entire situation his wife is a victim as well exactly he was up at the time thank you