 Good morning and welcome back to my House Judiciary Committee. We're going to be looking at two bills. We're going to finish up S184, which is justifiable homicide. And we do have Judge Zone here to testify on that. And then we will be turning to S224 actually relating to juvenile proceedings. So your honor, good morning, welcome. Good morning and I apologize, Tom Zone, Chief Superior Judge. I apologize for not being here earlier. I was in Senate Judiciary this morning. So thank you for your patience and courtesy. That's fine. No, it's always good to see you. Thank you. On S184, the short is we support it. I listened yesterday to Senator Benning and I concurred with his analysis that when he introduced it, I also listened to the discussion that this committee had with respect to it. We do support this. The bill, I believe, as was indicated, simply fixes what was unintended from a prior change to this very statute. And it brings it in line with common law principles and also indicates that it's not intended to change common law to the extent there may be other rights out there as a result of common law. And I would note that Representative LaLonde had a question yesterday. I believe he said, what would be just and necessary? Well, in a case called State v. Wheelock, the Vermont Supreme Court said that, quote, our case law requires that self-defense is just and necessary. When a defendants' belief of imminent peril and of the need to repel that peril with deadly force is reasonable. And so that is how the Supreme Court has seen that, and that's the law in Vermont. And beyond that, I don't have anything further. I would certainly address any questions. Members of the committee, how many? Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? Good. Martin, do you have a question? Are you good? I'm good. Eric did provide me some further information. And I think that's one of the cases that he cited, in addition to a 1928 and 1932 case, actually. And I'm hoping to get something on our website that lays that out, just so we have that built into the record. And my concern was whether one could read from the case law that, in essence, we are a standard ground state as opposed to a duty to retreat state, kind of using that as a broad category for each of those. And at least Eric's input was that it doesn't come out and say that we're a duty to retreat state, but certainly the case law would not suggest that one gets the right to stand their ground if there's another less than lethal use of force as an option to avoid a situation. But anyway, I'm hoping to get a little bit more information on just that we have that in the record. And it's our understanding that that's what the justifiable homicide statute means and requires. I suspect you may have also indicated a case called state v. Hatcher, H-A-T-C-H-E-R, 167 Vermont, 338. You might want to take a look at it. Great, thanks. Great, thank you. OK, thank you. Eron, while we have you, do you want to testify on S-224? Sure, I can do that. I told in a meeting yesterday I spoke, and I said that Mr. Paul was going ahead of me, so he was going to make my job easier. I said, as long as he's everything I agreed with, it would just say, whatever it is. We can try that. I don't mind addressing it. This was a bill that we spent quite a bit of time with different justice partners working on before the Senate. I would point out that the one significant area that changes what we're doing in the courts has to do with youthful offender and the factors that the court has to consider. And the factors were changed. The factors were ones that were discussed. And in fact, several of these came directly from input of trial judges who are currently in the juvenile division. We do support the bill as it is currently drafted, I believe. There's another section that talked about what's called the Yazi screening that has to take place. And that's in section 15 on page 21. Previously, there had been an issue about who notified the youth that he or she had to appear for this. And there had been confusion. And so what we said was the best place to have that come from is the court. And so we agreed that we put a change in there to make it clear that it's the court's obligation to notify the youth of that screening to take that step to go forward, because it is a necessary part of the process. And I believe on page 22, section 16, you may be hearing from DCF under the psychosexual that it wanted to add language that said that they wanted the psychosexual only if it was clinically recommended. And I can tell you that we would support that addition also, that we think that's an appropriate addition. But beyond that, we are generally in support with the bill. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any questions? I have one for whoever can answer it or whoever does. What's a psychosexual evaluation? I wonder if our social worker can answer that. I'm happy to, but I judge Zone also probably. It is a specialized evaluation of individuals who have been convicted of or found to have engaged in acts involving sexual activity that is against the law. And so it's not something that is necessary in every case. It's necessary in a case where there are potentials for sex offender treatment to assess risk, to assess need, and to come up with the appropriate specialized treatment program for that individual that addresses their sexual behaviors. Sexual crimes against children it would be given every time, I would assume. I can't think of a case where it's not, and I believe by statute in the criminal division it is required. OK, thank you. OK, thank you. Anything else? Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you very much. OK, Marshall. Morning, good to see you. Morning, can everybody hear me all right? Yes, thank you. All right, I've been moving between microphone and camera setup, so I have to keep asking that. So thank you. As indicated, I'm going to start by agreeing with just about everything that Judge Zone said. And in fact, I think I'll agree with everything he said. We support this bill. This has been a product of a real lot of work, beginning actually really last summer with work in front of Joint Justice Oversight and then throughout the fall in Senate Judiciary. So this is actually a what I would call a bill that came to the legislature in a very complete form. I mean, we had been working with Ledge Council and with the Senate throughout the fall. And so this really reflects a pretty incredible amount of consensus from a pretty diverse group of stakeholders. And so we're not only supporting the bill, but I just wanted to make a point that we are expressing our appreciation for the process and for the extent to which a bunch of people who work on different sides of the same issues have been able to come together and identify a bunch of ways that we can all agree to improve the system. And that's what we believe that this bill does. So I'll say that our office absolutely supports the bill as it's written. We would agree with the change that was discussed at the meeting the other day and that I think we'll be hearing from DCF about that Judge Zone mentioned about including some language in the section on psychosexuals to say that they should only be ordered if they're clinically indicated. That's really important because psychosexual evaluations they're very intrusive and in fact, we have psychologists who when they are asked to perform a psychosexual evaluation will refuse if they do not believe that it's appropriate because they say that it is in fact damaging to even do the evaluation on someone for whom it is not clinically necessary that just simply exposing and asking the questions that they ask is traumatic and causes people lasting damage. And so we think it's important to have the language in there that says if we're gonna be ordering psychosexuals let's make sure that that is only ordered when it's clinically indicated which as the judge said would be in pretty much any case of a child sexual crime but we like to have that language in there that says the clinical indication that this is necessary is important to that order. Other than that, I would say we agree with the bill as written and I can go through and quickly address the points that DCF had made several sort of asks outside of the bill and I can address those quickly. So first I'd like to just point out that those asks came from one memo that is now on this committee's website from last Thursday and that was a memo that DCF had prepared early in this process and you'll see that a number of the things that DCF requested are actually in the bill now. So in that memo, they requested for example, the pause in implementation of raise the age and that's included in the bill. In that memo, they also requested who I've forgotten there was a couple other things that were included but there was a few that are not included and I just wanted to address those because these were issues that were raised in the Senate and we had testified there about why we felt that those asks were inappropriate and I just wanted to sort of reiterate that testimony here. So that would be specifically to start with DCF's proposal to include aggravated domestic assault and wrestle reckless endangerment in the Big 12. We oppose that because for the first offense, aggravated domestic assault, we feel it's just not necessary because every aggravated domestic assault can be charged as an aggravated assault. An aggravated domestic assault is simply an aggravated assault where the victim is a household or family member or current or former romantic partner. Can I just ask a, I'm actually trying to figure out how to follow along with this memo from DCF because I missed some of the earlier testimony on this bill and I'm not readily finding it on the House Judiciary. Paige, was that something they just submitted on the Senate side or did they? No, it was on the House side. Excuse me, I looked it up, it was on the House side submitted on last Thursday and it's called ST-24 Macy Rebel Kidwell. Thank you. I got it. Thank you. Thank you, Marshall. Sorry to interrupt you. No problem. So for that one, excuse me, we would oppose adding aggravated domestic assault because we don't feel that's necessary because every aggravated domestic can also be charged as an aggravated assault, which is already in the Big 12. An aggravated domestic assault is simply an aggravated assault where the victim is a household member, family member or a former or current romantic partner. And so really that one is already included in the Big 12. It's included as aggravated assault. Reckless endangerment, we're very concerned about the idea of adding that to the Big 12. That really has no place on the Big 12. It's completely unlike the other Big 12 offenses. The Big 12 offenses are the most serious felonies in the state of Vermont, it's murder, manslaughter, arson causing death, sexual assault, no consent, which is what we would call rape. So we're talking about very, very high level felonies. Reckless endangerment is not a high level felony. In fact, it's not a felony at all. It's a misdemeanor. And all it means is that someone recklessly, meaning not intentionally put another person at risk. This is something that is charged for things like minor traffic offenses. People get charged with careless and negligent, reckless endangerment for driving in a manner that endangers another person. I've had children charged with reckless endangerment who were, they were cliff jumping at a lake and one kid who was hesitating to jump off the cliff. Another kid pushed that kid off the edge of the cliff. It was certainly dangerous behavior, not good behavior, possibly even warranting a legal intervention, but is that the same as equating that completely reckless unintentional type of conduct with murder, manslaughter, arson causing death, aggravated assault, those types of offenses. It would be wildly disproportionate and wildly incongruous to include reckless endangerment, you know, a misdemeanor that's not even a misdemeanor that requires intent in among the list of the 12 most serious intentional felonies in Vermont. So we would oppose both of those proposals. There's also a proposal to create a system where children who are on youthful offender status can be immediately revoked from youthful offender status if there's additional charges. That proposal we wouldn't support and in fact, we think it's unconstitutional. The idea of holding hearings within 48 hours deny defendants the opportunity to defend themselves. It certainly takes more than 48 hours to muster evidence in your own defense to investigate the evidence that the state puts forward in support of its request. And frankly, it's just unconstitutional to require people to defend themselves in such a short period of time. There's times when it takes me 48 hours just to make contact with my clients. When I'm notified that I have a client who has been arrested, it can take me three days even just to figure out where they are and arrange a phone call at their location and make that phone call happen. So we would certainly not support that. And if that was included in the bill, we would anticipate that being the subject of a lot of litigation. There's also a proposal in that to go backwards and go back to the old youthful offender system which required that children plead guilty in criminal court before they're entitled to youthful offender status. We would see that as a huge step backwards that essentially what we've moved from is we've moved from that system where there's not even an acknowledgement that children might not be guilty of the offense. I mean, just as an initial point, I've represented many, many children who were not guilty of the offenses they were charged with. Just factually, the state was incorrect in their charges. And when we say that you must plead guilty in order to be treated as a child and you're not even going to be given the option of making your case of being treated like a child and then being given the chance to convince the court that you didn't do whatever the state says it is that you did, I think we're moving really dramatically backwards. So we would not support that. And we also think that youthful offender has been a really, really, the changes to youthful offender have been very successful. We have hundreds of petitions being filed every year. We have plenty of evidence that judges are doing a very careful job of determining who gets youthful offender status and who doesn't. About 50% of the youthful offender petitions that are filed are actually granted. So half of those petitions are being withdrawn or rejected presumably because we're looking at kids who do not belong in the system. So we have a system that even though we've seen it increase the number of cases that it is taking in, it hasn't done that by simply accepting everybody. It's really clearly being very careful about who gets youthful offender status and who doesn't. And this would undo all that work. This would put us back to where we were before. Before we had the new system, there was between 11 and 30 youthful offender cases a year. Now we're doing several hundred youthful offender cases a year. And that really is an improvement. We've seen a real lot of success, a real lot of kids who would be subject to the adult system, who would be put on adult probation or even serving adult incarcerated sentences, who instead are finding success in the juvenile system and are able to do it without a record and without by using the sort of rehabilitative functions of the juvenile system while they are still young. And we're seeing kids who are graduating out of that system and being very successful, not committing further offenses, going on to kids who are going on to college who we never would have imagined would have been going on to college had they been going through the adult system, stuff like that. It's really been very powerful. So we would very much oppose going backwards to the old system of criminal pleas. We think that the system as it is has been working really well. Finally, DCF requested something that would require kids have their youthful offender status revoked if they commit a new youthful offender eligible offense. And I think that comes up because there are certainly cases where kids commit a new offense and it's apparent from their new offense that they shouldn't remain on youthful offender status. Our opposition to this is not that we think that every kid who's on youthful offender status should stay on youthful offender status forever. Even if they commit new offenses, it's not that. It's that we don't think it should be automatic. We think it should be an individualized determination. And I'll give you an example of why that is. For example, if you had a kid who went on youthful offender status at 16 years old for, I don't know, let's say a serious offense. Let's say an aggravated assault. So someone who did real serious bodily damage, serious physical injury to another person in the course of an assault. Dangerous behavior, behavior that really needs to be addressed. And let's imagine that person gets youthful offender status and they are being very successful on youthful offender status. They're in treatment and they are, you know, doing everything that everybody would want of them. And then they get charged with negligent operation at age 19 for crashing their car into a guardrail. No other vehicles involved. Accidental, negligent, bad driving, but not reflective of some sort of intentional criminal conduct. That is nonetheless a youthful offender eligible charge. Should we really be taking kids who are in the process of achieving success as youthful offenders and kick them off, kick them out of treatment and kick them out of that process and send them up for adult sentencing. Not because they've done anything that's demonstrated that they are not engaging in treatment or that they are slipping backwards towards committing new offenses or anything like that. But just because they committed another offense that may have been completely reckless and had nothing to do with their prior offense and then no reflection on their progression through treatment, that would just be, I mean, that would be a real travesty of justice. It would be a real shame to see that happening automatically. And that's why we oppose that. And I think, when it comes to all of the things that I've said about youthful offender status and our objections to some of DCF's concerns, some of DCF's proposals, it all sort of lumps into this sort of one framework of individualized determinations. What we're opposed to is making determinations on presumption. We don't wanna see situations where we're saying kids have to be removed from youthful offender status just because they've committed a certain offense or done a certain act without any consideration of their individual circumstances. We're not here trying to say that every kid who gets youthful offender should be on youthful offender forever or that kids should not be removed from youthful offender. We just want those determinations to be made on an individual basis, case by case, because frankly, these youthful offender cases in particular are so idiosyncratic and we see so many different kinds of kids, so many different types of, I mean, even when we're talking about kids who are on supervision and go on to commit new offenses while they're on supervision, that ranges from kids who really are engaging in the type of conduct that should get them kicked off supervision and sent up to the adult court for sentencing, just further criminal conduct. And then it ranges all the way down to kids who are really just at the mercy of their environment and who don't have control over essentially what acts they're taking and what acts they're not. And it would really be inappropriate for us to be kicking kids off youthful offender or punishing them for stuff that is really outside of their control. And that's why we need these individualized determinations because these cases are just so, they're so different. And so, I mean, frankly, I hate to say it this way, but they're just, they're so weird. We don't have run-of-the-mill youthful offender cases the way that we do have, what I would call run-of-the-mill DUI cases or things like that in adult court, fairly typical fact patterns that we see repeated over and over again. In juvenile court, what we see is a million different things, a million different ways in every case is different. And that's why our theme throughout sort of our response to DCF's proposals has been to say, we understand those concerns, but we just don't support making this automatic. We want this to be individualized. Thank you. Actually, three hands, we need them. Tenderos, Selena, Kate and Barbara. I was wondering if you could, thank you, Marshall. This has been all really helpful. And I was wondering if you could could just talk us through, Eric, I think you need to mute. I was wondering if you could, sorry, are you able to, I was wondering, there we go, sorry, bad multi-tasker. I am. I was wondering if you could just talk us through how those more individualized revocations work in current law, like when someone, just what are the factors that can be considered and how is your, thanks. So revocation is, it's pretty broad in terms of the judicial discretion. And it's basically a two-step process. First, the defendant, the kid has to be charged with a violation of their probation, which means there has to be some condition of their probation that they violated, which in the cases we've been discussing, like this, what I've been talking about are cases where kids have actually committed a new offense. And that's always a violation because the first condition of probation is always don't commit any further offenses. Once there's been a violation, then the question is, should the kid's status be revoked? And the, there was actually a case on this and it was my case and I lost it. So I can explain it in great detail. The standard, there is no standard written into law into our statutes for, this is what a court should consider when it revokes. And so the Supreme Court was left to address that question itself. And they did what I didn't want them to do in that case, but it is now the law, which is they said that the standard for revoking youthful offender probation should be the same standard that's used for granting youthful offender probation. And so those questions are essentially, if the person remains on youthful offender probation, will public safety be protected? Will the youth engage in treatment? Are they amenable to treatment? And is treatment available for them? And so those are the three questions that determine whether or not someone gets their youthful offender status revoked or not. And one thing that this bill does that is a change to current law, is this bill sets out criteria that say, what does that public safety problem mean? Because the prior bill just simply said, will public safety be protected if the youth is given youthful offender status? The new language that's in this bill says, will public safety be protected? And when considering public safety, the court shall consider the following factors and then has a list of factors. I only have one screen so I can't tell you exactly which page that's on right now. But so that is a change to this bill that will affect revocations. But probably it won't affect revocations really substantively. Those factors really are the factors that we all sort of agreed. Those are what judges are currently using to make revocation determinations when it comes to public safety. And so I don't, you know, that was all, those are all sort of factors that we all agree is essentially what's happening already. Thank you. That is was extremely helpful. Kate, Barbara and the coach. Thank you. So I'm just getting like used to the language of this bill. And so and hearing your testimony and also looking at the DCF document. So excuse me if my question is like already been answered in some way about just going back to your testimony in terms of, I'm looking at number four of like the document from DCF which is talking about ensure that you take responsibility for the actions that led to the change. You spoke to one of their proposed solutions which was the guilty plea. They offer a second solution which is that the statute be amended to provide that youthful offender cases are filed as sealed and then essentially that they be unsealed. It looks like if they were transferred. I don't know if you have thoughts about that at all. And I also don't, I guess I don't understand how it works currently in terms of sealing and unsealing in this department. So I'm not really sure where that recommendation fits and current, well I'll tell you my answer is I don't understand that recommendation myself and it's not even though that is, I agree in the memo it's not something that our group has discussed in any detail nor my recollection. Has that particular that second proposal been discussed in any committees that I remember? And frankly, and just reading it quickly I'm not quite sure I understand what it amounts to. So I don't actually have an answer for you on that one. I think you'd have to ask TCF. Can you tell me a little bit more about like are youthful offender files or whatever we might call them? Are they currently sealed? Like what's the, how does it work currently? So youthful in order to get youthful offender status the case has to be either eligible for criminal court it has to be eligible for criminal court. And it can either come in because a prosecutor direct filed the case as youthful offender that's very infrequent. I think it happens in Chittenden County sometimes but for the most part really doesn't happen anywhere else if it does happen elsewhere it's single digits number of cases. Most the 90 something percent of youthful offender cases come in because someone is in adult court they are arraigned in adult court and they move for youthful offender status. So the entire first part of their case which happens in adult court is public it is not sealed that takes place in open court. They go through a normal arraignment and then at some point after that their attorney files a motion for youthful offender and the case is transferred down. When it's down in the juvenile court it is confidential but not sealed or and that means that it is available to the parties in the case which in this case would be the child and the state but it's not available to anything else. Not actually sure what value filing it as sealed would have in this case. We file things as sealed in juvenile court only if we don't want the other party to see it. So for example, I've seen things filed as sealed in the juvenile court if we have a document that has particularly sensitive information. Let's say in a child welfare case this would come up more often where I might be representing a child and there might be a document that I need to file with the court but it might have some sensitive information that I don't want one of the parents to know just because of the relationship between the parents and the child I might file that as sealed. In criminal court we use it for things like when we have a defendant who's entitled who we're arguing about whether they're entitled to a public defender that is a I've seen people file that stuff as sealed because they say it's none of the state's business between the court and the individual not between the individual and the state and so they'll file that stuff as sealed though I don't know if courts really actually accept those as sealed files or not. My only point is that I don't quite understand the whole file it as sealed thing because really in juvenile court stuff is only available to the parties anyway because it's already confidential and so I'm just not quite sure what that proposal is trying to achieve by sealing. Thank you. So Marshall you touched on this very, very briefly and it's something that I'm concerned about and I feel like you're in a unique position because you see where your clients are but DCF requests to cause the taking on additional ages in raise the age and where those young people are now. We support that change because frankly the way that we're looking at it the system is overtaxed at the moment and we do not wanna see this be a failure. We do not wanna see raise the age. We don't wanna see 19 year olds be brought into the system when we don't have the resources to support them and then have that turn into essentially a failed justice system which would then result almost certainly in rolling back some of these changes that have been made and so from our perspective it's much more important to get this done right than to get it done fast and we would agree that right now just during the pandemic there has been a real contraction of services available that's not just there's a lot of focus on placement which I think is it's the most visible problem but it's not the biggest problem. It's actually relatively few kids are actually placed in out of home placements. Most of the stuff we do with kids while they are in the home and they receive treatment while they're in the home and everything else. But we're even seeing just finding counseling and treatment for kids is very difficult right now. We have people who are not accepting new patients who are not accepting who are only doing virtual stuff and that can be really hard to engage with kids in particular. So we're looking at it and seeing just that all the resources we depend on placement resources, treatment resources they're all being stressed right now we're having trouble getting access to them and we don't wanna see sort of more stress put on the system right now. DCF did request that the pause be essentially open ended that it be something that's like until the administration decides that the resources are there. We don't support that. We want there to be a timeframe on it. What we have supported is delaying it by one year. We actually, I anticipate that will even be probably we think one year is a good number to put in statute. I don't doubt that there'll be a request for even further delay beyond that because frankly the problem with the resources that the justice system uses right now is pretty profound and it's not just here in Vermont it's all across the country that placements and treatment providers that provide services to adolescents are completely overtaxed and understaffed and I just don't see it as a problem that we're gonna crawl out of very quickly. Marshall, so how many- So we support that. I want it to be clear we support it reluctantly. We wish we weren't saying yeah pause implementation but we also don't wanna see it fail. How many of those kids? So a lot of them they're saying are placed in home. Yep. They're not receiving out of home services. Some of them I'm assuming are in custody of DFC. They would be in custody of DCF if they're. Not if we didn't raise the age. So if it's somebody who's, I'm trying to remember what age we're up to right now. We're up to 19. Yeah up to 19. So we include 18 year olds but not 19 year olds. So up to the 19th birthday. So we, because I remember when we met with the DFC commissioner a couple of years ago it sounded like young adults or young youthful offenders. I don't think we're calling the people under 21 in their custody were frequently sort of in isolation as a way of removing them from sight and sound from adults. So how many, like are you working with clients that are in that situation right now? Right now I don't believe so I don't believe we've got trying to think if we have anybody in right now if we do there might be one. I don't think there is though. I think that could get moved out to Sonia. So I think we're at zero right now. But here's what I would say about that is that's a different situation than we're talking about because what we're talking about here are kids who are in the juvenile or youthful offender system. And what DFC was talking about there was kids who for one reason or another are still attached to the adult system even if they have a pending youthful offender or something like that. There's some reason they get attached to the adult system. So I can give you a few examples of how that happens. One is most obviously when a child is arrested for a serious offense. They're going to be treated at initial arrest as an adult because the presumption at least from the outset is that they'll be treated as an adult if it's one of those big 12 offenses. So those kids are treated as an adult from the very beginning unless and until some court orders them into juvenile or youthful offender court. Up till that point, they're an adult. If it's not a big 12 offense, but it's a kid who is over the age of 18, so they're charged in adult court, it's the same thing. They would be treated as an adult up until the point that a judge orders them into youthful offender or juvenile court. If a kid's in youthful offender or juvenile court, there are ways that they can be pulled into DOC, but like I said, it's sort of, it's always some kind of collateral thing. So for example, if a kid is a youthful offender and they violate their probation and they are over the age of 19, then they can be detained at DOC. So that doesn't mean that they have been like sentenced to DOC, it's more that when they're arrested, that's where they are put because we don't actually have another place for them to go because we don't have a juvenile lockup facility. And even if we did, it wouldn't touch those kids over that age. So kids who are between the age of juvenile jurisdiction and the age of youthful offender jurisdiction, if they get detained, they would be DOC detainees, not DCF detainees. So there's a few ways that kids come into DOC custody like that, but for the most part, when kids come into DOC custody, it's because they are being treated as adults. So those situations would be completely divorced from this bill. So I'm just having a little bit of a hard time, not believing, but if they're placed at home, they're the first category and they can't get services and we're saying to DCF, we're pausing. So who's then coordinate? Like, I still am missing what's happening to the kids if DCF is pausing and off the hook. Who's coordinating those services? They're being, so what you're saying is if we don't take, so right now, under the current lock or under the proposed bill, like today, there would be no change because currently 18 years old is as far as the system expands. The idea is that coming up this July, it would expand up to include 19 year olds and we would be proposing to pause that. So we wouldn't be taking anybody who currently would be entitled to treatment in the juvenile system out of the juvenile system. We would just be saying, we're not going to expand when we said we were going to expand and that would mean that those kids who were 19 would be dealt with in the adult system rather than in the juvenile system. Is that adult system just as stressed at the juvenile system and like, what's the advantage? They don't provide the same treatment that the juvenile system does. So they don't think it's not as stressed because they're not providing that kind of treatment and they're not doing, especially the type of, you know, community based services that DCF provides. Why do we think that's good? Why do we think that's better? Well, I'm not saying that it's good. I think that it's better to have 19 year olds in the adult system than to have them in a juvenile system that can't accommodate them at all because that'll just result in the juvenile system failing. Not only for them, but for the 18 year olds and 17 year olds and 16 year olds and everybody else. Okay. Coach, before I get to you, I just want to make sure I'm looking at the effective dates. And I, because the first one is sections 17 through 19, she'll take effect on the bill says July 1, 2023. And so that would be the one year pause. Yeah. And DCF has asked for 2024 when they were, when they were here. So I wanted to get your thoughts on that. Gotcha. So what I would say, what we were saying that we support was the one year pause, we support the pause that's in the bill, which is a one year pause. Okay. We're not supporting, if there was a larger ask, we're not supporting that. Okay. All right. Okay. I appreciate it. It also says section 17 through 19. And I don't see 19 on the copy that I have, but we'll, I'll note that for Eric. So, okay. So you post that. Okay. And then the next effective date in section two, and that's the other hasn't been asked on that one. So that's July 1, 2023. And I, so, okay. All right. Well, thank you for clarifying that that's first one. Coach. Good morning, Marshall. How are you? I'm all right. I just wanted to add a comment and I think it might help representative Rachel's question as well. In another one of my lives, I worked for NFI who was a contract provider for DCF. And in that role, we worked with that very small group of clients that Marshall's referring to to give you an idea as a caseworker most social workers could have a case load of up to 20, 25, 30 youth on their case load. My average case load was six to eight. I got those people that Marshall's talking about. And so the experience of working, you know, with that particular population, I think Marshall did a very good job attesting to the adaptability of the system at its present time to accommodate them in a fair and equitable way. And each one of those cases was pretty unique and individual. And so too would I support that continued approach to working with them in that sense. It's just thinking about some of those young folks over that six year period that I did that work. It was pretty impactful, you know, on me, you know, because I think that what it's done is given me that sense of I think we're landing in a good space with this bill and even the timing, you know, of it. Because that, you don't get extra chances, you know, to deal, you know, with some of these youthful offenders especially at that point of their life. And so either we get it right or we lose that opportunity and if we lose that opportunity, we lose a person, you know, and I think that's, you know, the simplest way to put what Marshall's been referring to and I really appreciate the work of you and the group that put this bill before us because I think that it's a good response to the situation we're in. So I just wanted to share that, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Anything else? Okay, great. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. And I think that is it for this bill. All right. So we will adjourn.