 Good afternoon, and welcome to Vermont House Judiciary Committee. It is Tuesday, March 9th, and today we are going to be starting with H133, an act relating to emergency relief from abuse orders and relinquishment of firearms. And we should have, it's draft 2.1 that we're going to be looking at. And since it's been a while, I've asked Eric just to go over the draft again. And there's one that's highlighted, and then there's a clean copy. And the highlights reflect what I call the Lefler Amendment, which I'm not sure you want it to be your amendment, but certainly helpful language when we spoke about this bill before. Eric, thank you. Sure. Good afternoon, everybody. This is Eric Fitzpatrick with the Office of Legislative Council here to talk with the committee about S133, H133, sorry. Representative Grad, you were mentioning there are two drafts, one with some highlights and one without. Do you want to take a look at the highlighted one first or do you have a preference? I think the highlighted would be great. Thank you. Okay, great. Well, let me pull that one up and that way everyone can take a look at it as well as we're moving through it. Evan, could you make me a close please? Perfect. Thank you. See if I remember how to do this since it's been a week or so. All right, let's just make sure I'm the right one here, which I believe we are. Okay. So we do have the right document up as Representative Grad mentioned this is version 2.1 of the committee strike all amendment. So you've already looked at one amendment to the bill as introduced and this is a second version of that with a couple of more changes which we'll get to in a moment. So this is an act relating to emergency relief from abuse orders and relinquishment of firearms. Remember, generally kind of since it's been a while just to ground the committee and what the substance of the bill is. This has to do with emergency RFAs, emergency relief from abuse orders, which the court can issue when a family member or household member of a person comes into court and is able to show to the court's satisfaction that the person who came into court, the plaintiff has been abused or the plaintiff's children has been abused, and there's an immediate danger of further abuse so those two findings are made by the court that the plaintiff or the plaintiff children have been abused and there's this immediate danger of further abuse, and the court can issue what's known as an RFA relief from abuse order which imposes certain restrictions on the defendant's conduct and the existing law lists several types of restriction that can be imposed on what the defendant can do with respect to the plaintiff and you may remember what some of those are, but just to go through them real quick. The court, for example, I'm in subdivision a now kind of going from page one to page two, they can include in the order that the defendant has to refrain from abusing the plaintiff or the plaintiff's children, or any of the pets or animals that they have, they can refrain order the defendant refrain from interfering with the defendants, sorry with the plaintiff's personal liberty, or personal liberty of the children refrain from coming within a fixed distance of the plaintiff, or the plaintiff's children or the fixed distance of the plaintiff's residence or their place of employment so that's essentially, you know, a restriction on how close the defendant can come to the plaintiff, either personally or where the plaintiff lives or works. And lastly, a no contact order, they have no contact at all with the plaintiff or the plaintiff's children in any way, with a telephone, email, whatever it may be. And so what H-133 does, proposes to do, is to add another potential item that the court can include in its relief from abuse order, I should mention right then as the committee has heard before, that from what the committee has heard from Judd Gurus and others, is that this condition of relinquishing firearms is commonly included in RFA's currently, so the idea behind H-133 is to codify, to put in statute what is the current practice of judges when they are asked to issue these relief from abuse orders currently. Sorry about that, I have a phone ringing there just for a moment, hang on. So, as I mentioned, this is a reflection of current practice is essentially being codified here in subdivision E, and that language codifies the ability of the court to order as part of the RFA that the defendant and now we're looking at the language on line 12, immediately relinquish until expiration of the order, so that's a crucial piece of the language that the relinquishment provision only lasts as long as the order is in effect. You may remember that these temporary relief from abuse orders have a maximum effective period of 14 days, so it will, within that 14 day period of time the court has to schedule a hearing on a final relief from abuse order or it can always dismiss the petition completely, but if it's going to go forward, there has to be a hearing, and then the court will decide whether to issue a final relief from abuse order. But so, for the period that the temporary RFA is in effect, the court can order immediate relinquishment of any firearms that the defendant, that are in the defendant's possession, ownership, or control. So you see there's a typo, I just noticed, hopefully it's not going to be in the final version, but the words or control on line 13 were inadvertently struck. So this should, the proposal here, the amendment to the previous version of the amendment that you looked at. I remember that it included not only firearms that were in the defendant's possession ownership or control, and then going on to lines 13 and 14 but it also included firearms that another person possesses or controls on behalf of the defendant. And after some committee discussion on that it sort of became apparent that that that language was not only less than clear, but that it also was redundant because the firearm that was in the control of the defendant, him or himself, would already be included within that language so the committee decided that there was really no reason to include it. So the idea was to strike it, but there's two words struck there that should not have been on line 13 the words for control should still be in there. So that's one change. The first change is to strike this whole notion of another person possessing, owning, or controlling the firearm on behalf of the defendant. So then it goes on and says, okay, not only is the, can the order include relinquishment, it also can include an order that the defendant refrain, I'm on the end of line 14 refrain from acquiring or possessing any firearms while the order is in effect. So that means going forward, you know you relinquish what you have and going forward, you can't acquire or possess any firearms, again, while the order is in effect so that's going to be a maximum of 14 days, at which time the court will hold the final hearing and decide whether whether a final order should issue. So that's the scope of the addition to the elements that can be included in the emergency RFI by the court under under age 133. I might want to take a quick look at the final language here to see if there's that same typo needs to be fixed, or whether it's in there. The clean draft does have or control in it. Oh, great. Thank you. Yep. So there you see line 13 so that's correct, as you mentioned. So you see the way it would lead, it would the way of read cleanly is that the order can can include a provision that the defendant immediately relinquish until expiration the order, all firearms that are in the defendants possession ownership or control, and to refrain from acquiring or possessing any firearms, while the order is in effect, the effective date of the proposal is on passage so that this provision would go into effect as soon as it was passed by the both both houses and signed by the governor. Great. Thank you, Eric. Sure. Any questions for Eric. I may not see people's hands so feel free to jump in if I don't call on you. Yeah, this time I have a question. It's really not about the bill it's it's about it's on passage. I guess I'd forgot that the governor still signs things that are on passage. I remember there's like a three day window that he has to sign it within. Is that right. It's just no that's it. I mean that is true but that's a separate issue that that this just that language just means that as soon as the governor signs that it becomes effective, as opposed to, you know, if there were no, if that language is not there there's a fallback principle that anything that's passed by the houses and signed by the governor goes into effect on July 1. Yeah. So, if you said nothing, it would go into it and the governor signed it let's say on just to pick a date, May 15. Well, maybe I'm being optimistic there. Then it wouldn't go into effect until July 1. But if you put in shall be effective on passage. That means that as soon as the governor signs it on May 15, it becomes effective immediately. Okay, so the official passage is his signature. Correct. Okay, I probably knew that at one time but I'm sure you did. Yeah, sure. Thank you. Anybody else and again jump it in. I'm not seeing any hands but I want to make sure that I get everybody's questions. Shall I pull down the document for a moment or so you can. Sure. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, I'm not seeing any in the hands. Oh, thank you Eric. Sure. There we go. Okay. There you are. Okay. So, Tom, I do see your hand. Is that from before or no, no. History would tell you that it is but just a question. Around on page to the amendment in the highlighted or not highlighted I guess but I'm blind 1314 and 15. So does that language still covers firearms that are in the possession. The possession of somebody else. I mean, the final language. Yes. Yeah, I think that that if you sort of think about how that situation could play out. Let's say for example, a defendant doesn't want to relinquish firearms. So, here she owns their defense their firearms to a friend or to a family member. Sorry, you're going to hear a dog in the background. That's all right. The. But they're not but they still remain there. They're still owned by the defendant. They're just sort of giving them to another person in order to not have to relinquish them for example. Then yeah, I think the language that you have covers them because they are still in the defendant's control. And they are still in the defendant's ownership. They may not be in their physical possession at the moment, but they split the defendant owns them, or in any other way controls them I think that that would that would be covered by the language that you have. That's why he didn't really need that other language saying referring specifically to another person. And that's kind of what I thought with the ownership I mean that's ownership is ownership so doesn't matter where something is in your house or two cities away I guess but okay thank you. Yeah. Any other questions I'm not seeing anybody. Okay, great. Well thank you Eric. So committee as you know this is been up for or noticed as a discussion and possible vote and I think we have taken a lot of testimony on this I really appreciate the testimony of all the witnesses. I'm not a person in and written. And so at this point, I would entertain a emotion to pass draft to make sure this is correct 2.1 of each 133. Oh Tom your hand is up again. I'm back to normal. Anyway, I would entertain a emotion in a second and then have discussion. So moved. Sleep in the well. Okay. Great. Thank you. Any discussion. Okay. Not seeing any. Ken, sure. Are we voting on the amendment first or is that already in the new language. How are we doing that. Just so I'm clear. So voting on 2.1 which incorporates the, the language that we had actually discussed last time we were, we were here. Okay, thank you. Okay. I'm not. Not seeing any hands in terms of discussion. Okay. The clerk shell. Commence to call the roll. You're good, Ken. Yep, Colburn. Yes. Donnelly. Yeah. Go slant. No. The lawn. Yes. Lefler. No. Norris. No. Yes. Christy. Coach. Kevin. Yeah, we'll come back to coach. No. Madam chair. Yes. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So let's, um, let's hold it open for coach. And, uh, Will, I think you're going to. Still on for reporting it. Right. Yes. Great. Great. Well, thank you. And I, again, I really appreciate. Um, everybody's engagement and, uh, respectful. Conversation in, in, um, in this important bill. And, uh, so as soon as we, Um, hear from coach, we can add him. Um, okay. Great. Well, thank you. All right. So let's see. Okay. 87. I might schedule again. You may be ahead of, uh, we are, we are ahead of ourselves. In terms of, uh, In terms of. Uh, all right. Why don't we take a, uh, Take a break. And, uh, because we do have witnesses. For, uh, for 87. And we're, we are ahead of ourselves. Um, You want to come back, Maxine? I'm sorry. What? What time would you like to just come back? So, um, Since two 15 for the witnesses and, uh, yeah. So why don't we come back around. To 10 or so. And then Eric will do a walkthrough of, um, Of the language, which is just pertaining to the fines. Right. And then we, and then we have some witnesses.