 Thank you everybody. Welcome. Welcome back to Vermont House Judiciary Committee and we are considering our deliberations on S3. And I would now like to welcome Kelly Carol to share her her story with us and miss Carol I'm sorry that you that you had to wait to testify but I'm very glad that you're here. Thank you and I hope you can hear me okay. Absolutely and and as you know we do stream on YouTube so we have no idea who's who's watching it very likely the press could be watching. So make sure you were aware of that and thank you so much. Maxine we're not live yet. Oh I see actually I see it on mine. Oh I don't have it on mine. We are interested. Huh. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Great. So, so welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you. And I, and I want to thank everyone on the committee for allowing me to participate and share Emily's story. And I know that a certain incident or a certain case cannot determine law, but Emily's murder highlights a lot of the disconnects that were spoken about earlier this morning and actually thank you for letting me attend that because I found it quite informative. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that I firmly believe that, you know, when we talk about the people that we're talking about in S3. And I'm not really even sure of the correct term to use if it's mental health illness or mental health status or, or, you know, what the correct term is but I honestly believe when you talk about people that do have mental illness, that it is a very very small percentage of the population that is violent. I believe the majority, the vast majority of them are nonviolent. I believe that people belong in our community. But I do also think that there are the top I guess there's two lists of 10 or 12 laws where there are some violent offenses and I think that those need to be handled differently. I just want to explain to you what happened to Emily, what I've learned and I'm not a lawyer. There's a lot I have to learn I've been learning a lot. But I know that I still have a lot to learn so basically on the morning of January 18 that was Martin Luther King's day in downtown Bennington. And I'm not sure if you're all familiar with downtown Bennington but there's a little Riverwalk pathway by the Bank of Bennington. And it also goes by the Wulumsak housing apartments which has about 50 units for seniors. And it was 11 o'clock on a Monday morning and there was a home health nurse that was coming out of the side door of the Wulumsak apartments on the Riverwalk pathway. And she saw somebody suspicious hanging around in the tree areas and he scared her. So instead of walking down the path which she would have had to have gone to get to her car the bank was closed so her car was in the bank parking lot. She walked down the snowy grass into the backside of the parking lot got in her car called her parents and told her parents what was happening and said what should I do and her parents advised her to call 911. So she was on the phone with 911 explaining this when my daughter went walking up the walkway. And she watched who we now know to be Darren pronto. Stand up, pull up his baggy pants, run after my five foot to 120 pound daughter and he's probably about 510 511 goes a couple hundred pounds. But he ran up on her he tackled her from behind, he slit her throat, he got up, he ran away, and this was all narrated by a witness on a 911 call there was another witness in the area that heard Emily screaming and saw it. It was recorded on the Bank of Bennington video surveillance. It was recorded on a home surveillance surveillance and because of the 911 call one of the BPD officers was on his way to the call and actually caught Darren pronto a couple of minutes from the murder scene covered in Emily's blood with the knife with Emily's blood on it, bragging to the cops that yes he did what he did to Emily Grace and he can get away with it. And BPD came to the house to tell us and right from the get go and even in our conversations with state's attorney's office we were told to not expect jail time with him, even though you would think two eyewitnesses caught at the scene, covered in blood on video surveillance, but he is going to get away with premeditated murder. And like I said I had no idea who he was so I started to look into him. And when you have something like this happen it impacts your whole community so people from the community started to tell us stuff. One of the first things I learned was that in November of 2020, which was about two months before he murdered Emily. He had made a video on Facebook, laughing and claiming he's a murderer and he can get away with it. Laughing about the laws laughing about the police officer laughing at all of us. He's right he can he can get away with it because in 2015 he was arrested. And I learned this I thought he'd only been arrested arrested a couple of times, but I was fortunate enough to testify on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and Senator Sears read his police record. So in 2015 he was actually arrested. And the charge was false information which we all know was probably modified from something else. And he was released with mental health conditions to UCS. In 2016, he was arrested for domestic assault and released with mental health conditions to UCS. In 2016, he was again arrested for another domestic assault and released with stricter mental health conditions from UCS. And then in 2018 there was another incident, which he ended up going into the state hospital and you can't really find anything on that because of HIPAA. And let me just say I work in healthcare and I fully understand HIPAA and I respect HIPAA and I and I get while why we have HIPAA but that whole danger to self or others I do think needs to be at least a topic of conversation. In 2018 he was released from mental health from the state hospital. And again you can't find it except when you live in a small town like Bennington, you can find the victims and you can find out what happened. He was having a fight with his mother apparently one day and punching holes in walls and scared his neighbor. And the neighbor could hear through the walls all the arguing and the F bombs and everything and the mother pleading with him to stop punching the walls. And she got scared. So she waited she didn't call the police right away. She talked with one of the other neighbors they waited a couple of days and they called the police and the police came and they spoke with Darren Pronto and the mother outside. And the mother declined or denied everything not declined denied that anything ever happened said the neighbors would just we're just out to get them and the police officer left. Well, after that, he went over to the neighbor that called not the one the lady originally but the couple that was living next door. This is also reported in the paper somewhere. But he went over to them, and was yelling outside for quite a while threatening to beat the FNS out of them and calling him a lot of names and telling the man to come outside and they didn't they had called the police to come back. And during that time that it took the police to get there he was getting more and more angered and he actually broke in the door and he did it so violently that he knocked the door right off of the hinges. And he was in there assaulting them and threatening to kill them and threatening to slit their throats when the police came so they actually came and saved them, but there wasn't anybody there to save Emily. He went into the court system he went into the Department of Mental Health. This was when he got his first not competent finding or label or and again I'm not quite sure of the term and I don't want to misspeak, but anyway he got that first not competent. And he went into Department of Mental Health custody. And then he was basically released back into the community with nothing to just go and terrorize the community and he did. And he was terrorizing he made that video in November of 2020 and for months he had been terrorizing the new neighbors, and they had been calling the police. I know one couple actually called the police, the state police four times they only showed up twice. Some of this is hard to find but again small town I know his mother. And I'm not sure what's coming forth coming when things are happening like this because people are afraid that all of these disconnects in their system are going to bring him back to our community. So her son and his girlfriend actually had to go and get a stocking order on him. So he's out with mental health conditions. There's absolutely no follow up there's no requirement for him to continue with medications. He gets to self medicate using crack. And he goes and tells his mother basically three days before he's going to kill my daughter by scratching murder time into the dining room wall or table, and nobody does anything. He's just allowed to continue. And for I don't think that whatever, you know, I hate to play the what if game, you know what if this issue had been addressed a couple of years ago, whether it be legislatively, or through corrective health, but you know he, he was allowed to deteriorate and get increasingly more violent and threaten more and more people in our community, and it's all documented you can find it you can check either some of the the online newspapers or the banner, but he terrorized people when he lived in Bennington, he terrorized people when he lives down in Poundall, and he's basically a domestic terrorist because there's no political agenda, but there's a disconnect there that we need to do. We didn't do the right thing for my daughter, and we didn't do the right thing for the people in Poundall. And we're not doing the right thing for the people in Vermont because there's other cases like this that are happening. Now granted they may not be murders and again, I firmly firmly believe that people that have mental illnesses, it's a very very small percentage that are violent. Most people don't go around slitting people's throats, but we've enabled him, we have empowered him and we have enabled him to get more and more, more violent because there are no interventions that are that are working. So I want you to get in touch with BPD and watch the video. Like I said I've learned a lot I watched the Senate hearings. I watched and I know I'm not going to pronounce this right and I apologize but I believe it's Mr. Valerio, our defender general had testified and, and he had talked about things that the Vermont Supreme Court says about civil liberties and again I'm not a lawyer, but I'd like to know what the Vermont Supreme Court would have said to my daughter at her funeral about her civil liberties, don't they matter. Does the public not have a right to public safety, because if someone is a danger to themself, I would suspect that it would be easy to get them treatment but I know from some issues that we had with my daughter and her depression and suicidal thoughts that that's not always easy to get those services so, but I would like to know what he would say about or the Supreme Court would say about that with civil liberties I have to have some for protection and you know and I heard about constitutionality on the hearings and I heard that the attorney general and the defender general don't necessarily agree on some things as far as constitutionality and that's not for me because I'm not a lawyer and there's a lot of committee who are much better to answer that question but one thing that struck me that Mr. Rubin said was that he had looked at some other states and nobody else was really doing anything like this. And I just have to say that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. I really don't think there's anything you know wrong with Vermont being a leader. If you look nationally, these issues are becoming more and more common or maybe not more and more common maybe more and more reported on. But there's there's disconnects and we did not do the right thing we didn't do the right thing for the people in the state or the community. I think that we need to take a look at that and I really hope that that S3 gets some serious consideration and it does get get to a vote because it's not going to get any better and you know there's there's mention of that psychiatric or the Connecticut psychiatric security review board. And the great thing about that is that it's multidisciplinary. You know this is not a problem that one agency or one department can can solve and you know if you look at Department of Mental Health, they're looking at people and they're looking at getting people better. And if you look at the Department of Corrections, they want to keep people safe. And I really think that these departments and include dial or Vermont Care partners or anyone else that you want these agencies need to partner together because this, they're not geared to solve this individually. They're not going to do this without legislation. It has to be addressed and S3 isn't perfect. There's a lot of people that are going to come up and say you know there's an issue with this and that, but it's at least a start, because right now, these departments are allowing people to sometimes take advantage of the thing you know we're going to talk about getting a court ordered evaluation, you know, in a non competent. It's my understanding that the defense attorney can go and get somebody to evaluate and get a not competent prior to a court ordered evaluation. They have to just go with the first one they can get a couple two, three, four, however many they get until they get the result that they want. And I know that in the last hearing the defender general said that this bill gives the prosecution the ability to go shopping around for an expert. But it's my understanding that the prosecution only gets to get one one and done, they get you know one and they have to tell the defense. So if this is the case then maybe the defense attorney should just be able to get one and have to tell them, you know if we have something serious medically. Chances are we're going to go and get a second opinion there's nothing wrong with getting that in a court I think we owe it to the Vermonters in our state I think we owe it to public safety and I think we owe it to the people that are not getting the proper analysis through the Department of Mental Health. And one thing that I did learn was that there was a significant difference somebody had asked and I apologize I don't remember the names but somebody had asked about contracts for profit nonprofit services. Well, my understanding for my care partners overseas a bunch of individual contractors, but services are not the same and Erica Marthage testified that if she has somebody in Manchester that has mental issues mental health issues. And I'm going to Rutland because Rutland has a team. If somebody's having an issue, two people will come to the house. There's a shield an example of a woman there whose son has PTSD and, and he needs to stay medicated the mother has a hard time with him he gets violent. And the Rutland team did have to come and take him into protective. And I don't know like custody or what again I don't have great terms for a couple of days, and he takes his medicine and now she just has to say don't you know do I need to call your case worker and he'll comply and take the medicine and then he's doing better. And she's safer and net net the community safer, but we don't have that in in Bennington. And one thing that this bill will do with the forensic groups and stuff is it will take a look at that, because you should, as you know, we're paying for it taxpayers. We should have consistent services and we should have accountability for those services. dmh isn't handling it they can't handle it. It's too much for them and that's proven you take a look at my daughter's case. You know, he's got a lot of mental health conditions and he continues to get worse and worse and worse without intervention so it needs to be a cross collaboration. And maybe, maybe for profits the way to go, as opposed to nonprofit because if you have somebody that's for profit, and I'll be full disclosure I work for a food contract management company, but if I don't hold up my end of the contract. We are done and some of my clients will push us harder for results, as opposed to somebody who's nonprofit so regardless of what you do on that end, you need to take a look at those nonprofits, you need to hold them accountable. And I think looking at the services and seeing what's different, whether it's within the prisons, or without in the in the community. I think having better services in the prisons is going to help lower some of the. I think it just provides mental health services to some people who need it and I think that's a significantly lacking area so anyway, I just, I wanted to, to thank you for your time. I just wanted to leave you with a thought about perception and reality. I very, very, very much appreciate the opportunity to come here but when I look at Darren pronto's history. And I look at things like the Novak Novak case, I think it was where there was a couple of troopers, and the state had to settle for time served and probation. I don't agree with that on a couple of different things I think that number one, if, if Mr. Novak needs services he should get them. And the public needs to be safe and I think that that's just an example of where mental health DOJ can just collaborate and do better for us all so my perception has been that this issue has been spoken about and spoken about and spoken about. I spoke with a couple of people from Leahy's office, Senator Leahy's office, and they told me that everybody talks about all the lack of services down here but nobody does anything about it so you have the opportunity to do them. You see the problems, you hear them, I live on my family lives with them. Every day, we see Emily's picture instead of Emily, you have the opportunity to fix that because S3 is not going to do anything for me or my family, but hopefully, it will help people to understand whether it's the people that are struggling with the illness, or the people that the victims that if I am a victim I'm a little confused on that today, but anyway, thank you very, very much for hearing me out I do appreciate the opportunity and I thank you for everything that you do to help you Vermont safe I hope you pass S3, and I hope that everyone on the committee makes a commitment to public safety and mental health. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story and course we are all so sorry for for your loss and and I also really appreciate your, your ideas, your thoughts your, your really thinking about it as you said in your letter last night when we were who are going back and forth with our emails that you want to be part of a I can I see that and I and I really do do appreciate that and we'll be taking testimony this afternoon on Friday, we'll be spending quite a bit of time on this bill as well as will other committees so I do very much, very much appreciate your, your testimony. Are you, are you willing to take questions. If anybody has questions. I really want to be part of the solution I know people might not like what I have to say at times but I really do want to be part of the solution. This has been a, this has been a horrific experience for us the more that we find out the more frustrating it absolutely. Absolutely. And again one case should not define law, but one case can definitely highlight a lot of those disconnects that need to be addressed and and I just hope that this year. Unlike, you know, last year because of COVID and I really hope that some things addressed for future people, if not, there's going to be I guarantee you, he's going to get out, because there's nothing in the law that says that he can't. And when he gets out, I guarantee you there's going to be more bloodshed, there's going to be more violence, there's going to be more victims because he can, and we've empowered him. So but I'll take questions if anyone has one. Thank you. Not just check. I'm not seeing anybody. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay, Joanne Courtney Dick, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Yeah, that's correct. Can you hear me. Absolutely. Welcome. Thank you. I can't, I don't can't I can't get the video. Okay. That's okay. I'm not sure. Anybody have any suggestions or would you have a little extra. Oh, okay. I had, okay, I got a little, I got something here now. Okay, here I am. Hello. Hello. Nice to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good. Thank you. My name is Joanne Courtney Dick, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak in front of you today. I don't know if you all have seen my family statement or aware of my sister's case. That statement was written by my cousin and I, at the time, my sister's killer died. She was killed. She, my sister was resident of Burlington, Vermont. And she was very active in a community. She was a social worker. She worked at Howard Center. She worked with refugees. She was a single mom and an artist. She had a connection with a person who killed her, but it was a friend of hers. And she was brutally murdered in a house. Intrusion in 2010, and he came in and he tied her up, gagged her, ended up slitting her throat, stole her car and abandoned it in a state preserve somewhere I can't remember exactly. And she was, she wasn't, because she was a single mom single person, she was not found for several days. Because she did not show up at work on the Mondays when a check was done on her, a safety checked, and her body was found. She was later arrested on associated charges on break-ins. And he, when he was, when he was apprehended, they were able to get his computer on which he had, they showed that he had done searches for the knots that he used to tie her up. He had done a search of the obituary columns to see if her name had popped up. And that was at a time when nobody out, nobody, but he knew she was dead. So, I mean, it's clear from all the facts and is that this was a very deliberate action. And he knew what he was doing before and after the crime. So, it's kind of difficult to describe the whole thing because it was such a long process. It was over a period of nine years that he bounced from the correctional system into the mental health system. And eventually, because he ended up dying because he had physical issue. And so that's when the case disappeared. So we went through many, many iterations of the competency, non-competency issue with him. The reason I'm wanting to testify is I feel like I really understand what, how difficult this process is for victims to walk through. I am a lawyer and I have a cousin who's a lawyer who was also involved in looking at this case and following it all the way through. And I have a brother who was a correctional officer. So we understand a lot of the different nuances, whereas a lot of people who are victims have no way of understanding or knowing how to navigate the system. So my feeling is I want to do, as Kelly explained in her situation, as much as I possibly can do to help other people who are similarly situated. So any improvements in the victims rights area are very important for those people who are in our situation. My situation is quite different, think Kelly, because it went on for so, so many years and there were just so many different nuances going. The problem with this particular defendant was he was very high. He didn't have a lot of aspects to him that he was able to operate pretty in a normal capacity in a lot of cases. So he had a very high understanding of the legal system, and he used all of the disconnects that are present, some of which have to be because of the nature of the mental health situation. But he was very aware of what he was doing and how he handled his case all the way through. And once he got into the mental health system, that became much easier for him. And so I am really wanting to outline here a couple of the things that we observed over that time period, where we think there could be improvements that could help particularly in the case of like this, where the person is really highly has high abilities. And I'll say this because if you look at the history of how this evolved over the years, examining psychiatrists, treating psychiatrists, and even the judge at the competency hearing questioned continually whether his failure to cooperate was due to his deliberately trying to cooperate versus actually having a mental condition that caused him to be unable to aid in his own defense. So that was the problem we were getting reports that he was competent and then they would be prosecuted would bring in another expert who would say that he wasn't. And we just it just went on and on and on. I would encourage you to look at the entire statement because it'll give you a better idea of what we went through during those during that almost decade. And here are a couple things that I really wanted to point out. And some of this was mentioned by Kelly and her testimony. I think one of the big issues is when that person is moved into the mental health system that there are disconnects between the two systems, and that the focus and the mental health system is purely on giving the individual who has the mental health condition. And then on the other side, the, the, I'm sorry, I'm having a little migraine here right now. This is all very stressful, I'm sure you can understand. But so the disconnects are exacerbated by the fact that the communications are really cut off when someone goes into the mental health system. So it seems like the mental health system is doing what it wants to do to help the patient. And then the criminal side is inactive during that period because they aren't able to be active and they are not really hearing about what is going on on the other side. And so that's why I think the provisions of the bill that emphasize the communication and notice, not, not just to the victims but also the communications between the two systems that there could be a lot of corrections or improvements. We as victims only get at the communication that through the prosecutor's office through the state's attorney. And when the person is moved into the mental health system. We just don't hear anything. And, and you can imagine how it would be if something like this happened in your family, where you have your sisters been brutally murdered or your loved ones been brutally murdered. And all you know is the person who did it and there's quite a bit of evidence in and which came out when he was first ordered into the hospital that he clearly was the killer and, and also, obviously, as one of the representatives in the their discussion of the bill. The person is not convicted at that point but there's enough evidence to show that they're a harm to others that they are then hospitalized, which was the case with our, my sister's killer alleged killer. So, I'm sorry I can. So anyway, my point being is I feel like the more notice the more information that's flowing between the two systems, the better. And I know there are privacy issues here. I know there's hip issues here. But I feel like there's so much pushback whenever somebody is in a situation that almost anything that you would say about them or what's going on with them would be defended by we will give you that information because it's hip protected. So, I feel like this bill is really important step in the right direction. I really feel particularly for people like Kelly where the person was released and their notices were not given that we don't we weren't in that situation. Although he was released at the end of his life to go into the hospital and and there was no notice given to the public safety people when that happened or to us. So there are even even with these raw laws in place I feel like there can still be missteps, but I think feel like the more we communicate between those systems is going to see improvements with respect to getting that person actually to trial. And that's my second point. And that is as that I can see any effort at all on the mental health side to restore competency for the individual who is deemed incompetent. It is really only a focus on making sure that they are properly medicated, and that they. And then that there was a question there too of whether they want to be or not, or not want to be medicated, but it seems very little is is if anything is given to actually getting that person restored to that can return to try to be tried for their crime. And I know one of the representatives was a little confused about the two things but when someone is found non competent until they're found competent again they cannot still stand trial for their crime. We don't know in this case whether an insanity defense would ever been brought, but because and we waited nine years to see if that could happen, but it never did. So I feel like we talk, we're talking a lot about public safety and we're talking a lot about the interests of the accused, particularly those who have mental illnesses, but we don't talk about the interest of the family of the victim and the public in general to bring the accused to trial and particularly once they get caught up in the mental health system that just disappears. So, for us that was a long journey. And we never saw the end of it because of her staff, which gave us some. I'm not going to say relief because you know this incident never goes away. We never saw justice for her. But we're hoping that if some of these things are considered in the system. And especially on the mental health side, and if victims are given more of an opportunity to voice their concerns in the processes, I, I totally understand the privacy issues. But there was big there are other issues at in play here, not just not just this just defendants privacy issues. So I think that the section of the bill so the two things I really think the notice provisions are good. I think they could be even more strengthened more. But I know they'll be pushed back from a lot of different areas on now but I feel like if there's any information that could be given to victims during the process particularly when it goes on as long as it with our family that it could. So that would encourage the evolution of this legislation, not saying we can do it all at once but I think little pieces are good. I think the section on the forensic care working group event identifying the gaps between the two systems and looking at other states models is excellent. I really encourage that that there are two victims, witnesses, or excuse me two victims representatives now on that. In that bill it wasn't there when the bill was originally drafted. I will tell you I've been following this bill for two years. I testified last year in front of the Senate Committee on this bill it was set up bill 183 last year. And I think it's improved this year actually I think there's some things in here that really will be helpful to victims. But I so I encourage you got to as a good start to move forward with this. I feel like the one one thing that could be done with respect to the section of the bill that sets up the forensic care working group would be to also emphasize not only the treatment but the interests of the accused. And the interest of public safety but the one thing that I, we were so frustrated with which is the interest of the victims and the public in bringing the accused to trial. But it's not always going to be as frustrating for people as it was in our particular case and as Kelly said, you know one case doesn't, doesn't dictate how everything should go for the rest of time, but you learn a lot of lessons when you look at, at situations like Kelly's and situations that like my family. And then I'm sorry I'm a little disjointed here. But the final thing that I want to emphasize is just the general status of victims in the Vermont criminal system. And it's not just Vermont is other places as well. It's a struggle. And I would, I would say that to emphasize that the purpose that the stated purpose of the law is to protect the victims of the crimes. While balancing the crime victims rights with the criminal defendants rights so what I want to emphasize here is crime victims rights. In my experience, there is no balancing. There is no consequences associated with the failure to comply with the provisions relating to victims rights. Especially, I mean and it's understandable because when you, if you don't chip toe around the defendant, you know that defendant could end up going free. So you want to make sure that they're given all the due process they can possibly get, but, but who is being ignored in this mix, the person who was actually the most impacted by the actions of that that defendant. There are a lot of people who have loved ones who were who were injured, who were, who were all the different circumstances that could happen in a criminal case. And so, I just feel like, even though there is a law on the books that victims and victims families are still largely invisible in the process and once they get into the mental health system, they're silent. I would really urge you to take a good hard look at this legislation. I think it's a very good start. I think this focus group can really come up with some good suggestions. I know it's very difficult because there are so many different nuances that come up with all different kinds of cases, but I think we can do better. I don't want to see another family have to go through 10 years of the kind of thing. Well, you go through it for the rest of your life, but that's nothing to do with the system. The guy, the guy who murdered her is the one who was responsible, but it's what happens to him or her once they're in the system to get that person to stand for their crime and to give the family a little bit of comfort with respect to that. I feel so sorry for Kelly. I appreciate her testimony. I think she'd be a great advocate for your group. I'm willing to do whatever I can to help give input with respect to ongoing issues related to victims' rights. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so sorry for your loss and so appreciative of your testimony and your suggestions and your statement is posted. So we'll be able to refer to that. And again, thank you. Thank you so much for really shedding an important light on the victim and the victim's family, which I understand is not always a good thing. Thank you. One more thing I want to say is, and I know you guys have a lot of witnesses, but just listen to what Kelly and I are saying in terms of we have nothing to gain. Our people are dead. My sister's killer can never be brought to justice. We are, I mean, I've been, I've been, this has been a part of my life now for a decade. And we'll continue to be. I'm doing my, I'm doing volunteer work here in Colorado. This is where I live in the volunteer and the victims area, because I feel so strongly about the need for improvements. And I just hope you would take that into consideration when you're looking at making improvements because they are just really needed. Absolutely. We'll, we'll take all of your testimony into consideration again. I thank you. And I do see a hand up for you. Is it okay to take a question? Sure. Okay. Thank you. Barbara. Thank you so much. I, I think that your testimony and Kelly's testimony just make this all so vivid and real for us in a way that no one else can and I, I'm sorry, I can't imagine how hard this is. So, you had mentioned that the only communication you heard was from the state attorney. That's how we got our communication. We did get a few and we did get some information through the Attorney General's office. But, but he could only give us limited information. So I'm, I'm wondering, especially given your legal background in that your volunteer work also, what ideally would you like to see for communicate, like, what, what should that look like so that I, I can't, I'm not a legislative drafter and I know there's a lot of nuances here. Sure. Yeah, I listen to the testimony. I know there's a lot of people that are going to be telling you that any, any information that is protected and it's the, and talk a lot about the due process that writes that that that individual has and the agency writes. So what I'm going to say is not everything is hip and protected, not everything that goes on in those places is hip and protected. And, and I don't, and, and I know it's case by case and I'm not and so it becomes difficult to say, this is the standard that whenever these things happen notice should be given to the victims, but there should be some sort of liaison maybe that can work between the two systems with victims and consider the enter the competing interests there and know what needs to be said and what can't be said, and, and help the victim. The victim has no one helping them. I, I will qualify that though I have to say the victims advocates on the criminal side were amazing and I really really appreciated them. I, I looked at my emails over their 10 year period I felt I felt like that I mean I had an ongoing relationship with these these women. They were they could only give me the information they had, and I would ask we would ask specific pointed questions about what was going on with him. We would find out little bits and pieces to the extent they said we could hear it. He was doing things while he was in custody, he was gathering outside the on the grounds to bring them into the facility. He was investigating ways to open get the locks on the doors and the windows where he was on his computer. I mean, all this stuff is going on and we don't I mean we hear about it. Most of the time when we find things out would be something that was written in the press and I'm not going to say the press always has the correct information because I know that's not true. But when you're when you're sitting there and you're you've got a loved one who's been killed and you don't get to talk to her, and you don't, and you don't get to know what is going on with her killer. And you don't know whenever what the status of that's going to change you you get a call you get a text saying okay something's going on right now and then your world just changes. Well and it sounded like Kelly had to like hear from people in the community. So that was a common theme in both your testimony is information and communication and right who was available for you and you know what could have made an awful time, slightly better, you know what I mean. And I get it everybody the thing that I really really hit home for me was, everybody has their own individual interests in the case, and either protecting the person from a from a mental health perspective, bringing justice, you know getting the case going if they can't, it's stuck because he's in the mental health system so they're on to another case. So, the only one that has a consistent interest in what's going on is the victim. And so we'd like to see all of these different parts, connect more work together this is what Kelly was emphasizing in her testimony, and I'll emphasize it too. Don't just say I can't do this because blah blah blah. Let's look at the whole let's look at getting the person. Help them for goodness sakes if they're mentally all absolutely, but but also look at whether they truly are to in my case that's that was the real tricky, tricky thing, because he was he was not. He had a diagnosis of delusional disorder, but he was not does he was not diagnosis schizophrenic. So, it's going to be different for every different person, but somebody needs to look at all the pieces and help that victim through the process. And get that person to trial if they really this in this case, this this man should have been put on trial. I'm not saying that's always the case but in this case that he should have been and that was very frustrating for us. Right. I mean, it seems like, like I get there's no conclusion like up or down the trial, having a trial at least you have your day in court so to speak, you know. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you listening. I know I'm going on and on but you know I have been waiting so many years. And even while the processes, even while he was still in the process. I was looking and talking to people about maybe making some legislative changes. And so I, what you guys are doing is so important. It's so important for these people, the people who have no voices. And I repeat myself a little bit, I respect the fact that defendants has all the rights that they have and they need them. But please, please consider the people who are most impacted by the crime. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm not seeing any other questions again. Thank you. We appreciate your, your testimony. Okay, so representative Donna Hugh. Do next we only have 10 minutes. You're welcome to start what what works for you. I don't want to want to make sure we get all of your testimony. I think at this phase, my testimony, hopefully is not too lengthy, because I'm not, it's not, it's not about details or wordsmithing and so forth. It's kind of an overview of issues. Okay, great. And we will continue after the floor. I know you're busy with your committee but I hope you're able to come back so welcome. Thank you. Thank you, representative and Donna Hugh. And I want to start by saying I think they're really serious problems with our current forensic law system, both with gaps and with significant discrepancies within it, it has not been overhauled in, I don't know how long. We actually introduced a bill in 2019 to try to do some overhaul work that followed a work group that the legislature had established on the orders of non hospitalization, which then didn't receive any follow up from the legislature. And the bill included a fact finding mechanism that actually therefore enabled some of the actions that people would like to see happen. And I think it's, it's really critical in looking at this bill. You need to have the context of the full statute and understand the revisions that need to be made in the full statute because picking out just limited pieces is going to add to the disconnects and the discrepancies that exist. And at a minimum you need to look at them to avoid increasing discrepancies, like the little reference I made to DMH being the only one mentioned when in fact insanity and competence is not only about mental health and there's a lot of focus on mental illness but that is not the only part of the definition. So a couple of the brief examples. Another piece of the definition for mental disease or defect is a traumatic brain injury. However, there is no outcome for that possible if a person is found not competent or insane based on a traumatic brain injury. There's, there is no custody involved by anyone. There's no ability to place conditions, or, or anything if they've been found not competent or insane, and we don't even include in the definition dementia. So if a person with serious dementia commits a violent crime which does sometimes occur, there's no ability to place any conditions or restrictions like they have to have somebody with them so that they're supervised we understand that they, you know, they're not criminally liable. Do we want to wait to again have to do reactive law when that situation arises, or do we want to incorporate looking at that as as part of a holistic picture, and probably the best legal example of a conflict in the law, in terms of what's changed since 30 years is about 12 years ago we revised the laws in acknowledgement that when somebody's being sent for an evaluation, mental evaluation, that it, the judge should not order that to be an inpatient evaluation unless the person actually needs to be in a hospital. The evaluation may need to take place in corrections it may happen in the community, but it shouldn't occur in a hospital unless they need to be in a hospital because our hospitals are not intended anymore to be correctional facilities, or just for the purpose of holding someone. But when we did that we didn't we were not consistent in other parts of the statute so the section that was just referenced by Eric this morning about the revocation of an order of non hospitalization. If someone is not following the conditions, and the court, then has jurisdiction and the court can order hospitalization has absolutely no relationship to whether hospitalizations appropriate. And if you don't look at that but just include the notification to the court that a person's not following their own age the court can pull that person in and order them into the hospital. I can tell you our hospital system which is already overloaded is not the right person for somebody who doesn't need that level of care and treatment. Now there may be a lot of other things that need to happen that may not be happening now. But being hospitalized if they don't need hospital care is not the appropriate answer and that would be the current statutory effect. The last thing I just want to mention in terms of you know highlights overview to what you have in front of you is I think the forensic work group which is critically important because this is not a task that could be taken on in a few weeks time on zoom. But it has to have the right people on it, and I think they're key ones who are missing. It has to have the right amount of time to do the work and August to November does not meet that. And it has to have the right charge in terms of what it ought to be doing. Right now, there are parts that are specific enough that it's actually sort of skews the outcome in terms of truly being an evaluation of what ought to happen and I will reference at this point I have a UVM intern, who is looking at various states to really handle this so that there's some ability to say okay, here are different models, not just here is a model that we think is the one that we ought to be do replicating in Vermont without looking at how different states handle it. So that's that's my, that's my quick overview I think there's a lot here there's a lot that needs to be done, but it's really important to do it right and by picking out things in isolation. There's a really significant risk of making things much worse in the interim. Thank you. Yeah, thank you and I appreciate your testimony and I'm hoping that your committee will will look at, look at the working group. But at the very least I really welcome your, your thoughts on who, who should be on it who you know who isn't on it as well as, as well as the charge in the, in the timeline and, and perhaps that will come from your committee. In a lot of ways that's the easier part. Right and trying to, you know grapple with the the underlying statutes but. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Questions, Barbara I see your hand up that might have been from before. Any other questions. Okay, well thank thank you and thank you everybody it's been I actually, I'm sorry I need to make one thing I did not mean and I think from some comments that may have been understood. I did not mean in any way to suggest that there are not victims involved. And I think that that may have been misunderstood by comment I made. You know, I think that sort of thing is really easily remedied by simply saying a victim of a crime for which the person has been charged. You know that that result but there's I mean there's no question about there being a victim. I just think we shouldn't. I think that the answers are completely clear as to somebody who has not been convicted as to whether we're in a sense saying we're convicting you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for that, for that clarification. Okay. All right, again, thank you everybody. It's been a long morning but certainly very, very important and only a start of the conversation. I'm not sure how long will be on the floor. My understanding is we are only looking at one thing today so 15 minutes after the floor we will continue working on the bill and I really appreciate them. The witnesses that will be hearing from in the afternoon and, and possibly Friday for for your flexibility. So, hey, thank you. So, Evan if we could please go off you too.