Justia Vermont Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Defendant Theodore Colehamer appealed two convictions by jury: (1) felony driving under the influence (DUI), fourth offense; and (2) misdemeanor eluding a police officer. He contended the trial court abused its discretion in denying defense counsel the opportunity to ask a question of potential jurors at voir dire, that it made multiple errors on evidentiary rulings, and that it improperly selected a jury foreperson. He also argued the eluding conviction should have been vacated because he did not violate the statute’s plain terms. After review, the Vermont Supreme Court concluded the court did not abuse its discretion on any of the evidentiary or jury issues but agreed with defendant that he did not elude law enforcement as charged. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the DUI conviction and vacated the eluding conviction. View "Vermont v. Colehamer" on Justia Law

In 2018, the State charged defendant Larry Labrecque with multiple counts of sexual assault, including the aggravated sexual assault of a child. He remained held without bail through his trial, which commenced on May 9, 2022. A total of approximately 45.5 months passed between charging and trial. In that time, the parties engaged in ample motion practice, "and a global pandemic occurred." At a May 12, 2020 status conference, defense counsel argued that due process required defendant’s release, citing to his nearly 2-year detention pending trial and “the judiciary’s inability to honor [his] speedy-trial rights.” On October 20, 2020, defendant moved to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial, which was denied on December 7. The criminal division determined that the length of delay, approximately 28 months at the time, was sufficient to trigger full consideration of the balancing test set forth in Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 (1972), but that the factors together did not weigh in favor of finding a speedy-trial violation. Defendant would file multiple motions for bail review in 2021; no due-process violations were found, and his pretrial detention continued. In November 2021, the criminal division scheduled a jury draw for January 10, 2022. On January 4, 2022, the criminal division granted defendant’s unopposed motion to continue the trial and rescheduled the trial to start on February 8, 2022. On February 8, the criminal division continued the trial because a necessary State witness was unavailable. Defendant declined to waive his Confrontation Clause rights to allow the witness to testify remotely. A jury was drawn on May 5, 2022 and the trial was held from May 9 to May 13. The jury returned a guilty verdict on the lesser-included charge of sexual assault. On August 5, defendant moved for judgment of acquittal in which his sole argument was that his speedy-trial right had been violated. The criminal division concluded that defendant’s right to a speedy trial was violated and dismissed the case against him with prejudice. Considering all the Barker factors, the Vermont Supreme Court concluded that defendant was not deprived of his right to a speedy trial and reversed the criminal division's dismissal. View "Vermont v. Labrecque" on Justia Law

Defendant Austin White appealed the suspension of his driver’s license. He argued that the trial court abused its discretion in admitting the results of an evidentiary blood-alcohol test because the State did not offer sufficient evidence to demonstrate that defendant’s blood sample was collected and analyzed in compliance with Department of Public Safety (DPS) rules. The Vermont Supreme Court concluded there was indeed an insufficient foundation to allow admission of the test result. The Court therefore reversed and remanded for entry of judgment for defendant. View "Vermont v. White" on Justia Law

Defendant Devan Calabrese appealed the criminal division’s denial of his motion to suppress evidence of a cartridge found at his girlfriend’s house following a remand from the Vermont Supreme Court. He argued the trial court exceeded the scope of the remand in Vermont v. Calabrese (Calabrese I), 268 A.3d 565, by finding that the search did not occur within the curtilage of the home, and that the evidence did not support the court’s findings that, even if within the curtilage, the trooper’s search did not exceed the trooper’s license to enter the property to conduct a welfare check. Finding no reversible error, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed. View "Vermont v. Calabrese" on Justia Law

G.C. brings this interlocutory appeal from a family division order denying his request for youthful-offender status. The State charged youth with felony sexual assault in October 2021. On appeal, G.C. argued the evidence did not support the court’s finding that there was insufficient time to meet youth’s treatment and rehabilitation needs. After review of the family division order, the Vermont Supreme Court found no reversible error and affirmed. View "In re G.C." on Justia Law

In August 2018, following a "series of unfortunate events," defendant Jeffrey Young fired multiple nine-millimeter rounds from inside his home toward the front door. Defendant’s adult son, and his son’s two friends were standing on the porch. His son was struck by one bullet, but the wound was not life-threatening. Defendant was arrested soon afterward and arraigned. He pled not guilty to charges including attempted second-degree murder, attempted voluntary manslaughter, aggravated domestic assault with a deadly weapon, and reckless endangerment. Following a weight-of-the-evidence hearing, the court granted the State’s motion to hold defendant without bail pending trial. In March 2020, all jury trials were paused in Vermont as part of the state's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 22, 2020, defendant requested a speedy trial for the first time. On June 17, 2020, defendant filed a pro se letter informing the trial court that he was unhappy with his current counsel and alleging that the attorney who represented him at arraignment had waived his speedy-trial right without his consent. On June 30, 2020, defendant, through counsel, filed an omnibus motion again asserting a violation of his speedy-trial right and seeking an immediate trial. The court denied the motion on August 25, 2020. Ultimately, the case proceeded to trial on November 1, 2021, approximately thirty-eight months and two weeks after his arrest, and fourteen months after the order denying his omnibus motion for a speedy trial. The jury returned guilty verdicts on attempted voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, and two counts of reckless endangerment. Following sentencing in April 2022, defendant appealed seeking to overturn his convictions because the State had violated his speedy-trial right as guaranteed under the U.S. and Vermont Constitutions. The Vermont Supreme Court was persuaded that no speedy-trial violation occurred in this case principally because of defendant’s twenty-month delay in first asserting the right, the unavoidable delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and defendant’s failure to allege that the State prosecuted him with anything other than reasonable diligence. View "Vermont v. Young" on Justia Law

Defendant Chavis Murphy was convicted by jury of second-degree murder following a jury trial. He argued on appeal that the trial court erred by: (1) denying his motion for judgment of acquittal; (2) denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained as a result of a warrantless ping of his cell phone; (3) failing to sua sponte give a limiting instruction on evidence of flight; and (4) denying his motion for new trial. The Vermont Supreme Court concluded that defendant was not entitled to a judgment of acquittal. The Court further held that, while defendant had a legitimate privacy interest in his real-time cell site location information under Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution, the warrantless ping was justified by exigent circumstances, and defendant’s motion to suppress was therefore properly denied. The Court affirmed in all other respects. View "Vermont v. Murphy" on Justia Law

Petitioner K.C. Myers challenged the trial court’s determination that his exclusion from the earned-time program for a disqualifying offense did not violate the Ex Post Facto Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Petitioner was accused of committing burglary on August 17, 2019, almost two months after the original earned-time bill, 2019, No. 56, §§ 1-9, was signed into law. He was arraigned in March 2020 and pled no contest on May 2020, receiving a two-to-five-year prison sentence. Petitioner was serving a suspended sentence for lewd and lascivious conduct with a child when he received the burglary sentence. Petitioner, like all others in prison meeting the standards set forth in 2019, No. 148 (Adj. Sess.), § 14, became eligible for earned time starting on January 1, 2021. The earned-time program was again amended by 2021, No. 12, § 2, which became effective on April 26, 2021. The central question in this appeal was whether the effective date of the earned-time program or the enactment date of the statute mandating its creation controlled for the purposes of an ex-post-facto analysis. Because the Vermont Supreme Court agreed with the trial court that the program’s effective date controlled, and, therefore, petitioner’s disqualification from the program did not offend the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on ex-post- facto laws, judgment was affirmed. View "Myers v. Baker, et al." on Justia Law

Defendant Dean Stearns pled guilty in 2018 to five counts of voyeurism and two counts of promoting a recording of sexual conduct. He was sentenced in 2020 to an aggregate term of ten to fifteen years suspended, except five years to serve. Defendant appealed the denial of his motion for sentence reconsideration, arguing the trial court abused its discretion by: (1) failing to apply individualized sentencing factors; (2) not considering how changes to incarceration conditions during the pandemic adversely affected the ability to achieve sentencing goals; and (3) upholding a sentence that had been effectively increased due to pandemic-era restrictions. The State contended, among other things, that defendant’s motion for sentence reconsideration was properly denied because sentence reconsideration did not include review of post-incarceration matters and defendant sought relief based on post-incarceration circumstances. To this the Vermont Supreme Court agreed and affirmed primarily on that basis. View "Vermont v. Stearns" on Justia Law

Defendants A.P. and Z.P. were charged by the Franklin County Vermont State’s Attorney’s Office with multiple serious criminal offenses in April 2020. The State’s Attorney’s Office discovered a conflict of interest, and the Vermont Attorney General’s Office (AGO) took over prosecuting the case. In December 2020, the AGO determined that there was insufficient evidence to support the charges and on December 30, 2020, dismissed all pending charges against defendants. In January 2021, defendants moved to seal the criminal cases under 13 V.S.A. § 7603(a)(1)(B). The AGO filed a notice on January 27, 2021, indicating that it did not object to the sealing requests. Consequently, on January 28, 2021, the criminal division issued an order sealing the underlying criminal dockets. The orders indicated that they applied to “all court files and records, law enforcement records, fingerprints, and photographs applicable to the proceeding” and directed that “[a]ll agencies and officials in custody of such documents shall comply.” The issue in this appeal was whether the Vermont Journalism Trust (VJT) could access sealed records from a criminal division proceeding. The trial court denied VJT’s request for access to records that were previously sealed on the ground that access was not permitted by statute and the court lacked discretion to override the statutory provision. The Vermont Supreme Court concluded that VJT lacked standing to appeal that order and dismissed the appeal. View "Vermont v. Z.P. & A.P. (Vermont Journalism Trust, Appellant)" on Justia Law