A Senate panel has worked out stumbling blocks for a bill to prevent people already sentenced for major crimes from earning “good time” that shortens their prison terms. However, people sentenced in the future could earn good time.
The legislation, S.18, gained initial approval Wednesday on a voice vote with almost no debate during a virtual Senate session held over Zoom. If the measure wins final passage Thursday, it moves to the House for consideration. It appeared only two of the 30 senators opposed the revision: Sen. Jeannette White, D-Windham, and Sen. Kesha Ram, D-Chittenden.
A bill passed last session allowed people sentenced for any type of crime to earn time off their prison terms at a rate of seven days a month.
Some victims of violent crimes expressed outrage at that change; they wanted the people who hurt them to serve their full sentences. Often, crime victims have a voice when sentencing is being passed, and they objected to changing the penalty they’d agreed to.
The Senate bill would keep existing sentences intact for those convicted of major crimes, but allow good time for people sentenced after the change was adopted.
“It’s a difficult bill because it’s difficult to admit you made a mistake,” Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said during a hearing last week.
“If you’re going to change the rules of a ball game, you usually don’t do it in the middle of the game.”
The Senate committee agreed to recommend that people already convicted of serious violent crimes — such as murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and voluntary manslaughter — are not allowed to earn time off their prison terms. White was the only committee member to vote against the change.
“You have to remember that this doesn’t guarantee release, only the ability to have a hearing” on whether a prisoner should be released, she said. “I do also trust the parole board to make decisions.”
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A “compassionate release” provision in the legislation, which prompted a great deal of debate last week, would have allowed prisoners age 65 years old and over — and who had already served at least five years of their sentences — to become eligible for parole. Compassionate release has been stripped out of the new bill.
White urged the committee to uphold compassionate release, again arguing that any prisoner must go before the parole board before being set free.
Sears wanted to see a compassionate release system that was based on a prisoner’s medical condition, rather than based on age and the amount of a sentence served.
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‘It’s difficult to admit you made a mistake,’ lawmaker says of prison bill - vtdigger.org
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