Senate sends domestic terrorism bill, with changes, back to the House

By Alan J. Keays, VTDigger.org

The Senate has volleyed back to the House domestic terrorism legislation after making some changes to the measure approved by that chamber a day earlier.

And the Senate passed a separate measure Thursday creating a commission to study what constitutes an “attempt” crime in Vermont, a task that proved too complex for lawmakers to advance in the waning days of the session.

The Senate action is the latest in a series of drafts, rewrites and amendments taken up over recent weeks as lawmakers work to craft legislation in response to an alleged school shooting plot authorities say they foiled, but has the suspect facing only misdemeanor charges.

The Senate voted 27-0 on Thursday afternoon in favor of a newer version of the domestic terrorism bill, paring down a House definition of what constitutes the taking of “substantial steps” a suspect would need to engage in before law enforcement could act to thwart a mass attack.

The newly passed Senate legislation, which that body took up after suspending rules to allow it to be brought to the floor a day early, now heads back to the House where members of that chamber will decide whether to approve the latest revisions.

“This is an instance where work that continues in this policy area is not only really complicated,” Senate President Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden said, “but also being crafted in an environment where people have anxieties and concerns about public safety.”

He said the latest proposal gets “right to the heart of the matter,” without taking steps that would lead to “unintended consequences.”

Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that the more concise definition of “substantial steps” in the latest version of the bill is in keeping with the structure of other Vermont laws.

The House version passed Wednesday was patterned more after the model penal code, providing several examples of what a possible “substantial step” could be, such as lying in wait or scoping out a location prior to a planned attack.

“Your committee on judiciary felt comfortable in taking out that section,” Sears told his Senate colleagues.

Senators went back to the version they unanimously passed in March, which states in one sentence: “Substantial step” means “conduct that is strongly corroborative of the actor’s intent to complete the commission of the offense.”

Both the House and Senate versions of the bill start out the same when defining domestic terrorism, saying it means, “engaging in, or taking substantial steps to commit” a crime with the intent of causing death or serious injury to multiple people.

However, the bill that passed on a voice vote by the House also included taking substantial steps to commit a crime with the intent to “place any civilian population in reasonable apprehension of death or serious bodily injury.”

The version adopted Thursday by the Senate changes that wording to “threaten any civilian population with mass destruction, mass killings, or kidnapping,” which is closer to how it passed the Senate in April.

The legislation stems from a Vermont Supreme Court ruling in April in the case of an 18-year-old Poultney man arrested in mid-February after police said he wanted to shoot up his former high school in Fair Haven.

The high court’s ruling cast strong doubt on whether the attempted murder charges brought against Jack Sawyer could continue to stand.

The court ruled that based on more than 100 years of case law in Vermont, merely planning a crime does not meet the standard for attempt crime.

Prosecutors have since dropped the most serious charges against Sawyer, leaving only two misdemeanor charges pending. He could still be jailed for up to three years.

The high court suggested to lawmakers that if they want to avoid a similar situation from arising again, they should make changes to the state’s attempt law.

Gov. Phil Scott also called on the Legislature to act quickly to make such changes.

The result has been the domestic terrorism legislation, which moved forward after the Senate and later the House both decided against moving forward this session on rewriting the language of the state’s attempt statute which would have affected many more crimes.

Asked Thursday at his weekly press conference if he believed the domestic terrorism legislation advancing in the Legislature closed loopholes he saw in the law, the governor replied, “I think it helps out.”

He added, “I mean there’s different views on what it does and doesn’t do, but I think this domestic terrorism bill will help. And there may be some other opportunities in a future legislature, but once again this is a good step forward.”

Meanwhile, prior to acting on the domestic terrorism legislation on Thursday, the Senate passed a measure calling for the Vermont Sentencing Commission to, among other tasks, look at “a redefinition of what constitutes an attempt in Vermont criminal law.”

The legislation also called on the commission to “develop responses to the significant impacts that increased opioid addiction have had on the criminal justice system.”