Vermont AG’s office tells Judiciary committee H.118 would let hate-crime law cover targets who aren’t the technical property victims

Julio Thompson, an assistant attorney general and co-director of the Civil Rights Unit at the Vermont Office of the Attorney General, told the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 27 that H.118 would remove a technical barrier in state hate-crime law so incidents motivated by bias can be prosecuted or addressed even when the legal victim is the owner of damaged property rather than the people targeted by the bias.

Thompson said the statute enacted in 1989 (cited in the hearing as 13 VSA 14 55, with the original enacting provision at 13 VSA 14 54) ties the hate-motivation element to the named victim of the underlying crime and that linkage can prevent certain incidents from qualifying as hate crimes. "Under existing law, we are restrained," Thompson said, describing examples such as vandalism of a school bus or a rented home where the owner, not the targeted occupants, is the technical victim of the property crime.

The committee heard that the Office of the Attorney…