Judiciary committee reviews Senate amendment to H.41 to clarify fetal-remains handling under Title 18

The House Judiciary Committee met May 6 and reviewed the Senate’s proposed amendment to H.41, which rewrites subsection B so that violations of the statute addressing abuse of a dead body are applied in a way that preserves Title 18’s treatment of fetal remains and keeps certain disposal violations as civil penalties rather than criminal charges.

Committee counsel and outside witnesses said the change was intended to respond to testimony that similar statutes in other states had been used to prosecute people who experienced miscarriages or stillbirths. Ben Dobrowski of the Office of Legislative Counsel told the panel the Senate wording “isn’t very large, but it’s notable,” and explained the drafting change shifts the focus from enumerated acts to a cross-reference that preserves the Title 18 permit and disposition scheme.

The change replaces a list of prohibited acts tied to “for the purpose of concealing a crime or avoiding apprehension” with language that treats a violation of subsection A (prohibiting intentional mutilation, burning, disfigurement, dismemberment or destruction of a dead body) committed for those purposes as an elevated offense, while keeping the separate statutory scheme that governs fetal deaths in Title 18. Dobrowski said that approach was meant to “keep that distinction as recognized in Title 18” and to avoid creating a separate criminal pathway for conduct already covered by Title 18’s fetal-remains provisions.

Planned Parenthood testified it had worked with legislative counsel and the bill sponsor to refine the language. Jessica Farquis, identified as representing the Planned Parenthood Vermont Action Fund, said the organization worried that “abuse-of-corpse laws [were] being used in other states to really criminalize pregnancy complications or abortions,” and that the amended language and the Title 18 handling of fetal remains “remedies our concerns.”

Committee members and counsel discussed the relevant case law. Counsel cited State v. Chambers, 144 Vt. 234 (1984), explaining the Vermont Supreme Court found the statutes governing disposition of fetal remains and dead bodies operate together so that, for purposes of the burial-permit requirement, it was “irrelevant whether the buried body was a dead person or a fetal death.” Counsel said the amendment’s drafting keeps the statutory distinction explicit and avoids subjecting fetal remains matters to a separate criminal prosecution under Title 13.

The committee discussed penalties included in the statutes as context: counsel noted the general burial/disposition violations under Title 18 can carry up to five years and fines historically tied to that chapter, while the abuse-of-a-dead-body provisions, as amended, retain the elevated penalties for aggravated circumstances (cited in committee discussion as exposure to terms up to 15 years and fines up to $10,000 for specified elevated subsections). The committee did not change penalties in the discussion on May 6; counsel said the amendment clarifies placement of fetal-remains handling in Title 18 and switches certain language to describe civil penalties rather than criminal fines where the House had earlier reduced criminal exposure to a monetary sanction.

No final vote was taken; the chair said the committee expects the Senate amendment formally on the notice calendar within days and that the committee will consider a motion to concur when it receives the official Senate amendment packet.

The committee heard from counsel and advocacy groups and flagged a technical grammar issue in the draft for later clean-up; no formal legislative action was recorded on May 6 other than the committee’s plan to take up a concurrence motion when the amendment is formally transmitted.

For readers: the change aims to preserve the statutory structure in Title 18 that distinguishes fetal deaths from deaths of persons and to avoid unintended criminalization of people who handle fetal remains outside Title 13’s criminal scheme. The committee will consider formal concurrence once the Senate amendment is on the official notice calendar.