House Judiciary hearing highlights debate over S.12 sealing and expungement framework

Marshall Paul of the Office of the Defender General testified Thursday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing that S.12, the committee’s sealing-and-expungement bill, reduces confidentiality for criminal records by eliminating petition‑based expungement and converting some automatic expungements to petition-based sealing.

Paul told the committee the bill expands which offenses may be sealed compared with current law but said the expansion is modest and that an earlier draft, H.762 (2024), would have applied confidentiality much more broadly. “S.12 eliminates petition‑based expungement,” Paul said. “We think that expungement — petition based expungement — is the gold standard. It means the physical destruction of all the files related to a charge.”

Paul and other witnesses described three central concerns: (1) petition‑based expungement would be removed under S.12, reducing actual destruction of records; (2) sealing leaves records accessible to agencies and therefore vulnerable to misuse or exposure; and (3) storing sealed files electronically increases the risk that highly sensitive materials (for example, pre‑sentence reports, psychological evaluations, or public defender applications with Social Security numbers) could be exposed by hacking. Paul cited recent ransomware incidents in other jurisdictions and the University of Vermont Medical Center to argue that electronic records are under daily attack and that true confidentiality requires deletion, not merely sealing.

On numeric scope, Paul summarized his analysis of Vermont statutes and estimates: the state has about 267 felonies on the books; under current law roughly 240 are not expungible and about 14 are expungible, S.12 would raise expungible felonies to roughly 35, while the H.762 draft would have rendered about 192 felonies sealable and only 62 not sealable. He also said under current law 42 misdemeanors are not expungible; S.12 would reduce that number to 19 and H.762 would have reduced it to about 11.

Witnesses discussed access rules in S.12. Paul said the bill permits law‑enforcement, prosecutors and defense counsel to seek sealed records — a change he called constitutionally necessary if records are only sealed rather than destroyed. He recommended a robust judicial check on access requests: courts should review and authorize use of sealed files rather than permitting open, unconditional access by criminal justice agencies. “If you’re going to have confidential records, you’ve got to be clear about who can access them and when and for what purposes,” Paul said.

Court operations testimony described how sealed records are handled in the state case management system (Odyssey). A court operations witness (identified in testimony as the court operations representative) said sealed records are phased behind a confidentiality code in Odyssey and that most newer files are electronic; paper files created before the Odyssey conversion (cited as 2020) remain a limited legacy workload. The court representative noted the sealing process is substantially similar to the prior expungement process in staff time and steps and asked the legislature to consider resource implications if filings spike.

Committee members raised practical and policy questions: would sealing reduce use of deferred sentences; how access rules would affect investigations; and whether automatic expungements for people convicted as young adults (ages 18–21) should remain automatic rather than petition‑based. Paul objected to converting existing automatic expungements into petition processes and urged restoring or expanding automatic confidentiality where appropriate.

Court and judiciary witnesses confirmed the courts already perform frequent sealing/expungement work and provided a fiscal‑year ’24 caseload figure: 9,324 sealing and expungement actions that year with the largest single category identified as non‑conviction petitions (about 4,591). The court operations witness said the courts can implement sealing in Odyssey and can apply confidentiality coding, but if filings rise sharply the judiciary would need to request additional resources.

No formal committee votes were recorded in the transcript excerpt; the hearing included questions and follow‑up requests from committee members and concluded with the committee taking a short break.

Ending: Committee discussion continued around narrowing or clarifying access exceptions, preserving deferred‑sentence expungements and restoring some automatic confidentiality provisions; witnesses urged clearer statutory rules for who may access sealed records, explicit definitions of “use” versus mere “access,” and protections for sensitive documents to reduce exposure risk from electronic data breaches.