Vermont attorney general outlines office role, limits and offers homicide help amid court backlog

Attorney General Clark told the Judiciary committee the attorney general’s office focuses its prosecutorial resources on the most violent crimes, offers assistance to county state's attorneys on homicide cases and operates a small criminal unit that handles a disproportionate share of the state’s most serious felony prosecutions.

Clark said the office’s criminal division is small and specialized and that the attorney general’s statutory charge to “represent the state” has been interpreted to include homicides. “We have 14 independent county prosecutors who are elected in their counties and serve four year terms. In addition, we have a statewide attorney general who has concurrent jurisdiction,” Clark said. “There is one charge in particular that is explicitly named in the statute … it is homicide.”

The nut graf: Clark emphasized that Vermont’s prosecution system is intentionally divided and collaborative: county state's attorneys handle the bulk of criminal work in their counties, while the attorney general’s office maintains statewide capacity for complex, violent felonies and for specialized units such as the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.

Clark described staffing and structure. She said the office employs “about a hundred assistant attorneys general,” most of whom advise and defend state agencies in civil matters; the criminal unit currently has four attorneys with six authorized positions, and ICAC investigators and support staff are housed in the attorney general’s office. Clark said Medicaid-fraud work is largely federally funded and housed in a separate unit (funded about 75 percent by the federal government) and that ICAC handles a “huge percentage” of the criminal division’s caseload because of child sexual-abuse material investigations.

Committee members asked how the AG’s office and county prosecutors coordinate on homicides and other serious cases. Clark said there is a standing offer from the AG’s office to assist or take homicide prosecutions and that staff typically make contact by phone or conversation with the relevant state's attorney: “When there’s a homicide, we always offer our services … If they decline, we respect that. If they don’t, we’ll team up with them.” She added that in practice the office will be more active in counties that are “struggling for one reason or another.”

On capacity, Clark said the office “does a lot with a little,” describing it as one of the smaller statewide attorney general offices nationally. She said trials are rare for the office — “trial is extremely unusual” — and that most cases are resolved without jury trial, so shifting large volumes of county caseload to the AG’s office is not a function the office can take on without additional staffing.

The AG identified the Internet Crimes Against Children task force as a major workload driver: Clark said ICAC produced over a thousand cyber tips last year and that a backlog in investigative capacity can delay responses to those tips. She described one operational benefit used in ICAC investigations — matching known files with a hash value so investigators do not need to view previously identified graphic material repeatedly.

Several legislators pressed Clark on whether the AG’s office could take additional cases to ease county backlogs. Clark said the office will “always offer to help” and can take more homicides with additional staffing, but she reiterated that most criminal matters by design route to county prosecutors and that any such shift would be a policy choice for counties and the Legislature.

Ending: Clark closed by reaffirming collaborative practices with state's attorneys, courts and law enforcement, and by urging that resources be considered to address statewide public-safety needs while preserving local prosecutors’ role in their communities.