Attorney General presses for compromise on S.12 to expand sealing of criminal records

Attorney General Erin told the Senate Judiciary Committee on S.12 on Oct. 12 that her office supports moving from a system of piecemeal expungement to a broader sealing regime and urged lawmakers to resolve a small number of technical and access issues so the bill can pass.

The attorney general told senators her office runs expungement clinics and said those clinics inform her view that sealing helps people secure jobs, participate in community life and move on with their lives. “We are the lawyer to the state in a nutshell,” she said, describing the office’s role and experience handling criminal and civil matters. She said the office has about 150 staff and roughly 100 lawyers and that a Medicaid-fraud unit is largely federally funded.

The proposal in S.12 would expand the set of records that become sealed, reduce reliance on the current patchwork of expungement mechanisms and, ideally, create an automatic sealing process. The attorney general described “super sealing” as a particular point of contention: one draft would make sealed records inaccessible to everyone except the defendant after 10 years; other proposals would allow law enforcement access after a court motion by a state's attorney for narrowly defined uses (for example, cold-case investigations or major criminal conspiracies) to avoid prejudicial roadside disclosures.

Committee members pressed on several detailed issues. Senators raised questions about which categories of records should be sealed (for example, dismissed cases or certain regulatory/licensing records), whether licensing and Office of Professional Regulation (OPR) exceptions should change (the committee indicated it does not intend to open new exceptions), and the roadside-safety concern posed if officers cannot see older convictions during stops. The attorney general said those are the remaining “5%” of issues preventing passage after many prior sessions of negotiations and asked stakeholders for compromises to get a bill the governor will sign.

The attorney general and senators also discussed administrative and technology hurdles: the state crime-information system and court software that store conviction data may not easily support a new sealing model and could be a speed bump depending on required changes. She noted further that sealing statutes are currently uneven in practice, citing a $90 fee for DUI sealing that is not applied uniformly and an exception for sealing records of people who were under 25 at the time of the offense.

Committee members and the attorney general discussed outreach and testimony. The attorney general said her office has partnered with local agencies for clinics (naming Franklin County and St. Albans) and suggested witnesses from local service providers — she mentioned Good Samaritan House and an organization referenced as a local partner (Janice/Jenna’s Promise) — as people who could speak to the real-life impacts of sealing. Senators indicated they want defense-bar and judiciary input on technical impacts; the attorney general said several defense and judiciary stakeholders have been contacted and she expects further testimony.

No formal action or vote occurred on S.12 during the hearing. Committee members requested follow-up: additional stakeholder testimony, clarifications on categories to be sealed, and assessments of court and law‑enforcement data-system impacts. The attorney general and staff said they will continue working with the committee and other stakeholders to resolve the outstanding issues and return with refined language and witnesses.

The discussion also included brief references to other matters the attorney general’s office handles, including the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the consumer assistance program housed at the University of Vermont, and the office’s role representing state agencies in litigation. Those items were background to the S.12 discussion and did not produce committee votes.

The committee did not set a vote date. Members asked the attorney general to coordinate schedule availability and to bring additional witnesses and technical clarifications at a subsequent hearing.