Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs cites 23,000 pending cases, urges use of Rule 48 and proposes staffing to clear backlog

The Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs told the Senate Judiciary on Jan. 14 that the statewide pending caseload is about 23,000 cases and urged judges and prosecutors to use existing procedures — including Rule 48 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure — to remove aged, low-priority misdemeanors from dockets.

The issue matters because the department said the pending caseload is straining courtroom time and staff across 14 counties and that a combination of high felony trial volume and limited physical courtroom capacity makes clearing older misdemeanor dockets difficult. The department also outlined five legislative priorities it plans to pursue during the session: creating a statutory sealing system (instead of expanding expungement), a revised definition of recidivism to improve data collection, aligning Vermont’s firearms-possession prohibitions with federal categories, clarifying charging options for DUI crashes that cause both death and serious injury, and pausing phase two of the state’s “raise the age” plan to evaluate earlier changes.

An official from the department described the caseload and staffing picture in detail and recommended targeted administrative steps. "We just did our big data extraction at the year end ... there's 23,000 amount pending cases," the executive director of the Department of State's Attorneys and Sheriffs said, describing the figure as including family, post-conviction, civil and criminal matters…