Advocate tells Judiciary committee S.193 should restore victims bility to deliver in-person impact statements and support forensic facility

Jennifer Pullman testified to the Judiciary committee in favor of S.193 and urged lawmakers to preserve and restore victims' ability to deliver in-person impact statements.

Pullman, who identified herself as director of the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services, told the committee she supports the edits offered in a recent walk-through involving prosecutors, the Department of Corrections and the attorney general's office and that she placed the Act 27 work group report (2024) on the committee page for members to review. "The original version does not mention victims at all, so we really appreciate the language that they included," she said.

Why it matters: Pullman said the 2024 Act 27 report recommended both a stronger statewide forensic system of care and clearer victims' rights. She told the committee that Vermont providers on the work group, including Vermont Care Partners and the Vermont Crisis Intervention Network, supported establishing a facility for people who cannot be served in the community.

Pullman argued restoring an in-person right to deliver an impact statement would matter to survivors even if it does not change legal outcomes. Citing a national survey from the National Crime Victims Legal Institute, she said "the most important piece for victims and survivors in terms of how they view the system, how they view their experience was not the outcome. It was whether they felt that they were heard." She contrasted that preference with the current practice, which she said often allows only written submissions routed through prosecutors.

Pullman also described individual harms she said the existing process can cause, including an example in which a survivor learned only when the person who harmed their family member had died after being held for years without restoration efforts. She used that case to argue Vermont should not "simply put somebody in a locked facility for 9 years without efforts to restore competency." Pullman said the Act 27 majority recommended establishing a facility and a better system of care; she asked the committee to retain language that would let victims appear to deliver their statement and noted a 2022 juvenile-proceedings carve-out as a precedent for limited in-person appearances.

Next steps: Pullman told members she expected the bill, if advanced, to receive additional comment in the House Health and Welfare committee and thanked staff and stakeholders for ongoing collaboration. The committee signaled it would hear further testimony on the topic in coming weeks.