Victims and mental‑health workers urge Vermont House Judiciary to back S.193 to create forensic facility

The House Judiciary Committee heard emotional testimony on S.193 on April 8 as victims and mental‑health workers urged lawmakers to create a forensic facility for a small, high‑risk population of people found not competent to stand trial.

Kelly Carroll, a mother who said her daughter Emily Hammond was murdered in 2021, told the committee the proposal “is not about a broad population. It is about a very small, specific group of individuals who are charged with serious violent offenses, often punishable by life sentences, who have been found not competent to stand trial.” Carroll said those competency findings are judicial determinations and stressed that victims and communities also have rights to expect “monitoring, supervision, programming, and treatment when someone has demonstrated that they are a danger.”

Carroll recounted her family’s…