People Charged With Murder Are Living Unsupervised in Vermont Because They Never Went to Trial. Lawmakers Took One Step, but Vermont Is Still the Only State Without a Secure Facility to Hold Them
The House took a step forward this week — but the facility won't exist until 2028 at the earliest, there's no money for it, and the people it's designed to hold are already in your community.
Here is what happened this week at the State House: the Vermont House rewrote S.193, the bill that would create the state’s first secure treatment facility for people who commit violent crimes and are found mentally unfit for trial.
The rewrite was significant — the facility would now be run by the Agency of Human Services, not the Department of Corrections. That’s progress. The House deserves credit for it.
Here is what didn’t happen
The facility didn’t get funded.
It didn’t get a location.
It didn’t get a timeline shorter than two years.
And it didn’t change the fact that right now — today — there are people in at least seven Vermont counties who have been found mentally unfit for trial after being charged with violent crimes, are in state custody, and could eventually be released back into the communities they victimized because Vermont still has no secure facility and nowhere else for them to go.
Those counties, identified in testimony by Kim McManus of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs: Windsor, Rutland, Bennington, Orleans, Chittenden, Franklin, and Washington. That’s half the state. And McManus has testified that all 14 state’s attorneys and all 14 sheriffs can name individuals in their communities who they know pose a risk but who are unsupervised — because there is nowhere for them to go.
Kelly Carroll, the Bennington mother whose daughter Emily Hamann was murdered in 2021 by a man who had cycled through exactly this gap, put it plainly in a letter to House committees on May 13: “Continuing to delay action does not make the gap disappear. It only guarantees Vermonters more victims.”
The facility won’t exist until 2028
Under the rewritten bill, the statutory framework for the facility would not take effect until January 1, 2028. Before anything is built, the Agency of Human Services must produce a feasibility plan — covering the proposed location, design, bed count, staffing levels and qualifications, estimated construction and operating costs, physical security, discharge procedures, and a community monitoring plan. The committee set a deadline of this summer for that plan.
That’s another study. The fifth in five years.
The current fiscal year budget — FY27 — does not include funding for the facility. Committee members acknowledged that staging implementation into FY28 and beyond was “realistic.” Several members pushed for interim restoration services for the five to seven people currently held without any competency restoration pathway — but there is no funding mechanism for that either. The committee discussed having AHS propose interim programming and bring a funding request to the joint justice oversight committee.
That is another ask, another process, and another wait — for the same families who have been waiting since 2021.
What this means for your community
On May 13, Carroll wrote to House committees identifying seven Vermont counties where, according to testimony from Kim McManus of the Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs, individuals charged with violent crimes who have been found mentally unfit for trial are currently in state custody and could eventually be released back into the communities they victimized — because Vermont still has no forensic system and nowhere else for them to go.
Those counties: Windsor, Rutland, Bennington, Orleans, Chittenden, Franklin, and Washington. That’s half the state.
“Continuing to delay action does not make the gap disappear,” Carroll wrote. “It only guarantees Vermonters more victims.”
The bill’s narrow scope hasn’t changed — it applies only to defendants charged with offenses punishable by life sentences, including murder, aggravated sexual assault, and kidnapping. The estimated population at any given time remains five to seven people. But McManus has testified that the broader population of violent-felony defendants with competency issues extends far beyond that number, touching every county in the state.
The debate that remains
Committee members agreed on one thing: the people inside the facility should be treated by clinicians, not corrections officers. Therapeutic programming and living units would be staffed by AHS or clinical personnel. The bill builds in multiple safeguards — six-month competency reevaluations, a 60-day dangerousness hearing if someone is found not restorable, periodic court review, and victim notification at every stage.
But divisions remain. Some members wanted a side-by-side comparison of a facility run entirely outside DOC versus one that uses DOC for perimeter security. Others warned that asking for two competing plans could bias the analysis and delay the process further. At least one member proposed excluding Wellpath — DOC’s current healthcare contractor, which declared bankruptcy in 2024 with $644 million in debt and more than 1,500 lawsuits — from any interim restoration contracts.
And Representative Quatt raised concerns about whether people with long histories under Act 248 — Vermont’s existing framework for people with developmental disabilities in the justice system — should be eligible for the new facility at all, noting four decades of community placement practice for that population.
The committee was working toward a vote. The chair indicated the bill could move to the House floor as early as this week.
Where this stands
If the House passes the rewritten S.193, it will go back to the Senate for concurrence — since the House version is substantially different from the 29-1 bill the Senate passed on April 1. If the Senate doesn’t concur, the bill goes to a Committee of Conference. All of that takes time the session may or may not have.
Carroll, who has testified before five committees across four legislative sessions and written letters to every committee that has touched this issue, captured the gap between what lawmakers experience and what families live with in her May 13 letter: “Your frustration is noted but the difference is that victims didn’t choose the situation the VT House has put us in.”
Meanwhile, in Burlington, a man who shot three Palestinian college students on his porch in 2023 sits in jail awaiting trial — locked up, supervised, accounted for. The system worked for that case because the defendant was found competent. For the people on McManus’s list — the ones every sheriff and every prosecutor can name — the system has no answer. Not today. And under the rewritten bill, not until 2028.
Carroll has been asking for urgency since January 18, 2021 — the morning her daughter was killed on the Riverwalk in downtown Bennington.
The legislature gave her a rewritten bill. It did not give her a facility. Not yet.
This is the latest in a series of Compass Vermont reports on Vermont’s competency gap. Read the full series for background on the bill’s legislative history, the families affected, and how other states have addressed this issue.
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