Source: rutlandherald.com 9/10/22
A man charged with sexual assault on a 14-year-old got the charges against him dismissed due to a gap in Vermont’s youthful offender law, prosecutors said this week.
In a decision handed down Friday in a case that originated in Rutland County, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the state could not appeal the family court’s dismissal of a juvenile delinquency petition, overturning a precedent from 1991.
“In crafting the juvenile-delinquency statutes, the Legislature explicitly intended to protect minors from the consequences associated with a criminal record,” the decision reads.
The “minor” in question, identified in the decision only as “S.D.,” was an 18-year-old at the time he allegedly had sex with a 14-year-old girl — the third of three felonies the decision indicates he had been charged with since turning 18 in May 2018. The other two were impeding a public officer and aggravated auto theft.
Once again, I say DAs love sex crimes – free felony convictions with astronomical sentences and virtually no burden of proof. If there weren’t a sex crime dismissed in the juvenile court, the DA probably wouldn’t care less. Would likely even be grateful for not dding to the docket.
Who wants to bet there’ll be an effort in the Vermont legislature to exempt sex crimes from the juvenile delinquency procedures in this story?
That wasn’t a gap in the system that was the family courts decision not to ruin this young mans life, it didn’t say he rapped or did anything violent to the victim so I’m guessing they were probably dating at the time
If this guy was in California the DA’s office would of laughed in the family courts faces and just charged him with something else.
The DA in my case Dena Benett from the TV show Surviver, didn’t cut me any slack, 8 years after she convicted me, her and a riverside county sheriff track me down and arrested me for FTR and 2 years later arrested me again for FTR even though I okayed it with my PO to go spend time with children 2 days out of the week.
Dena told my PO to stay out of it and she tucked her tail between her legs and ran away and left me hanging.
This time it was another DA on my case but that didn’t matter she still would showed up 8 months pregnant wobbling into court and whispering in the new DA’s ear.
I don’t believe teenagers should be placed on the registry for dating other teenagers with a five year age gap or less, thats just cruel and unusual punishment I’m glad this young man slipped through the cracks
This is in Vermont (VT), not in Virginia (VA).