Vermont

The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that records related to the investigation of a crime are exempt under the state’s Access to Public Records Act — with no time limit for when the exemption expires.

The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that police dispatch logs are not automatically exempt from public disclosure as investigation records under the state’s Access to Public Records Act.

A Vermont judge declined to dismiss charges against a newspaper publisher who was charged with criminal trespassing while covering an anti-wind energy protest on Lowell Mountain.

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law Wednesday a public records bill championed by open records advocates who say the changes are long overdue for a state that has consistently received poor transparency rankings.

The legislation, H.B. 73, awards attorneys fees and costs to those who fight public records denials in court and win, and creates a committee to review the number of exemptions to the state’s public records statutes.

In Vermont last week, the Senate Government Operations Committee approved a bill setting up a  new committee to examine the list of over 207 exemptions to Vermont’s public records law. The proposed committee would also look into the different charges for accessing public records.

Recorded police interviews with the man charged with killing a University of Vermont student will remain sealed for at least a week, a trial judge decided Friday.

Chittenden County Judge Michael Kupersmith held that the audio and video recordings of interviews with Brian Rooney, 37, will be kept private to maintain Rooney’s right to a fair trial and until Kupersmith issues a ruling.

A Vermont District Court judge said that he thinks video and audio recordings of interactions the police had with a murder suspect are a matter of public interest that should be released. 

The suspect, Brian Rooney, is charged with the killing of University of Vermont senior Michelle Gardner-Quinn. The material in question covers interviews between the police and the suspect from the time Gardner-Quinn disappeared to when her body was found six days later. 

A rare prior restraint on speech has turned up in an unlikely place -- a divorce case -- with a Vermont judge ordering a husband to take down blog postings about his wife and their dissolving marriage. The husband called his postings a "fictionalized account of the marriage" according to a New York Times article, but the wife contended they are defamatory statements and the judge ordered the posts be removed pending a February hearing.