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165 Vt. 389

685 A.2d 1076

State v. Austin

Supreme Court of Vermont

Decided August 9, 1996

Supreme Court of Vermont · decided 1996-08-09

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1996-08-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 101 later decisions — most recently April 2024 · most notably Cox v. State (1999), State v. Hill (2001)

101 state decisions

5001996200020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Morse, J.,

¶1concurring and dissenting. I dissent from Fart I. Otherwise, I concur.

¶2The Court holds that defendant was denied procedural due process because he was not permitted to “confront” a New Hampshire police officer, Christopher R. Gentes, whose affidavit placed defendant on March 3 at 9:43 p.m. in Claremont, N.H., in violation of the probation condition that he not be in New Hampshire without permission.

¶3Officer Gentes’ affidavit read as follows:

1. I am an Officer assigned to the. Claremont Folice Fatrol Division.
*4032. The defendant, JAMES W AUSTIN DOB: 06/26/63, was stopped at 9:43 PM on March 3rd, 1995 in the City of Claremont New Hampshire while operating a 1988 Oldsmobile bearing Vermont registration BBY291 for a defective headlight,
3. The defendant produced a Vermont driver’s license and vehicle title to the 1988 Oldsmobile
4. The defendant is a convicted sex offender living in Vermont and is on probation in Vermont,
5. The Claremont Police Department received a request from Vermont Department of Corrections, Probation and Parole for any contact information regarding James Austin, attached is a copy of a Motor Vehicle Stop Slip pertaining to the stop of James Austin..

¶4The “slip” attached was an “enforcement action slip” warning defendant that he needed to fix the defective headlight.

¶5When this evidence was presented at the hearing, the only objection was that “[t]he witness is apparently beyond the subpoena power of the Court. We have no opportunity to confront the information. . . [w]ith no way of knowing whether there was even an affidavit form.”

¶6The Court faults the trial court for not making a “finding” that the affidavit was reliable. I submit that what was not explicitly stated in the record is nevertheless obvious from the record. The State’s evidentiary offer was reasonable, and defendant’s objection was insufficient to raise a due process issue.

¶7Defendant never denied his supposed whereabouts, and given the cryptic nature of his objection, the court’s summary overruling of it was correct. It would be incredible for defendant not to speak up if he was, in fact, somewhere other than New Hampshire at the time. Defendant had no privilege to remain silent on the issue. Neither a probation violation nor his presence in New Hampshire is a crime. His silence in the face of Officer Gentes’ affidavit does not require the State to produce Gentes as a “live” witness. The factual issue was not whether defendant had a defective headlight, and it seems obvious by defendant’s position at the hearing that he was not contesting his whereabouts; he was merely raising a technicality over the manner of proof.

¶8The evidence reeked of reliability, defendant had no interest whatsoever in confronting Officer Gentes, and the State’s burden of *404producing the officer would have been a waste of time. In short, the evidentiary basis and “good cause” to overrule defendant’s objection needed no explanation.

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