"Good" Timing

Can we have a decision about calculations
without using this meme? Possibly. But why? 

By Andy Delaney

Friday was my birthday. SCOV issued one opinion about good-time credit and that which the Legislature giveth, the Legislature so too hath taken away (or something like that). Some birthday present, I guess. 

Light blasphemy aside, petitioner is serving a 20-to-life sentence for a 2018 second-degree murder conviction. Effective New Years Day 2021, Vermont revived its earned-time program, allowing eligible incarcerated people to reduce their sentences by seven days each month if they avoided major disciplinary violations and release-condition violations. And from January through April 2021, petitioner got so-called good-time credit. 

But the Legislature quickly changed course. Effective April 26, 2021, it excluded people who were serving sentences on January 1, 2021 for a list of serious offenses, including murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, certain child-sex offenses, and sexual assault. The excluded group could keep credits earned through the amendment's effective date but couldn't earn any more. (Oddly enough, people sentenced later for the same offenses remained eligible.) 

Petitioner filed a Rule 75 action in the Civil Division claiming that the 2021 earned-time amendment unconstitutionally deprived him of the ability to earn future credits. After a stay pending a decision in a factually similar federal case, petitioner amended his complaint to include some arguments based on the Vermont Constitution. But to no avail—the trial court adopted the federal court's reasoning and granted summary judgment to DOC

On appeal, petitioner argues that this line-drawing violates due process and Vermont's Common Benefits Clause. 

SCOV is not persuaded.

SCOV's central procedural-due-process holding is straightforward: the Legislature’s amendment was a general, prospective legislative act, not an adjudicative decision directed at petitioner. Procedural due process (notice and an individual hearing) applies to adjudicative deprivations, not to ordinary legislation affecting a defined class. In SCOV's formulation, the legislative process itself supplies all the process due. 

The amendment also operates prospectively in the relevant sense. It doesn't claw back credits petitioner already earned. Instead, it changes whether affected prisoners could accumulate future credits after April 26, 2021. 

The substantive-due-process claim fares no better. SCOV says that statutory good-time or earned-time credits don't implicate a fundamental constitutional right. And that means rational-basis review rather than heightened scrutiny. 

The State's asserted interest is protecting the expectations of victims, their families, and the public that people convicted of especially serious crimes will serve the sentences imposed when no earned-time program was on the horizon. SCOV treats that as a legit government objective and finds the cutoff rationally related. Victims in post-2021 cases know that earned time is part of the sentencing playbook, but victims in earlier cases would not have that uncertainty. 

SCOV also rejects petitioner's Common Benefits Clause claim. It identifies the disadvantaged class as prisoners who were eligible under the 2020 version of the statute but became ineligible under the 2021 amendment because they were serving sentences for disqualifying offenses on or before January 1, 2021. 

While that's a significant lost benefit—up to seven days off per month of good behavior—SCOV holds that the classification bears a reasonable and just relation to the Legislature's victim-expectations objective. The cutoff line is neither materially underinclusive nor overinclusive, SCOV says, because it: (1) applies only to enumerated serious offenses; (2) leaves prior earned time intact; (3) does not increase an imposed sentence; and (4) lets defendants and victims in later cases account for earned-time eligibility at sentencing. 

Petitioner tries to distinguish jury-trial convictions from plea cases but SCOV is not moved. The legislative aim, it reasons, is not limited to victims whose expectations arose from plea negotiations, but extends to victims of serious crimes generally. 

SCOV doesn't decide whether the earned-time cutoff was wise, cost-effective, or consistent with rehabilitation policy. It decides that the Constitution doesn't prohibit it. The Legislature can prioritize victims' retributive expectations over the statute's earlier goals of reducing incarceration costs and encouraging good behavior—and can do so through an offense-and-sentencing-date classification. 

Trial court is affirmed. Murphy v. Deml, 2026 VT 41.