Christina Lee, Head Photography Editor

With the collaboration of Yale Law School students and several local Connecticut nonprofits, a new bill in the state may soon be passed that would provide trauma-informed sentencing relief to people who can connect their crime to a past history of domestic violence and abuse.

Current clinic student members, Kevin Chisolm LAW ’25, Ivetty Estepan LAW ’25 and Claire Sullivan LAW ’25, are working with community members, victims of domestic violence and legislative reform experts to negotiate and prepare the bill for the next legislative session in January. 

A variety of perspectives has been invaluable in improving the bill, Chisolm and Estepan told the News. The coalition, which meets every other week to negotiate the bill’s details, includes nonprofits such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the FreeHer Campaign.

“Learning how to balance a variety of stakeholder interests is always a rigorous process but also useful [in creating] a bill that can endure the test of time and have a lot of people’s input,” Estepan said.

Seventy-five percent of women who are incarcerated have experienced domestic violence, according to Chisolm. 

The current bill draft would aid victims of domestic violence at four stages of the criminal justice process: sentencing, sentence modification appeals, parole considerations and commutation trials. 

“It opens the doors to opportunities to explain and contextualize so much more about a person’s life than criminal law and criminal procedure otherwise allows for,” visiting lecturer Anjali Pathmanathan, the clinic’s supervisor, said. 

New York passed their version of the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act in 2019 and Oklahoma followed this year. If the coalition is successful in the next legislative session, Connecticut would be the third state in the U.S. to pass a version of this bill.

Clinic student members who first drafted a version of the bill two years ago based it off the New York bill, but there have been many discussions on what the Connecticut one can do differently. Chisolm hopes that because Connecticut is a more liberal state than the others, they can “pass a strong version” of it. 

“Connecticut has a number of what what we call ‘second look mechanisms’ — laws or other processes that can help people who have been convicted of crimes get a second look at their sentences to see if they can be re-sentenced based on new information,” professor Miriam Gohara said. “A bill like this would be consistent with Connecticut’s tradition of offering meaningful second look opportunities for people who have been in prison and have demonstrated a good track record.”

To ensure accessibility, particularly for people who do not have access to private lawyers, the bill includes an “expansive list” of what would qualify as evidence of domestic violence, Chisolm said. These include hospital records, case reports and affidavits, or written statements confirmed by oath. 

But the coalition does not have full control over the final version of the bill. The legislator who sponsors it may have edits, Pathmanathan said, and on the Senate floor there are typically “carve-outs” of the bill where parts of it may get dropped. 

Massachusetts is currently working on its own coalition to pass a similar bill, according to Estepan, and a professor from Georgia who runs a domestic violence survivors clinic also reached out to the coalition to express interest.

“[The bill’s] going to be something that really has rippling effects,” Estepan said, “It’s a wonderful opportunity and a powerful opportunity for Connecticut to be a leader and for Yale and community organizations to really show the power of a coalition.”

The Connecticut Senate convenes next year on Jan. 8.