Background
Between 2019 and 2020, Philip Lin — then nineteen to twenty-one years old — was charged across four separate Bennington County criminal dockets with ten offenses arising from a series of incidents: breaking into a couple’s home and stealing their PlayStation and credit cards; sending explicit photos to a minor via Snapchat and attempting to solicit her into sexual activity; attempting to unlawfully enter a woman’s home; and striking a woman on the head with a stick. In April 2023, Lin and the State reached a plea agreement, but Lin failed to appear for the change-of-plea hearing and a warrant issued for his arrest.
By April 2025, Lin was serving a sentence in Connecticut. He invoked the Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD), 28 V.S.A. §§ 1501–1509, to return to Vermont and resolve the outstanding charges. A new plea agreement was executed in May 2025 under which Lin pleaded guilty to burglary, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, attempted luring of a child, attempted unlawful trespass, and simple assault, with contested sentencing capped at eight years for the State. The court ordered a pre-sentence investigation (PSI) and a psychosexual evaluation.
At the September 2025 sentencing hearing, the court-ordered psychosexual evaluation had not yet been completed. Defense counsel disclosed that Lin had recently been diagnosed with autism — a fact absent from the PSI — and that this diagnosis and related mental-health records would have been material to the evaluation. The State contended the IAD required the court to proceed immediately. Defense counsel did not contradict that assertion but urged the court to recognize the gaps in the record. The court sentenced Lin to four-to-six years to serve. Lin appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Vermont Supreme Court held that the trial court committed plain error by proceeding with sentencing before the court-ordered psychosexual evaluation was complete. Because Lin did not object at sentencing, the court applied the plain-error standard, requiring (1) an error, (2) that is obvious, and (3) that affects substantial rights and results in prejudice. All three elements were satisfied.
On the first two elements, the court found it was error — and an obvious one — for the trial court to accept the State’s assertion that the IAD barred any continuance. The IAD’s 180-day trial deadline expressly permits a court to grant “any necessary or reasonable continuance” for good cause shown in open court with counsel present. 28 V.S.A. § 1503(a). Because the court had itself ordered the psychosexual evaluation, and because defense counsel identified specific and significant information — namely the autism diagnosis — that would otherwise be missing from the record, good cause to continue plainly existed. The court also cited 28 V.S.A. § 204a(b), which directs that a PSI “shall include a psychosexual evaluation if so ordered by the court.”
On prejudice, the court found that the missing evaluation affected Lin’s right to be sentenced on accurate information, citing State v. Neale, 145 Vt. 423, 436 (1985). The court rejected the State’s argument that Lin invited the error or could have obtained the evaluation earlier, noting that practical barriers — including Lin’s out-of-state incarceration and systemic delays in obtaining evaluations within Vermont — made alternatives unrealistic. Because the court could not conclude the same sentence would have been imposed had the evaluation been available, it vacated the sentence and remanded for resentencing upon completion of the psychosexual evaluation.
Key Takeaways
- The IAD’s 180-day deadline does not require courts to proceed to sentencing without court-ordered evaluations; the statute expressly authorizes continuances for good cause, which exists when a previously ordered psychosexual evaluation is incomplete.
- A defendant’s right to be sentenced on accurate information is a substantial right; proceeding without a court-ordered psychosexual evaluation — especially where a new, material diagnosis like autism is present — satisfies the prejudice prong of plain-error review.
- A defendant who fails to object at sentencing but does not affirmatively invite the error (e.g., by merely acquiescing to the State’s misstatement of law) is entitled to plain-error rather than invited-error review.
- Practical barriers to obtaining mental-health evaluations — including out-of-state incarceration and systemic Vermont delays — can foreclose the argument that a defendant should have arranged for alternative evidence.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies that Vermont’s IAD obligations do not override a trial court’s duty to conduct sentencing on a complete record, particularly when the court itself has ordered a psychosexual evaluation. Prosecutors and defense counsel in IAD cases must now actively seek good-cause continuances rather than assume the statute’s deadline is absolute — a point of practical significance given the frequency with which out-of-state detainees return to Vermont with incomplete evaluations.
The opinion also reinforces the constitutional floor that sentencing courts may not rely on incomplete or inaccurate information. With autism diagnoses increasingly surfacing in criminal proceedings, the decision signals that courts must take seriously the evidentiary gaps such a diagnosis can create in pre-sentence investigations and related evaluations — and must afford defendants a meaningful opportunity to present that information before sentence is imposed.