Background
In August 2023, William Jarvis II followed his sister Alana and her fourteen-year-old daughter A.M. to Alana’s car after a verbal confrontation at their shared workplace, a theater in Morrisville, Vermont. While Alana sat buckled in the driver’s seat speaking with her mother by phone, Jarvis wrenched open the driver’s door and physically confronted her. Both Alana and A.M. testified that Jarvis grabbed the seat belt, wrapped it around his hands, and pressed it against Alana’s throat. Alana felt pressure on her neck and screamed to her mother that defendant was hurting her. A responding officer found Alana hyperventilating and distraught; A.M. observed redness on her mother’s throat. Jarvis was charged with second-degree aggravated domestic assault on the theory that he attempted to cause bodily injury to a family member and had a prior domestic assault conviction.
Following a February 2025 jury trial, Jarvis was convicted of misdemeanor domestic assault. The trial court acquitted him of the aggravated charge after finding the State failed to prove the requisite prior domestic-assault conviction specifically (as opposed to the aggravated variant). At a May 2025 sentencing hearing, the court imposed a sentence of twelve-to-eighteen months, all suspended but 160 days, with two years of probation. Among the probation conditions was a requirement that Jarvis “comply with the requirements of electronic monitoring (e.g. GPS or SCRAM), as directed by your probation officer.” The court cited Jarvis’s extensive criminal history — including multiple assault and domestic-assault convictions dating to 2005, two prior probation revocations, and repeated failures to appear during the current proceedings — in fashioning this condition.
Jarvis appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in denying his motion for judgment of acquittal and that the electronic monitoring probation condition was not reasonably related to his conviction.
The Court’s Holding
The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed on both issues. On the sufficiency challenge, the court applied its standard of viewing evidence in the light most favorable to the State and excluding modifying evidence. It found the testimony of Alana and A.M. — both of whom described and demonstrated Jarvis pressing the seat belt against Alana’s throat — sufficient to permit a rational jury to conclude that Jarvis attempted to cause bodily injury. Because the charge was an attempt under 13 V.S.A. § 1042, the State was not required to prove actual injury. The court held that Jarvis’s own denial to police was a credibility matter properly resolved by the jury, not a basis for acquittal.
On the probation condition, the court held that the electronic monitoring requirement was within the trial court’s broad sentencing discretion under 28 V.S.A. § 252(a). Drawing on its earlier decision in State v. Putnam, 2015 VT 113, the court explained that conditions facilitating effective supervision by a probation officer — such as enabling the officer to locate and monitor a defendant — are reasonably related to the underlying offense whenever probation is imposed. Given Jarvis’s documented pattern of failing to appear, his history of probation revocations, his uncertain housing and employment, and the victims’ fear that he would violate the no-contact condition, the court concluded there was a reasonable basis for the condition. The court rejected Jarvis’s argument that electronic monitoring can never be imposed solely to enforce other probation conditions.
Key Takeaways
- An attempted domestic assault charge under 13 V.S.A. § 1042 requires only proof that the defendant intended to cause bodily injury and took an overt act toward that end — actual injury is not an element, and eyewitness testimony about use of a seat belt as a choking instrument can be sufficient evidence.
- Vermont courts have broad discretion to impose probation conditions that facilitate effective supervision, including electronic monitoring, so long as the record supports the condition as reasonably related to the defendant’s particular circumstances and the offense of conviction — the condition need not target specific criminal conduct.
- A defendant’s credible denial of an act goes to jury credibility, not sufficiency of the evidence; on a judgment-of-acquittal review, courts set aside the defendant’s contrary evidence and ask only whether the State’s evidence could support a guilty verdict.
- This decision is an unpublished three-justice panel entry order and is not precedent before any Vermont tribunal.
Why It Matters
For criminal defense practitioners and prosecutors in Vermont, this decision reinforces how broadly trial courts may read the “reasonably related” standard when crafting probation conditions. A court need not tie electronic monitoring exclusively to the physical circumstances of the crime — a defendant’s supervision history, flight risk, and the need to enforce no-contact orders can each supply a sufficient basis. The decision applies and extends Putnam‘s logic that supervision-enabling conditions are appropriate “in any case in which probation is ordered.”
The sufficiency holding, while fact-specific, is also instructive: it illustrates that in attempted-assault cases, corroborated eyewitness accounts of a defendant’s physical conduct — even absent visible injury, reported pain, or breathing difficulty — can survive a motion for judgment of acquittal when the charge is framed as an attempt. Attorneys handling domestic violence matters should take note that the absence of documented physical harm does not, standing alone, undermine the State’s case at the acquittal stage.