The Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee amended a larger bill to expand the state's definition of "mental incapacitation" to include situations where a person is "under the influence of an intoxicating substance to a degree that renders them incapable of consenting."
The definition was central to a Supreme Court decision last month that found current laws don't deem"mentally incapacitated" people who become intoxicated on their own. The court's decision resulted in a new trial for a man who offered to drive an intoxicated woman to another party in 2017 before taking her to his home and sexually assaulting her.
Justices in their opinion said state lawmakers were in a better position to review the statute and make changes to provisions that hadn't seen rewrites in decades. The Minnesota House of Representatives has pushed forward a similar bill to close the gap along with additional recommendations from a state task force on preventing sexual assault.
"This statute is extremely complicated and convoluted, but this is an absolutely necessary step to bring justice to victims of sexual assault. The law should never favor the criminal over the victim," Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, said in a news release following the hearing.
MORE:
Senators earlier in the week heard testimony from sexual assault survivors who said current laws had prevented them from taking their cases to court or winning cases over the person who'd assaulted them.
Now that both the Senate and the House have prioritized the change, it stands a strong chance of passing into law as legislators weigh a two-year state budget. In the next two weeks, committees will continue working on the plans and they will come up for a vote in both chambers.
Additional amendments that failed to pick up support in the Senate could also be folded into a larger bill this year as legislative leaders and the governor enter closed discussions about a budget.
The Senate committee considered but ultimately voted down police accountability provisions pushed forward in the Minnesota House of Representatives. On a party-line vote, the panel rejected amendments to require the board that oversees peace officers to remove those with ties to white supremacy groups. And they voiced opposition to establishing an office to delve into instances of missing and murdered Indigenous people, as well as to keep in place outdated statutes that outlawed adultery and sodomy.
Republicans on the panel said they were concerned about abridging officers' First Amendment rights and didn't want to expand state bureaucracy. Democrats, who'd pushed for the changes, said additional efforts needed to be taken to prevent white supremacist views from taking hold in law enforcement groups.
"I don't think this bill is meeting the moment of time," Sen. Karla Bigham, D-Cottage Grove, said Thursday. "We have a lot of things going on out there that I think we could've addressed in this bill ... we have real issues going on with our fellow citizens that need to be addressed."
Follow Dana Ferguson on Twitter @bydanaferguson, call 651-290-0707 or email dferguson@forumcomm.com
"case" - Google News
April 10, 2021 at 01:27AM
https://ift.tt/3dLfm7s
Lawmakers push to re-write Minnesota rape law after court case again exposed gap for drunk victims - Park Rapids Enterprise
"case" - Google News
https://ift.tt/37dicO5
https://ift.tt/2VTi5Ee
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Lawmakers push to re-write Minnesota rape law after court case again exposed gap for drunk victims - Park Rapids Enterprise"
Post a Comment