Senate Standing Committee on Public Safety

All right. The Senate Committee on Public Safety has begun. We're going to ask for a roll call, but prior to that, I just want to make an announcement. We are hearing one Bill on a 2910 motion, SB 285 by Senator Allen. Our usual two-minute limit on both support and opposition witnesses will apply. Can we call roll, please?

[Roll Call]

Thank you. We have established a quorum. Senator Allen, would you like to begin?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to the Committee for your work on this Bill.

As some of you may recall, a few years back, I brought a Bill, SB 483, to this Committee that sought to retroactively apply the sentence enhancement rollback that we had passed a couple years before under the leadership of Senator Mitchell that has allowed for many, many meritorious cases to be reviewed.

And there are a number of people who had sentence enhancements that had dramatically increased their time in prison to have them re-examined. And many. There's some wonderful, heartwarming stories that have come out of people who have gotten out of prison and have now built a successful and happy, healthy lives.

That being said, the Bill has been abused by a few cases of people who have no chance of getting out of prison. We're talking about folks who are LWOP, death penalty cases.

And, you know, we saw that those resentencing hearings were both irrelevant to the person at hand, to the person's kind of future in prison, but also really scratched at a lot of wounds for victims.

And we're looking to, in a very narrow way, ensure that those most egregious cases are not able to use our previous legislation to have useless resentencing hearings that create a lot of havoc, clog the courts. And so that's what this is ultimately about.

As I say, it's been heavily narrowed, and I really appreciate the work of the Committee on the Analysis and respect for your aye vote.

Thank you. Do we have two witnesses in support? Seeing none. Do we have two opposition lead witnesses? Seeing none. Do we have any me toos in support or in opposition? Seeing none. We're going to move on to Committee Members. Committee Members, do you guys have any questions or comments or concerns? Seeing none. Would you like to close?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Appreciate your efficiency, respectfully ask for an aye vote.

Thank you. Do we have a motion? We have a motion by Senator Skinner to support the Bill, and it is recommended to Assembly amendments be concurred in.

[Roll Call]

So the bill is out, thank you for your time. Meeting adjourned.