Tarra’s Law
The Pal-Item has an article about House Bill 1276, a bill introduced by Rep. Pflum in response to a local murder. It’s a good example of how bad cases make trouble in the law.
Every statutory code, from Indiana’s to the federal code, is choked full of junk that came about because of odd circumstances or one-time interests of important people. The hard thing is that this leads to the rest of having to wade through statutory muck on every routine matter.
Tarra Pickett of Cambridge City, Indiana was murdered in 2007. The man charged with the crime was, at the time of the killing, a convicted sex offender and out on bond for a pending sexual offense. Many people were outraged that a convicted sex offender could get bond on a new sexual offense and blamed the murder on the justice system leaving this man out among us. The trouble is, the man is entitled to bond under Indiana’s constitution, and the setting of bond must be done in a rational matter.
The new bill - if passed - would actually give a benefit to the very people it is aimed at: sexually violent predators. Why? In the basic criminal case, the judge reads the affidavit of probable cause and determines the bond without any hearing. Generally, the bond is set according to a stated schedule, based on the pending charge and other factors. If the defendant does not like the bond, they have to file a motion to modify the bond and wait for the judge to get an opening on his or her calendar to hear it. HB1276 would give people charged with sex crimes and who already meet the requirements for being a sexually violent predator an automatic bond hearing.
Presumably, the judge, in a “public hearing” (what other types of hearings do we have in criminal cases?) will be pressured by the public opinion and impose a high bond, but I doubt the public nature of the hearing will impact a judge’s calculus on this issue. Other than put in the requirement of the hearing, the law does not otherwise alter the standard for the setting of the bond. So in the end, it makes the code a little longer for a pretty rare circumstance, and doesn’t have much practical impact, other than give these “predators” an automatic bond hearing. . . .
January 31st, 2008 15:10
[...] House Bill 1276 passed the Indiana House, says the Pal Item. My previous comments on this provision are available here. [...]
February 21st, 2008 11:21
[...] House Bill 1276 has cleared the Indiana Senate Judiciary Committee and it on its way to the full senate (it’s already cleared the house). This is the so-called “Tarra’s bill,” which I have previously commented on here. [...]