Testimony today at House Criminal Justice hearing

Referenced here is the pdf of testimony presented today on behalf of the LPM regarding a number of bills before the House Criminal Justice committee:

http://michiganlp.org/Webpages_Aux/2015/20150616_Hearing.pdf

Most of the bills were reported out to the House for action (possibly later today) with unanimous support, other than a few bills which had a single no vote.  I was the only one presenting oral testimony on most of the bills, but there was written testimony presented by others.  The final bill on the docket (HB 4536) had numerous people testifying with an overflow crowd in the next room watching on CCTV video.  It deals with providing compensation and expungement of records for people wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for crimes which they did not commit and were later found innocent.

The presentation can eventually be viewed at the House archived video website once it is uploaded:  http://www.house.mi.gov/MHRPublic/videoarchive.aspx

Live broadcasts of committee meetings and House sessions can be viewed at: http://house.michigan.gov/htv.asp

There will likely be a lot of bills passed this afternoon and later this week before they break for vacation, so if you want to watch the legislature in action this is the channel to watch.

A brief analysis of the bills before the Criminal Justice committee today to which my testimony pertained follows below (MY COMMENTS IN CAPS).  There is a link at the end to view the complete text of the bills.

Overall, they are a good batch of bills, eliminating superfluous laws, decriminalizing some and allowing for better probation terms.  The LPM testimony can be reworded as a letter to the editor or a press release.  If anyone would like the .doc version to rewrite please let me know.

Will Tyler White
LPM Legislative Committee chair

Share this:
Share this page via Email Share this page via Stumble Upon Share this page via Digg this Share this page via Facebook Share this page via Twitter