Alabama Legislature

ADOC Reporting, Sexual Assault Victim Bills Advance, Grand Jury Bill Delayed

Creative Commons Alabama State House by Chris Pruitt is licensed under CCBY SA 3.0

MONTGOMERY — Several committees of the Alabama Legislature met Wednesday to consider various bills. Here are legislative briefs from the State House.

Committee Advances ADOC Reporting Requirements

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved House Bill 106, which would require the Alabama Department of Corrections to make quarterly reports to a legislative oversight committee.

Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, sponsored the bill. Information required would include hiring and retention, inmate population size and litigation against the department, including money paid for lawsuits.

Prison crowding and understaffing issues have plagued the ADOC for years and are part of the reason behind multiple lawsuits against the state.

“That’s going to put the responsibility on us to receive it and understand it,” Sen. Greg Albritton, R-Range, said.

“And fix it,” Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, said.

It passed the committee unanimously.

Sexual Assault Survivor “Bill of Rights” Advances

The Senate Judiciary Committee also approved House Bill 137 to create a sexual assault survivor “bill of rights” and set a requirement for how long law enforcement must preserve evidence from sexual assault cases.

“This will helpfully clean out some of those cold cases,” sponsor Rep. Chip Brown, R-Hollinger’s Island, said to the committee.

Brown’s bills also would help provide financial compensation to cover medical costs related to sexual assault evidence kits and would allow health insurers to pay for the medical costs if the victim had qualifying insurance.

The bill also sets up a Sexual Assault Task Force responsible for developing and implementing best practices regarding the care and treatment of survivors and the preservation of evidence. An amendment was approved that included a person from the Department of Human Resources on the task force.

Grand Jury Witness Bill Delayed

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday delayed a vote on a bill to remove witnesses from the state’s grand jury secrecy laws. Rep. Jim Hill, R-Odenville, said he wanted committee members to read a recent federal judge’s ruling on the issue.

Alabama Daily News reported on both the bill from Rep. Mike Ball, R-Madison, and the ruling, earlier this week.

Ball told ADN his bill would allow witnesses to talk about what they knew before their testimony, the questions they were asked and how they were asked. Current law doesn’t allow witnesses to talk publicly about their experiences before grand juries.

The Alabama Attorney General’s office opposes the bill, saying it would “frustrate criminal investigations by putting sensitive information into the public domain.”