This story was originally published by Alaska Public Media reporter Eric Stone.
Senators are pitching a new package of crime bills dealing with a wide range of issues, from drugs to child abuse to grand jury proceedings. Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Matt Claman, D-Anchorage, rolled out the bill on Monday.
“We have been looking carefully, and I’ve been studying carefully, different issues going on, in terms of, how do we make steps to improve public safety and make wise use of our public safety resources,” Claman said in an interview Tuesday. “The goal with the bill is to address those and do that effectively so we can really show the public meaningful steps that we’ve taken.”
The package, a new draft of House Bill 66, has four bills rolled into one, and a bit of a grab bag.
The bill would stiffen penalties on people selling the powerful opioid fentanyl and methamphetamine, among other Schedule IA and IIA drugs. It would allow people charged with first- or second-degree drug crimes, typically dealers or manufacturers, to be charged with second-degree murder rather than manslaughter if someone dies from taking their drugs.
The director of the Department of Law’s criminal division, Angie Kemp, told the Senate Judiciary Committee the upgraded penalties come in response to a sharp increase in overdose deaths in recent years.
“These aspects of HB 66, are designed to address that public health crisis and hopefully create some additional deterrence for these types of offenses, and recognize that … we have a crisis on our hands, and it seems to be getting worse,” Kemp said Monday.
That part of the package comes from a bill proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy and passed by the House last year, though the House version would apply to a wider variety of drugs.
Another key change proposed by the governor and included in the package would allow hearsay to be presented to grand juries. Claman said the bill would prevent victims of sex crimes from having to testify before a grand jury.
“If you’ve been the victim of sexual assault, or sexual abuse, going and testifying in front of a grand jury … can be incredibly stressful, and can be a source of additional trauma,” Claman said.
Victims would still have to testify and be cross-examined at trial. The new rules would be consistent with the federal system and a variety of other states, Claman said.
That portion of the bill would also require out-of-state sex offenders be listed on the state’s sex offender registry. Claman said it’s an effort to fix a loophole in a 2019 bill that allowed out-of-state sex offenders to avoid registering if they were convicted prior to 2019.
House Republican leaders recently signaled support for that section of the bill.
“I think sometimes our grand juries are the largest perpetrators of victims’ trauma,” House Rules Committee chair Rep. Craig Johnson, R-Anchorage, said at an April 23 news conference.
House leadership has also voiced support for another section of the bill that would redefine child pornography as “child sexual abuse material.”
And the final portion of the four-part bill would allow people found incompetent to stand trial on violent felonies to be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital if they have a violent history and pose a risk to the public.
Claman said it’s a response to a 2022 stabbing at the Loussac Library in Anchorage. The suspect had been found incompetent for trial two months earlier for prior alleged attacks.
The bill is scheduled for hearings and amendments in Senate committees before it heads to a floor vote.
Cover image credit: Eric Stone/Alaska Public Media
