The Committee on Reapportionment will be meeting on Tuesday, October 26 at 1 PM in Rm.317 at the Statehouse. Here are the proposed Congressional, State School Board, and the Alabama House and Senate district maps along with accompanying underlying demographic data. #redistricting
HB29, the Second Chance Bill, will be in House Judiciary today. I am honored to be the sponsor of such important legislation. Last session, with bipartisan support, this bill almost became law. Check out this video to see why this bill means so much.
Last session, a lot of misinformation was spread in an effort to stop this bill from receiving final passage. So, let’s get some of the basics out of the way so everyone will know and understand what this bill actually does. Here is a link to the bill. legislature.state.al.us/pdf/Searchable…
This legislation will create a pathway for individuals who were sentenced to life without parole to have a hearing to be resentenced if they meet certain criteria. That criteria is laid out specifically in the legislation. Again, it only creates an opportunity for a hearing.
I’m retweeting this because I want to add to it. Another lawsuit was filed against the parole board this Thursday making it even more obvious how racially discriminatory our parole board is. The numbers you are about to see came from the lawsuit filed the last two weeks.
From 2015-2018, the parole board used guidelines to help determine who could be safely paroled. The guidelines are objective standards created to help assess the “fitness” of individuals for parole, aimed at encouraging the release of those who posed a low risk of recidivism.
Applying the guidelines led to a reduction in the prison population. The resulting reduction was particularly pronounced among incarcerated people held in work release facilities. Between 2015 and 2018, the work-release population of the Alabama prison system was reduced by 38.2%
Wow. So, in other words, board chair Leigh Gwathney, whose exhaustive and detailed review of each case once allowed her to deny parole to a dead person, will continue to ignore guidelines based on actual data and just make up arbitrary BS to keep people in prison.
Seriously. The same person that once denied parole to a dead person is now trying to convince you that her extremely thorough review process of each case yields some super secret reason, that she can’t share with anyone, to deny 93% of the people who apply for parole.
Leigh Gwathney once denied parole to Leola Harris who uses a wheelchair, relies on dialysis, and is suffering from end stage renal disease after a 6 minute hearing. Does that sound exhaustive to you? This is just one example of what happens all of time under her leadership.
For some reason, some people keep saying that the Human Life Protection Act only applies to doctors, clinics and medical providers. That’s not true at all. The HLPA says that It shall be unlawful for ANY PERSON to intentionally perform or attempt to perform an abortion.
Also, there has been some debate about how the law will be enforced and what conduct will potentially carry criminal culpability. In my opinion, folks are making this too complicated. Let me explain why. First, take a look at the law in Alabama.
Even though those statutes seem pretty clear to me, let’s look at this a different way. As an elected AG or DA, if the goal is to stop abortions in Alabama and also score some political points, how do you think they will interpret, apply and enforce the conspiracy law?
I’m so glad that @AGSteveMarshall wrote this that I wanted to make sure you saw it. He wrote this in opposition to HB57 which is a bill I sponsored. So, since it is out there now, let me correct some “misrepresentations” in it and also give you facts about pardons and paroles.
HB57 would create the Criminal Justice Policy Development Council to update the inmate classification system; 2) create parole guidelines; 3) adopt a validated risk and needs assessment for felony offenders; and 4) provide quarterly reports to Legislature about the Council’s work
The bill would require the Board to 1) use parole release guidelines in parole decisions; 2) provide an explanation when deviating from these guidelines; and 3) provide written notification to the applicant of their right to appeal if the denial deviates from the guidelines.