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State Capitol

State Senate Passes Updated Version Of Marsy's Law

Stu Johnson

The Kentucky Senate voted 31 to six Tuesday in favor of a constitutional amendment calling for a crime victims’ bill or rights.  Passage of this form of “Marsy’s Law” legislation comes after the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled last summer the wording of the original ballot question in 2018 was too vague.

The bill approved in the senate calls for including the entire language before voters.  Bill Sponsor Whitney Westerfield said the only change was adding victim protections related to pardons. “The whole point of Marcy’s Law is to make sure that crime victims have a meaningful voice in the criminal justice process.  And while pardons, and commutations, and even less frequently reprieves are pretty rare, there still part of the criminal justice process and victims need to have their voice represented there, even if it doesn’t change the governor’s ultimate authority, and this doesn’t,” said Westerfield.

Northern Kentucky Senators John Schickel and Will Schroder oppose the bill and said victim protections don’t need to be written into the constitution.  Shroder said writing protections into the constitution could create some challenges, if subsequent changes were proposed.  “And then if we determine we have issues with Marsy’s Law it’s not simply us meeting, simply having a task force, having a committee meeting, hearing from witnesses in making those changes so we can better protect victims of crimes.  That’s not what happens.  Instead we have to go through the whole constitutional process over again to try to protect victims of crime,” explained Shroder.

The bill now goes to the House where it won overwhelming approval when it was taken up in 2018.

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