HB 1093 Further Restricts Defendant Contact with Victims, Shows Glodt Amendment S Not Needed

Rep. Lee Schoenbeck provides more evidence that Jason Glodt’s Amendment S is unnecessary. Filed this morning is House Bill 1093, a bill to prohibit any contact between defendants and their victims or victims’ family members and/or households.

Currently, defendants are forbidden from contacting victims’ and victims’ kin and roomies before their first court appearance or “until such contact or communication is specifically authorized by the court.” The latter suggests that the court can authorize defendants and victims to interact before court.

HB 1093 strikes that latter language. Offered by attorney Rep. Schoenbeck, HB 1093 allows no defendant–victim contact before court, period.

That seems to go further than Republican front man Jason Glodt’s proposed constitutional scribblings purported to give crime victims more rights. The sixth plank of Amendment S appears to touch on the issue of defendant–victim contact, proposing that victims have “The right to privacy, which includes the right to refuse an interview, deposition or other discovery request, and to set reasonable conditions on the conduct of any such interaction to which the victim consents.”

HB 1093 seems to offer a more strict protection than what Glodt seeks, providing victims an absolute legal protection from contact or communication with those who allegedly have done them harm. HB 1093 at least demonstrates that the Legislature already takes a keen interest in protecting crime victims. Unlike Amendment T, the redistricting amendment, which is a response to the Legislature’s explicit and repeated rejection of anti-gerrymandering reforms, Amendment S seeks to order the Legislature (and state’s attorneys, and other officials) to do things they already do.

As I have argued before, if the current system is already solving a problem, we do not need to foul our constitution with out-of-state astroturfery that would cost money and clog our courts.