Proposed 2020 Amendment Shows HB 1006, SB 11 Unnecessary

Victimless Crime Amendment Also Blocks Prosecution of Drug Abuse, Child Abuse, Theft, Terrorist Plots…

With five working days left during which legislators and committees can submit new bills, the South Dakota Legislature is up to 183 House bills and 149 Senate bills.* Combined, that’s 85% of the bills considered by the 2017 Legislature.

But now I already have to turn my attention to possible ballot measures for 2020! An eager reader noticed that Secretary of State Shantel Krebs has put up a 2020 ballot question page, and that, sure enough, the Legislative Research Council has received and reviewed a proposed Constitutional amendment!

We’ll get to the amendment in a moment, but first let’s note that LRC issued its review on January 19, 2018. Statute gives LRC fifteen days to prepare such a review, so they must have received the amendment after January 1. With the Legislature coming to town and Session starting January 9, LRC was still able to review and rewrite an initiated constitutional amendment. Well done, LRC!

This swift and effective review helps prove that House Bill 1006  unnecessarily infringes on citizens’ right to initiate measures. HB 1006 (which passed Senate State Affairs yesterday and thus faces just one more vote, on the Senate floor) would allow LRC to delay its review of any initiatives submitted between December 1 and the end of Session at the end of March. HB 1006 supposedly keeps LRC from being distract during Session, but this amendment and the volume of bills pouring into the hopper right now demonstrate LRC can handle Legislative and initiative demands simultaneously. HB 1006 is just an excuse for the Legislature to place itself above citizens and delay our exercise of our constitutional rights. Full Senate, listen to the committee Nays of Sutton, Heinert, and Bolin (Jim Bolin! Known frowner-upon of initiative and referendum!) and kill HB 1006.

This proposed 2020 amendment does provide the example I was looking for of an initiative that would be affected by Senate Bill 11, which would prohibit citizens from submitting initiatives more than 30 months before the general election. LRC has processed this rare early amendment with no apparent difficulty, so why impose another restriction? SB 11 has passed the House; maybe Senate State Affairs will see the light and nix this further bit of government meddling in citizen rights.

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So what is this early amendment? The text, as revised by LRC, would change Article 6 of the state constitution to prohibit the state from prosecuting “victimless” crimes:

§ 30. In order for a violation of the law to have been committed each of the following shall occur:

1. A charge of a violation may only be filed by a victim whose person or property has been physically damaged by the defendant. If the victim is incapable of filing a charge of a violation, a family member may, but only if the victim does not object; and
2. The damages must be physical, quantifiable, and have already occurred [proposed initiated constitutional amendment, first new section, as revised by LRC, 2018.01.19].

Two subsequent sections apply this amendment to all cases pending as of July 1, 2021. Anyone already fined or jailed for charges that are dropped under this amendment will not receive restitution. The amendment also enjoins the state from using any resources to enforce state or federal laws that punish crimes that don’t meet this amendment’s criteria.

Charge filed by a victim—obviously, that gets rid of restrictions on marijuana and every other illegal drug. It also gets rid of speeding tickets—as long as you don’t hit anybody, sure, tear down 41st Street at 80 miles an hour. Ditto child abuse—consider the weirdos in California who chained up their whole family: if they chain up the whole family, and if the kids are sufficiently brainwashed to never press charges, then DSS could never remove children from a home, because only family members can press charges.

Physical, quantifiable already occurred—Rep. Sue Peterson’s silly state seal bill disappears, since I do no physical or quantifiable harm by drawing a version of the state seal without its theocratic motto. Copyright in general becomes unenforceable, since I do no physical damage by stealing intellectual property. But even regular theft becomes legal: if I’m smart enough to hack your bank account, I just move electronic figments that we treat as money, without any physical damage. And if I take your car or your four-wheeler, I won’t damage it physically; I’ll even fix it up and give it a new paint job before I hock it for cash. No crime there!

The physical-quantifiable criteria also do away with the ability to prosecute sexual harassment (“Hey, baby, I’d love to hit that… but since I haven’t, yo can’t prosecute me for creating a hostile work environment”), emotional abuse (words hit harder than a fist, but they leave no bruises), and conspiracy to commit murder or terrorism (“I’ve got it all planned out, I’m carrying the guns up to my hotel room in Vegas, but I haven’t hurt anyone yet, so stand aside, G-Man, and wait for me to start pulling my bump-stock trigger”).

The proposal comes from one Levi Breyfogle of Rapid City, whose address for “Coming Freedom,” an Internetally non-existent entity that resides in the same downtown office as boutique Glittered Vein. Breyfogle has done well to submit his amendment early, because given all the crimes his measure would legalize, he has a lot of revising to do to create an amendment a civilized society dares pass.

*Update 13:36 CST: Just today, the bill count has reached 236 in the House and 173 in the Senate. Last year, the House totaled 211 and the Senate 179.