Panel shelves bill to end mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes (copy)
A bid to end mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, which advocates say can result in unjustly lengthy prison stays, was shelved without discussion by the House of Delegates Courts of Justice Committee on Wednesday.
The committee carried over the bill until 2027 as “administrative action” with no explanation or debate.
It means the idea is dead for this year, even as House and Senate panels gave the go-ahead to measures that set clearer legal standards for social workers handling foster care cases and for tenants facing eviction.
Advocates for expanding defendants' rights have pushed to end mandatory minimum sentences for years, as have progressive members of the General Assembly, but opponents say they’re necessary to keep criminals off the streets.
"I'm disappointed," said Del. Rae Cousins, D-Richmond, who sponsored the measure, House Bill 863.
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She said she believed the reason for shelving the bill was a desire to avoid battles on contentious issues and to focus on Democrats' affordability agenda and efforts to rein in Virginians' healthcare, housing and energy bills.
“I’ll be back,” she said.
Cousins has said she's been passionate about the issue since seeing many of her Church Hill neighbors sentenced to long stays in prison under mandatory minimum laws and meeting Harry "Justice" Traynham, sentenced at 19 under the mandatory minimum law to 64 years in prison after his conviction for being the driver in a drive-by shooting.
While carrying over a bill is normally a diplomatic way to let it die, committee chairman Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, said that was not the plan.
“We’ve been working on this issue for several years, and we want to work on it some more,” he said.
Similar efforts to end mandatory minimums died in 2021, when Democratic majorities in the House and the state Senate split over how many crimes should be subject to them. It failed to get out of the subcommittee in 2023, when Republicans had a majority.
Foster care
The committee, meanwhile, approved a measure, House Bill 775, that says for the first time what is entailed in the “reasonable efforts” that state law says social workers need to make to reunite children in foster care with their families.
The bill says social workers need to help parents through the often complicated steps of a case and get the resources needed to deal with the safety concerns that prompted a child’s removal from the home.
Reasonable efforts need to include a comprehensive assessment of the circumstances of the child's family, the bill says.
In addition, it says those efforts need to address financial barriers to reunification, including providing financial assistance to meet immediate family needs.
Social workers would also be required to take steps to keep siblings together and to facilitate regular visits with parents while a child is in foster care.
The bill also says social workers should not be able to say a child is neglected if the only issue is a family's poverty.
“Our reunification rate is only 27%. We need to kick that up,” said Del. Virgil Thornton, D-Hampton, the bill’s sponsor.
Evictions and bail hearings
Meanwhile, the committee’s civil law panel approved a measure, House Bill 845, that says when tenants face eviction but contest the amount of rent and damages, they can have their allegations heard at the same time as a landlord’s efforts to evict them are before a district court judge.
In addition, both the House committee and the Senate Courts of Justice committee approved legislation, House Bill 127 and Senate Bill 412, saying people in jail should have a lawyer when they come before a judge for a bail hearing.
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