Senate committee rejects body cam video release bill
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted down a proposal to make most law enforcement dashboard and body cam videos public record and widely distributable within 30 days.
Senate Bill 14 sponsor Sen. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove, said law enforcement videos should be released in a timely manner in order to “identify bad apples” and quash rumors in a community when there is a police-involved shooting.
Several members of the committee who are attorneys raised concerns about released videos impacting ongoing police investigations or criminal trials. Concerns came from both sides of the aisle and the bill received a 4-8 vote.
Last year, the Legislature approved House Bill 289, sponsored by Rep. Juandalynn Givan, D-Birmingham. It grants people whose image or voice is on a law enforcement recording, or their family members, the right to request to view the footage. It also allows law enforcement to deny requests that interfere with an investigation or prosecution.
Coleman told the committee that law is being cited by some law enforcement agencies that don’t allow family members to view videos.
Coleman’s proposal was named for Jawan Dallas and Steve Perkins. Dallas died in July after being Tased twice by police in Mobile. Perkins, of Decatur, was shot and killed by local police in September.
Coleman told committee members Wednesday she looks forward to working with them on the bill in the 2025 legislative session.
Senate committee hears support, opposition to expanding mixed drink availability
At a public hearing Wednesday, the Senate Tourism Committee heard several speakers in both support and opposition to a bill that would permit “ready-to-drink” spirits to be sold alongside beer and wine in grocery and convenience stores.
Sponsored by Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, Senate Bill 259 would permit RTD spirits with an alcohol by volume of up to 8% to be sold outside of Alcoholic Beverage Control Board stores and private package stores. The bill would expand the availability of RTD spirits from less than 1,000 locations to more than 4,600.
The bill also includes franchise language that would require exclusive sales territories to be established between RTD spirit producers and wholesalers, an inclusion that has drawn the ire of some soft drink producers.
Bo Taylor, senior vice president of Coca-Cola United who had signed up to speak at the public hearing, called the franchise language included in the bill a “protection, an entitlement that puts them in a position to be successful and eliminate all others.”
The majority of those who spoke at the hearing, however, spoke in favor of the bill, with most of them representing grocery or convenience stores.
Sen. David Sessions, R-Grand Bay, considered himself among those in opposition to the bill, calling it “not a good piece of legislation.”
Singleton filed a similar bill last year, though that version would have expanded the availability of RTD spirits with alcohol by volume levels as high as 12.5%. He remained hopeful that a compromise could still be reached this legislative session between the bill’s supporters and opponents.
Death row inmate sentence reform effort dies in committee
A bill that would have granted death row inmates whose jury-imposed life sentence was overridden by a judge an opportunity to be resentenced died in a House committee on Wednesday.
House Bill 27, Sponsored by Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, seeks to retroactively apply a 2017 law that prohibits the ability of a judge to override a jury’s decision and impose the death penalty, a process known as judicial override. While judicial override is no longer legal, 33 inmates are still sitting on death row who were sentenced by the now-banned practice.
Taken up in the House Judiciary Committee, the bill immediately received some pushback from committee members.
“This basically says if the judge overrode, for whatever reason, then they get resentenced because we changed the law at some point, but at the time, that was the law, and that was the judge’s ability to do that,” said Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook.
“I understand where you’re coming from, I also understand where the victims are coming from though, and it’s a difficult thing to go back and say because we changed the law, we’re going to go back and change that.”
England, who introduced an identical bill last year, pushed back on Faulkner’s concerns about retroactive application of the law.
“I have to say, it’s really disturbing to me when we talk about retroactive application, and when we decide to use it,” England said.
“We just created immunity for doctors to protect them retroactively for in vitro fertilization. It’s like when we do things out of convenience instead of for justice, it means that we can be malleable when we want to apply these standards.”
Other committee members, including Rep. Jim Hill, R-Odenville, the chair of the committee, said that the idea of “second guessing” a judge’s decision to impose a death sentence was difficult for him.
Of the committee’s 15 members, four voted to give the bill a favorable report.
Deanna Smith, the wife of Kenneth Smith, who was executed in January via nitrogen gas, attended the committee meeting in support of the bill. Her late husband was among those who was sentenced to death via judicial override after being convicted of the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett.
“It’s something that should have been done years ago,” Deanna Smith told Alabama Daily News. “Kenny, he was sentenced with 11 jurors to life without parole, so it’s definitely very close to my heart. We have a jury for a reason.”
House committee advances proposal to increase funding to feed county inmates
Members of the House Ways and Means General Fund standing committee voted unanimously on a bill that would increase how much the state reimburses counties for jail inmates’ meals.
Sponsored by Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, Senate Bill 149 would increase the daily rate of meals by 25 cents annually for three years to $3 per day in 2026.
Orr has previously said the bill is the request of the sheriffs who have to feed the local prisoners.
Alabama Daily News’ Alexander Willis and Stuart Dyos contributed to this report.