Tag: Steven Roberts

House committee seeks input from all sources in hearings on civil asset forfeiture, racial profiling

The House’s Special Committee on Criminal Justice will meet next week and again in August to develop potential legislation dealing with civil asset forfeiture and racial profiling by law enforcement.

Representative Shamed Dogan (photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The hearings have been spurred by the 2018 Vehicle Stops Report from the Office of Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R), and a report from State Auditor Nicole Galloway (D) on civil asset forfeiture.

Committee Chairman Shamed Dogan (R-Ballwin) cited Galloway’s report which said $9.1-million in cash and property was seized in 2018, compared to $7.1-million in 2017.  He called the findings a “call to action” for the committee and the legislature to balance Missourians’ rights against law enforcement’s duty to protect the public.

“We want to try and curb some of the abuses of that and come to some kind of a compromise where law enforcement can go after drug cartels.  No one’s trying to prohibit them from going after people who are drug dealers, but we just want to make sure that whenever possible, they do that through state law, which does require criminal convictions before you can take someone’s property,” said Dogan.

The traffic stops report showed the largest racial disparity in vehicle stops in state history, with African-Americans 91-percent more likely to be stopped by law enforcement than whites.

Dogan said the findings are frustrating, especially since that disparity has grown from about 27-percent in the 2000 report.

“I don’t think it makes sense to try to say that that increase in the disparity is because African-Americans are driving worse,” said Dogan.  “One of the explanations, to me, that make sense is just that law enforcement, for whatever reason, is wasting a lot of their time and resources on people who haven’t done anything wrong because they’re in search of people who have done something wrong, and that’s just a waste of their time and energy.”

Dogan said the disparity continues in the statistics on vehicle searches.

“Once the vehicles are stopped, they search the vehicles of African-Americans and Hispanics more than they do whites, but they’re less likely to find guns, or drugs, or other contraband on blacks or Hispanics than they are on whites, so again this is a mismatch of resources,” said Dogan.  “Why are you searching people of those racial categories more when they’re less likely to be carrying something illegally?”

St. Louis representative Steven Roberts is the top Democrat on the Committee on Criminal Justice.  He said there could be several legislative solutions for racial profiling.

Representative Steven Roberts (photo: Ben Peters, Missouri House Communications)

“The first thing, of course, is recognizing, look, there’s a problem here, then we can go forth fixing the issue, and I think the Attorney General’s report further proves what a lot of us have known:  that we’ve got a problem here,” said Roberts.

Roberts hopes the hearings this summer will help the committee flesh out the language of House Bill 444, which proposed banning the confiscation of assets from a person who hasn’t been convicted of a crime.

Dogan said he wants anyone with something to say about these issues to weigh in, and that includes members of the public, prosecutors, and law enforcement.  He said past efforts to pass legislation dealing with these issues have run into resistance, particularly from law enforcement groups, and he wants to get past that.

“We really do have to have buy-in from law enforcement but we also have to have constructive criticism, because I think the frustration with myself and a lot of my colleagues is just that law enforcement says ‘no,’ to these bills, or to the idea of reforms, but they never give us something that they can say ‘yes’ to.  Let’s come to a compromise on racial profiling,” said Dogan.

The Special Committee’s hearings take place Wednesday, July 24 at 9 a.m. in the St. Louis County Council Chambers, and Thursday, August 1 at 1 a.m. at the Robert J. Mohart Multi-Purpose Center in Kansas City.

Missouri House endorses elimination of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent crimes

The Missouri House has voted to eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent crimes.

Representative Cody Smith (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Missouri law requires that offenders with one prior conviction must serve at least 40-percent of a prison term.  Those with two prior convictions must serve 50-percent, and those with three or more must serve 80-percent.

House Bill 113 would allow judges to make exceptions to those mandates if, based on certain criteria, those minimums would be unjust to the defendant or unnecessary to protect the public.

“This enables us to, as someone said, differentiate between the folks that we’re scared of and the folks that we’re mad at,” said bill sponsor Cody Smith (R-Carthage).

Supporters say reforms such as those in HB 113 would keep individuals who made bad decisions but aren’t likely to commit further offenses from spending too much time in prison, where they might learn to commit additional and more violent offenses.

Projections say HB 113 will also save the state more than $3-million by 2023, by leading to the release of an estimated 466 prisoners and thereby eliminating the cost of housing, feeding, and otherwise seeing to the needs of those individuals.

Smith notes that those projections don’t include the fact that as recently as last year, Missouri was seen as on pace to need another two prisons in the next five years.

“Not having to build new prisons and incarcerate more and more folks, and house them, having that cost of operational cost … we’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Smith.

The bill drew broad bipartisan support, passing out of the House 140-17.  St. Louis Democrat Steven Roberts said while the bill removes minimum sentences, it doesn’t stop a judge from imposing maximum sentences when appropriate.

Representative Brandon Ellington (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

“I just want to emphasize the point that what this bill does is it doesn’t lower the ceiling, so if there’s an egregious offense – if something heinous happens, there’s nothing in this bill that lowers the ceiling of discretion, but what it does is it lowers the floor,” said Roberts.

Democrats called the bill a good step in the direction of criminal justice reform, but say they hope to see more.

Kansas City representative Brandon Ellington (D) has filed legislation that would further change the laws regarding minimum sentences, and named other reforms his party supports.

“Expungement is still a hot topic; some of the laws around marijuana expungement, etcetera – not just for the medicinal but full-scale expungement, so we’re looking at things of that nature,” said Ellington.

HB 113 now goes to the Senate, where last year’s version of the same legislation was referred to a committee but did not receive a hearing.