Some bills arrive at a committee already carrying their arguments on their sleeve. Others slip through in the span of a few minutes, in a room that has technically already adjourned for the day, with nobody raising a hand to ask a question. Senate Bill 26-115 was the second kind.
The measure, formally titled Post-Conviction Relief for Certain Offenders, sets up a narrow window — the next three years — for a person in prison to petition for resentencing. It opens that door along two tracks. A petitioner qualifies if they are 60 years old or older when they file and have already served at least 20 calendar years for the offense. They also qualify along a second track: if they committed the offense when they were younger than 21 and have served at least 20 calendar years. The idea rests on a long-studied premise in criminal justice circles: that the risk a person poses tends to fall as they age, and that a sentence handed down decades earlier may no longer fit the person now serving it.
The bill draws hard lines around who can walk through that door. It excludes anyone incarcerated for a sex offense, for human trafficking, for a crime that resulted in life without the possibility of parole, for an offense where the victim was a child younger than 12, or for a crime against a first responder in the line of duty. And the burden sits squarely on the petitioner: at a hearing, they must show, by a preponderance of the evidence, that they no longer present an identifiable danger to any person or the community, and that there is good cause to modify the sentence. Only if a judge agrees can they move for reconsideration and a new sentence.
There is also a mirror provision worth noting. If a person doesn't qualify to petition on their own, the district attorney's office that prosecuted the case can petition the court on their behalf — running the same process in reverse, with the prosecutors, not the prisoner, opening the door.
The fiscal side is what put it in front of House Appropriations. The bill appropriates $50,840 to the judicial department for the public defender and $50,326 to the department of corrections for community services, while trimming $168,980 from the 2026-27 appropriation the corrections department would have sent to local jails for inmate payments.
In committee, the mechanics were almost anticlimactic. Members adopted amendment J004 without objection — it was moved by the Vice Chair and seconded by Rep. Andrew Boesenecker (D-District 53), as described in committee — and then referred the bill, as amended, to the Committee of the Whole. No questions were raised for the sponsors. On a day the panel moved a full slate of bills to the floor after adjournment, this one drew no debate at all.
The bill is carried by Sen. Julie Gonzales (D-District 34) and Sen. Mike Weissman (D-District 28) in the Senate, and by Rep. Jennifer Bacon (D-District 7) and Rep. Javier Mabrey (D-District 1) in the House.
With the referral out of Appropriations, the bill heads to the full House floor, where the questions that went unasked in committee may finally get asked.