The Criminal Subcommittee advanced bills on live streaming while driving, critical infrastructure protection, gift card fraud, child abuse reporting, sextortion, medetomidine scheduling, and probation reform, while tabling a mandatory minimum for felony eluding, defeating a voluntary manslaughter penalty increase, and carrying over a serious-bodily-injury assault bill to the Crime Commission.
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Rob Hogan of Class Justice for Virginia argued mandatory minimums 'don't work, they don't deter crime' and strip judges of discretion to consider case facts. Rae Cousins questioned whether the bill's aggravating factors were ones a judge could already consider at sentencing without a mandatory minimum. An unnamed committee member stated they were 'not a fan of mandatory minimums' and would not support the bill regardless of how the 'equipment' language was drafted. The bill was tabled 7-3.
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“Delegate Cousins. So I don't practice a lot of criminal law. I'm more personal injury and counsel can certainly correct me if I'm wrong. But there'll be sentencing guidelines that's put together and so the judges have to keep it middle of the road with the sentencing guidelines. And without the mandatory minimum in there, oftentimes in these cases, it's going to be well below the one year”
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Sign in to subscribeMembers, if you could take your seat, please. Clerk, please open the roll. Members, indicate your presence. We have a quorum. And the Criminal Law Subcommittee of the House Courts of Justice Committee will come to order. And while we have a docket here, it's pretty much in numerical order, which means there's not a strong logic. So I am going to. I do not see any major groups of individuals that might be waiting to testify on a given bill. So with that, I'm going to go ahead. While I didn't see which members came in first on the list, help me. So let's go with hb320. Cole. Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the committee before you is HB320. It specifically bans live streaming to social media while driving. And I want to stress what HB 320 does not do because there's already laws to address these issues. It does not ban zoom calls while driving. It does not ban face timing while driving. It does not ban backup cameras, security cameras, or dash cameras. And it has nothing to do with holding your phone, texting, or watching the screen. There's already laws addressed to do that. It…
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