Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 17, 1994 TAG: 9402170151
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Staff and wire reports
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Stretching a midnight deadline for completion of work on bills introduced by its members, the House worked until about 2:30 a.m. to approve measures that could revamp the criminal justice system and seemed calculated to reassure the public that legislators are serious about cracking down on crime.
The delegates also wrestled again with the abortion issue, agreeing to a bill that generally would require that the parents be notified when unmarried teen-agers seek abortions. Approval of such legislation has become almost routine in the House, but the proposal has cleared the Senate only once, in 1992. It was vetoed by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder; Gov. George Allen has pledged to sign the bill, should it pass this year.
As in the past, the bill includes a "judicial bypass" procedure that would allow abortion without notification if a juvenile court judge finds that notification would not be in the pregnant teen's best interests.
On Tuesday, the House killed a bill that would have allowed notification of an adult family member other than the girl's parent. That bill also would have required notification of the parents of the male who caused the pregnancy.
Though all garnered bipartisan support, political considerations were apparent in the House's work on the crime bills. All the measures to get tough on parole were sponsored by Democrats, who obviously were watching last fall as Allen won the governorship based Delegates agreed to a bill requiring that parents be notified when unmarried teens seek abortions. largely on his promise to end parole.
Allen plans to call a special legislative session this spring on abolishing parole. Democrats say the job can be done now, and they rushed through a bill sponsored by Del. Roscoe Reynolds, D-Martinsville, to underscore their argument.
Reynolds' bill would end parole beginning in January 1996 if voters approved the idea in a November 1995 referendum.
Del. Randy Forbes, R-Chesapeake, said the bill was not carefully thought out and did not address how sentences should be restructured. Nevertheless, Republicans joined with Democrats in approving the measure, 90-8.
Soon after the vote, Allen issued a statement saying its passage "demonstrates the power of the people of Virginia as expressed at the polls."
"To those members of the General Assembly who are now ready to abolish our lenient, liberal parole system in Virginia, I say welcome aboard," Allen said. "I am ready to work with you."
Scott Leake, director of the Assembly's Republican caucus, said Democrats deliberately proposed a flawed bill to put GOP legislators in the awkward position of voting against parole abolition. But he said the Republicans didn't take the bait.
"We've got 90 on record now as supporting abolishing parole," he said. "It's only a matter of how we get there, not whether they go there."
In his statement, Allen listed several problems with Reynolds' bill but did not say he would veto it if it passes the Senate.
Also passed early Wednesday by the House was the "three-time loser" bill, which Allen favors and has said need not wait for the special session, and a bill which would offer one last hope to some prisoners facing the death penalty.
The latter proposal would permit condemned convicts who turn up evidence of their innocence after they are tried to get a court hearing on that evidence. Virginia law now bars such hearings, unless the convict requests them within 21 days of sentencing.
Before leaving office last month, Wilder commuted to life in prison the sentence of Earl Washington Jr., whose lawyers produced evidence indicating he could not have committed the murder for which he had been convicted. That evidence, a DNA test, did not surface for years after Washington's trial.
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB