H.B. 284 Murder Offense Amendments: transcript

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. I'm joined today by, uh, Christopher Christopher Ballard. He's the General counsel at the Utah County Attorney's Office. And I'm grateful for the attorney's office in Utah County for, uh, bringing this bill to me. And, uh, uh, Mr. Ballard will talk about the importance to their office, but it will also be important throughout the state. But HB 2 84 fixes an un unintended drafting change in Utah's murder statute, uh, a couple of years ago that, uh, uh, eliminated the, uh, depraved indifference murder, uh, policy. And so what this bill does is basically puts that back into code. And because Utah has long recognized that some killings are so reckless, so dangerous, and so callous toward human life, that they're the moral equivalent of intentional murder, even if the actor didn't intend to kill a specific person. So in, uh, and each case an actor may claim, I didn't mean to kill anyone, but society recognizes that the conduct itself is so dangerous that it justifies a murder murder charge. And so with that, and I'll just reiterate it again, that in 2022, it was a change that was unintended to the murder, to the murder statute when they were making some cleanup changes, uh, to the code. And so with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Ballard to kind of explain a little bit more about this and why it's so important that we get this back into the code.

Thank you. Representative Malloy, uh, Christopher Ballard, general Counsel at the Utah County Attorney's Office. And, uh, this issue came to our attention, um, from the Kent Cody Barlow case, um, which, uh, occurred, uh, just after the May, 2020, or excuse me, just before the May 22nd, 2022 Amendment that we're talking about here, uh, that we're trying to fix. Um, Mr. Barlow was driving 120 miles an hour through an area in Eagle Mountain, uh, high on methamphetamine when he lost control of his vehicle and ran into some horse stables, killed two little 3-year-old boys. Had that crime happened just two days later, we would not have been able to charge him with depraved indifference murder because the statute, as it read after the reification in May of 2022, says that in order to charge someone with depraved indifference murder, you would have to show, or in order to prove that that crime, you would have to show that they had a particular, uh, victim in mind that they, in that, um, that they caused the death of a particular individual. But depraved indifference murder has never worked that way. And prior to the reification in May of 2022, uh, the statute did not require the state to have to prove that the defendant had a particular victim in mind. And so we're just trying to get the statute back to the way it read, uh, before that reification in May of 2022. Okay. Thank you. That concludes our presentation.

Yes. I, I just wanna say thank you because, um, that incident not only brought light to this loophole, but also what is addressed in HB two 30, which is there, uh, those who are required on parole to have drug tests, they were not being reported back to UGC. So under HB two 30, that part's being dressed. I just think making sure that we close these kind of loops, holes, saves children's lives, saves other people's lives, and make sure that we are holding people accountable who, um, who have contracts under parole and, and, and other things. So, thank you so much.

Motion to, let's see. Motion to a adopt and pass out favorably HB 2 84 Murder offense amendments with favorable recommendation.

Seeing none? Would you like to representative? I, I'll waive. Thank you.

You, Mr. Chair, and thank you members of the committee.

Thank you Mr. Chair. It's good to see you again after seeing you in our committee earlier. It's a, it's a funny game we play here it is. Um, I want to, uh, first kind of set this up by saying that the Utah County Attorney's Office brought this bill to me, uh, because of specific concerns and needs that they felt. And so I have Christopher Ballard here who is from the, uh, Utah County, uh, attorney's office. And he's going to, uh, speak, uh, briefly, but this is a, a, a very simple bill. A couple years ago, the, uh, the, the language that, uh, allowed for depraved indifference murder policy was removed. It was, uh, uh, not intentional. It was, uh, a mistake in drafting. And so all this bill does is put that back in. It's just a couple word changes in what, what year was it removed? I think it was 2022. Is that correct? Yeah. Was it, was it one of my bills? Probably, but, alright. Um, uh, Mr. Uh, Ballard, thanks for being here. Can you please introduce yourself and Yes.

Christopher Ballard, general Counsel at the Utah County Attorney's Office. And, uh, as Representative Maloy has explained, this is just, uh, fixing what was not intended to be a substantive change when, uh, the criminal code was reified in 2022. But the addition of a couple of words did make a substantive change. The theory behind depraved indifference murder has always been that the defendant does not have to have a specific intent to kill any particular individual. But in fact, the change in 2022 incorporated that requirement into the law. Contrary to the way depraved indifference murder has always been understood, we're just trying to get the law back to the way it was before that unintended change was, um, put in, into the statute in 2022. Thank

It does, except I would just say there have been instances where this, it was very important that this be in place recently in, in the past couple years in, uh, Utah County. So I think it's pretty important. But that, that concludes our presentation. Thank you.

Be extremely brief. Marice Jones Victims Services Commission. We are in support of this bill for obvious reasons based on the explanation. So I will not revisit that. But we hope that you'll see the rationale in it and we are in support of it. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Yeah. And depending on the vote, I'll do a follow up motion after this, but I would recommend favorably HB 2 84. We have a motion to favorably recommend HB 2 84 to the floor of the Senate discussion to that motion.

I haven't seen any no votes on this. It's changing three words and replacing them with two. It's a pretty small change, so I would recommend that we place HB 2 84 in the consent on that. Is that something you'd agree to? Sure. All right.

Madam Reading Clerk House Bill 2 84, murder offense amendments by Representative Maloy. This bill was heard in law enforcement and criminal justice with the vote of 9 0 2 Representative Maloy.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker ProAm, Utah has long recognized that there are some homicides that are so reckless, so dangerous, and so callous toward human life, that they are the moral equivalent of intentional murder, even if the actor did not intend to specifically kill someone. What this bill does is it corrects, uh, a drafting error that occurred a few years ago by putting back into the murder code. Uh, the concept of depraved indifference murder. And what that means is, uh, the actions of someone that were, that was so bad, uh, that it, it resulted in the, the, uh, ending of someone's life that even if it wasn't intent, intentional, uh, it gives the, uh, our county attorneys the opportunity to prosecute for those kinds of, uh, uh, homicides. And the, uh, it was unintended, but, uh, that concept was removed from the murder code a few years ago. So this just puts it back in. And, uh, this was brought to me by the Utah County attorney who, uh, specifically thought this was important that we got this back into our state code. And there has been, uh, incidences in the past few years, uh, in Utah County where this actual, uh, crime was committed and, uh, loss of life, uh, what occurred. Uh, and it was, uh, someone who was being told completely indifferent to the cons, their consequences of their actions and resulted in the loss of life. And, uh, I'm, I'm told that the county attorney in Utah County was able to use this before it was removed unintentionally in the prosecution of that crime. But since then, it's been, uh, removed like I've mentioned, and now they don't have that ability to do that. So this bill just puts, uh, it's very simple change to the code. It's only a few words, but it puts depraved indifference back into the murder code. And that's my presentation. Mr. Speaker ProAm.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker ProAm. I, um, I'm grateful for this bill and I'm also concerned about this bill. At the same time, when I think of the term depraved indifference, I don't necessarily look at the word depraved, but I look at the word indifferent. And when I consider a lot of the personalities out in the, out in society today, I think that that's a really hard thing to determine indifference and depraved indifference. Um, but overall, I, I understand why this is put in and supported.

Thank you. I'll wa Summation is waived.

And so, uh, with that I would move that HB 2 84 pass.

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