H.B. 495 Capital Felony Case Amendments: transcript

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning committee. And, uh, you know, next time I barrel through the parking lot and then run, I'm gonna text the chairs to make sure they're here. So, uh, it was a good exercise this morning. Uh, colleagues, I hope you're looking at the first sub that's come from some of the meetings we've had with stakeholders yesterday. Um, and in a moment, uh, the attorney General's office, um, will, one of their attorneys will be joining me up here. But, uh, colleagues, this bill, uh, well, the death penalty can be a hot topic. This bill is not about, you know, philosophically whether we should have the death penalty or not. This bill is about process. This bill is about how our state handles capital felony cases. And, um, there have been some high profile cases that over interim, really caught my attention. And I think a lot of ours that has got us talking about how does Utah's process work for capital felony cases. Thank you, will. And, uh, just to give you some context here, the time between sentencing and execution in the US has grown significantly over recent decades. And so nationally, the average amount of time that an individual will be on death row is 22 years. However, in Utah, our time is currently 33 years, uh, which is significantly higher than the, the average. Um, we have had three inmates that are currently waiting on death row, and they've averaged, you know, 34 years there. Most recently, uh, if you had followed the Ralph Menzies case, he sat on death row for 36 years. Um, and people have said he is an outlier, but he is not. If you look at the next three individuals who are on death row. And so my intern is going to hand out a flyer if she hasn't already. Uh, that I think is helpful for those of you who are not like me, who are not attorneys, and this is a lot of legal jargon, but able to go through what our existing process is when it comes to the death penalty process. And Alyssa, if you'll make sure just every seat gets one. 'cause I think people are gonna trickle in, but I wanna just make sure we're clear. So when we're talking about the death penalty to be eligible to, uh, be sentenced to death, it's reserved exclusively in Utah law for aggravated murder, which requires the presence of at least one aggravating factor that we have defined in statutes such as killing multiple victims, killing a child under 14, or targeting law enforcement. So I just wanted to put that out there too, because sometimes this conversations conversation trace to the philosophical, um, ideologies and, and thoughts surrounding the death penalty. But really, I think we should be looking at the process. And if Utah does it well, there are two components to this bill. The first thing that we're working on addressing is competency. And we're gonna discuss that a little bit. And then also then just the process and how we handle these cases and what that means at the federal level for a potential expedited review. So, um, if you, you walk through and you've got a nice little chart. Now, thank you to our staff who worked late to help get this together. You've got the actual trial, you have the appeal, you have state post-conviction review, you have federal habeas review and competency challenges. So, um, I'm gonna walk through the bill and I'm gonna have will jump in as well. Uh, were needed. So, uh, when it comes to pre-screening for intellectual disability, the constitution, uh, prohibits the death penalty for someone who's intellectually disabled. So to avoid going through the time and expense of seeking the death penalty, only to have a defendant argue long after the fact that he or she is intellectually disabled a status that doesn't change over time. The bill requires a prescreening for intellectual disability at the beginning of a capital case where an IQ test can be com uh, performed in the sub. We have some significant changes that we have made after discussing with the defense. Uh, but will, do you wanna explain a little more on intellectual disability and how that would be evaluated?

Sure. So again, my name is, is this? Yeah, it's on. Yes. My, my name is William Haynes with the Attorney General's Office and Assistant Solicitor General and Deputy Division Director of the Criminal Appeals Division. The Criminal Appeals Division, uh, oversees, uh, litigation and capital cases after the trial. And so all of these different stages of the proceedings that represent Pucci described for intellectual disability, the law requires two components, um, significant, um, significant sub average general intellectual functioning, plus significant deficiencies in adaptive functioning. Um, these two components also have to be manifested by the time someone is an adult, and that's the, the test that US Supreme Court has identified for intellectual disability, saying that someone who is intellectually dis disabled under that definition, uh, cannot be executed as a constitutional matter. And because you need both components, um, intellectual, this bill requires a pre-screening where a, um, an evaluation is done of the defendant's iq, uh, which will establish the significant whether the defendant has significant sub average intellectual functioning, um, which is generally recognized as, uh, two standard deviations be between the means. So an IQ score of 70 or lower. Um, and, um, the US Supreme Court has said we need to take into account the possibility of error in those tests. So a standard deviation of, of about, um, sorry, a, um, um, error measurement of about five points. So if someone has an IQ of 75 or lower, they, there's the potential that they could be intellectually disabled, even though their IQ score is higher than the that number of 70. And so this bill says that if someone has, through this prescreening process, if they have an IQ of 75 or lower, it requires a hearing with further, uh, examination to determine whether they are intellectually disabled. And it also, this is, this pre skinning process is modeled after the process in Arizona, but unlike Arizona, it also allows the defendant to present their own evidence of a lower iq, um, if they, uh, if that prescreening comes back as 76 or higher. So they can still get a hearing if they can present their own evidence that they're, um, that they do have significant sub average general intellectual functioning. But if they, if that first critical element is not present, the defendant cannot be, uh, intellectually disabled just as a matter of, uh, of law and as recognized in the scientific community. So if that is not established at the outset, there's no need for the further evaluation. But we want to clear this up at the beginning of the case to save the time and expense of going through a capital trial if, um, the death penalty is, is not an option. And, and to avoid appeals coming challenges coming years later when this is something that was always present and always discoverable right at the outset.

Thank you. So then we're gonna shift to talking about the appeal. And again, if you turn to your handout, I feel like we're in school on page two, it walks you through what existing law does and what this bill would change. But when we talk about automatic review, current Utah code authorizes the Utah Supreme Court to conduct an automatic review in a capital case. This bill clarifies that an automatic review will happen in the following ways. Either an automatic review can be conducted only when the defendant waives the right to an appeal. The court reviews the conviction and sentence only for manifest I justice, or the court initially conducts its review without briefing from the parties, but it may reverse only if it gives the attorney general a chance to weigh in. Um, and so you can see that, uh, the 120 days also, um, that the court would need to complete that review. As we look at that, uh, one thing that people, when you, when you review these cases, and I have learned ineffective assistance claims are often what, on an appeal a defendant is asking for a new trial or sentencing, uh, challenging the representation they received at trial. So to create a record in support of that claim, defendants are currently able to ask the Supreme Court to send the case back to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing. This bill states that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to hear claims of an effective assistance of counsel on direct appeal in a capital case. So ineffective assistant claims will have to be raised exclusively in a separate post-conviction case. So if you look at the chart here, uh, you can see the second column. There are so many different phases of these, um, these cases. Uh, and it eliminates the potential for two evidentiary hearings, wondering the appeal and one in the post-conviction ca uh, case. So then, um, when we're talking about state post-conviction and our review, uh, the code currently requires the appointment of a post-conviction counsel for Indigent capital defendants. This bill would actually expand that requirement for all capital defendants, although they can waive counsel. This will help us as we go forward with an expedited review at the federal level. Uh, it does clarify the timeline for appointing counsel. They, it will require it to occur within 30 days of the end of the appeal, and it requires the Utah Supreme Court to maintain a list of counsel qualified to handle post-conviction capital cases. Um, it also will remove the provision that allows the court to dismiss a post-conviction petition when the court fi can't find willing counsel for an indigent defense who wants counsel. So these changes really are going to help us when we go to the federal level and try to qualify for federal habeas corpus. Um, we also, uh, if you'll look, we have increased the compensation for post-conviction counsel in capital cases. So, um, the defense attorneys, their pay will be increased significantly. Uh, this will change will also help us qualify for the expedited review in a federal habeas corpus, uh, excuse me, federal habeas, um, review. So when we talk about federal habeas, um, and so after we've gone through the state process, which is lengthy and robust, it then kicks it over to federal habeas review. Um, and so once the state meets several conditions to ensure that indigent defendants have qualified their, we have adequately compensated their counsel and post-conviction, it can be certified by the US Department of Justice as qualifying for expedited habeas review. Now, expedited review, I just wanna clarify, when you and I hear the word expedited, I think 24 hours, but we we're in the judiciary, so come with me here. Uh, expedited review is within 450 days. So it is still over a year, uh, of the filing of the initial petition, and it requires the federal court of appeals to rule on the case within 120 days of briefing of the briefings being complete. So I just want to give you the actual days and context here. When we use the word expedited, it means something very different when you're talking in the judiciary. So then, uh, when you have these competency, uh, proceedings, do you wanna add anything on this? Just let me know, just Okay. Yeah. That's one of the critical areas of the bill. Okay. Critical area, uh, the competency to be executed proceedings. Um, when you're looking at a competency standard, the bill brings the test for competency to be executed in line with the US Supreme Court precedent. The statute currently uses an awareness standard that the court has held unconstitutional, which is why this bill defines competency as lacking a rational understanding due to a mental condition. Uh, that one is to be execut executed as punishment for committing the crime of the murder. Okay. Now, the timing of the petition here for competency is important. And this is something we've seen in recent cases. So, a claim the defendant is incompetent to be executed, can only be raised once an execution date is actually set. So when a death warrant is issued, the court sets an execution date between 30 to 60 days out. This bill will prohibit competency challenges within 21 days of the execution unless the defendant provides an affidavit from a physician or a psychologist stating the defendant is incompetent and the defendant shows good cause for not filing the petition sooner. This bill also requires competency evaluations to be completed within 30 days, and a competency hearing to be held no sooner than five days, and no later than 15 days after the evaluation is complete. Uh, this is a really critical part of this bill. If you'll remember specifically in the Menzies case, this was something that, uh, to many people's surprise, uh, he was able to raise his attorneys and him were able to raise the competency standard very late in the game. Do you wanna add anything to this? No. Okay. Alright. So that's the competency piece As we've walked through the process, um, when we talk about successive petitions. So this bill does increase the standard for getting another competency evaluation once the court has already found the defendant competent to be executed. So the petitioner must show a substantial change in circumstances that create a significant question about competency and provide an affidavit from a physician or psychologist who has examined the defendant after the previous finding, and, and states based on the facts that the defendant is incompetent. So the court can consider any competing evidence presented by the state in deciding whether to hold a second hearing. Now, when we talk about stays, this bill specifically limits, uh, or specifies, excuse me, the legal reasons that could prevent the issuance of a death warrant, limiting those reasons to the existence of a stay or some procedural defect in the warrant application. So it removes the automatic stay for competency proceedings and gives the district court authority to stay the execution only if circumstances beyond its control prevent it from ruling on the petition before the execution date. It also allows for the automatic expiration of stays upon the resolution of the challenge that triggered the stay. And the bill also clarifies that if the date of execution has not passed, the state does not have to seek a new warrant and restart the clock. Uh, and if a competency finding has been challenged and upheld on an appeal, the bill shortens the window in which the new execution date must be set, making it 50 to 30 days rather than 30 to 60 days. Now, this is a lot of legalese and court process that we've walked through, and again, to just manage expectations and level set. Right now in Utah, the average time on death row is 33 years. Most recently, uh, Ralph Menzies was on death row for 36 years. Michael Archuleta is on death row. He's been there 36 years right now, next person's 34 years, next person's 29 years. When we talk about qualifying for expedited review at the federal level and making changes to our process and how we do competency, we are not thinking that we're going to cut this time drastically, uh, to five or 10 years. It is likely it will take what is now a 33 year stay death row to 15 years. And that's if everything were to go smoothly. So again, I still think 15 years or 10 to 15 years is plenty of time to vet and go through a case. Um, and there's nothing hasty about this. And I would say when you look at national averages, Utah is skewing much higher. And I think we can do a lot of things to improve our process to be good towards the taxpayer dollars and make sure that we are providing justice and, um, fairness to our victims. Do you want anything? No, I'm just happy to answer questions. Okay. As necessary. Alright. Thank you Mr. Chair. That concludes our presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and thank you representative for the research and the thorough presentation here. I'm wondering if I could ask maybe a three-pronged question, Mr. Chair, regarding the intellectual disability determination aspect of it. Maybe the first question you referenced, if I understood correctly, the state of Arizona as a similar model. Are there, can you provide other examples of what other states have done regarding the intellectual disability determination?

Uh, yes, there's It. Yeah. Other states, um, a lot of other states, um, just simply have a, a process. They usually put a deadline on how soon before trial this can be raised to encourage it to be raised sooner. And that is a varying range. I I don't recall the numbers. Some just, you know, a few day, like, you know, maybe a month before trial. Um, others have a, a longer window as to be raised even sooner. Um, and then a few states have, um, Arizona and Kansas, both specifically state defined in statute that significant sub average, uh, intellectual functioning is an IQ of 70 or below. Um, but other than just simply requiring it to be raised a certain number of, a certain number of days before trial, there's not a lot of, um, variation in in what states do they simply just allow a defendant to raise it, having different standards of, of what kind of a showing is required for a defendant to raise it. Um,

And I can get, I can dig into what other states are doing when we looked at this, uh, we are not that far off base on what, what we're working on here.

Thank you. A a second pronged question regarding the intellectual disability determination. Um, I'm reading that a defendant may waive pre-screening if the waiver is known and voluntarily. Is there a timeframe of that when the defendant may waive the pre-screening?

So the, uh, the bill, um, requires this pre-screening to be conducted, um, right after the state files the notice of intent to seek the death penalty. And so it's at that point where the court's going to order it. That's the point where a defendant waives decides whether they're going to waive it or not. And, um, and again, it has to be a knowing and involuntary waiver. The, the standard for intellectual disability doesn't preclude a knowing the ability to knowingly, involuntarily waive that. Right. But that is something that the court would inquire into to make sure that the waiver is knowing involuntary just to, as a safeguard there.

Okay. Thank you for the clarification. Mr. Chair may ask one additional question. Go ahead. About the intellectual disability determination. Um, I'm reading that a finding on an ID claim can be appealed by the defendant or the prosecution. Is there a timeframe of regarding that appeal portion?

The appeal would have to be, the notice of appeal would have to be filed within 30 days of the court's determination. If that 30 day window passes and there's no notice of appeal, then neither party can challenge the order. Uh, as far as that process, how long that appeal would take. Um, there's no specific timeline in the bill except that the bill does, um, explicitly state that capital cases at every stage of the proceeding need to be prioritized. And, and once a, uh, once a sentence is entered, they need to be expedited as well.

Thanks for that additional clarification. Thank You.

Thank you. Uh, my questions are on the defense counsel pay, and can you tell me how that will work and if it includes the public defenders and will that still be a county expense? And how far in advance do we need to know so that we can get that included in the county budgets? And will you give me a line that you're looking, I'm trying to find it in the, at the end.

Okay. I'm not, I'm just going off of what you said. Oh, okay. Okay. On page 43, oh, sorry. It's around line 1400. Yeah. Um, 1443. And my understanding is nothing in this bill would change how Vick's costs are currently handled. So

Could I add that? Yeah. This is a, this is a, uh, a, an expense that is paid by state finance, not by the counties. So, and this, and this is only for post-conviction in a capital case. And, uh, in the criminal case itself, um, as you, as you suggested, it is the counties that, uh, that pay the public defenders. But when the court appoints a, an attorney for the defendant in the post-conviction process for a capital case, currently under the statute, that is an expense that the state pays. And, and the statute already requires, uh, the state to provide, uh, counsel to indigent defendants. This requires it for all defendants. The, the likelihood that someone at this stage of the proceeding a capital defendant after going through this litigation is, um, not going to be indigent is, is unlikely, but, but it is possible. Um, but this expedites and streamlines the process for getting counsel appointed. But to answer the question about pay, uh, it is the state and not the county.

Thank you. I'm just always looking out for our public defenders and making sure they're being adequately paid. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you representative for all the work you've done on this. I know a lot of us have expressed concern in this area, and as you dive into things like this that maybe you've never dove into before, you learn a lot, I'm sure. And I'm sure you've, I can tell you've learned so much about this whole process. Um, I just had a quick question about, and maybe you covered it and I I didn't hear it, but it, it's, you, you have on the handout that it used to be only six years was kind of the average, and now we're at 34 years of an average on, on death row. How do you, have you, do you have any idea of how much that costs a year, how much that cost the taxpayers a year? So,

That's a great question. I've actually asked our analysts to dig into that because I think when you look at the fiscal note, you know how our fiscal notes work, uh, it doesn't necessarily capture potential cost savings, but I have asked them on, on the amount and they were gonna get that back to me. So I can circle back up with you. Okay.

Thank you. Bless you. But great work. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, mark Moffitt. I'm here on behalf of the Utah Defense Lawyers Association. First of all, I want to thank Representative Pucci for meeting with us yesterday. Uh, we were, uh, among a group of stakeholders that met with her to discuss this bill. Um, there have been some changes, but we remain concerned. Um, and I, I wanna, I guess give the, the committee my perspective with respect to the folks that are on death row now. It is true, and we understand that there is a concern about the length of time people are on death row before sentences are carried out. The folks who were on death row now were people that were tried back in the 1980s. And I, I want the committee to understand what the state of death penalty litigation was in the 1980s. And I will tell you that the state of death penalty litigation in the 1980s was super unsophisticated when it came to defense lawyers. Um, the defense lawyers who were taking the cases were people who were very well intended. They believed in the cause, but they weren't adequately trained in death penalty representation. And as a result, um, there were numerous, numerous errors that were committed in those cases that contributed to the length of time that these folks have been on death row. And it's because of those errors that the Supreme Court took a look at things and said, wait a minute, we have to have a standard here in the state of Utah that people have to meet before they can take on death penalty work. And that became Rule eight of the Utah Rules of Criminal Procedure. And Rule Eight basically makes requirements that must be met to do trial work, to do appellate work, and to do post-conviction work, you have to have training, you have to have, um, experience before you can even take those cases on. And these cases that we're all concerned about here occurred long before that rule was ever enacted. Another thing that the Supreme Court did, it, it, what was created is the Rule eight Indigent Defense Fund. And the Rule eight Indigent Defense Fund provides money to counties who basically opt into this basically insurance fund to fund criminal defense, um, on death in death penalty cases. And so the combination of these things has significantly improved the state of death penalty representation by the defense since that rule was enacted. Um, and unfortunately for the defendants that are on State Death Row now, the, when they were convicted, that rule did not exist. One of the concerns that we have here is that the clear intent of this bill is to accelerate the timeframe for death penalty cases to make a death sentence be enacted quicker. Um, and when you seek to enact a death sentence quicker, um, there is always the possibility that, number one, you're going to, um, execute somebody who's innocent or you're going to miss, um, errors, significant errors that were committed in the, the trials of those cases. Um, there's a recent, one of the men on death row right now, um, is on death row, uh, was on death row for years and years and years before it was discovered that in that case, prosecutors suppressed the, and, and, uh, the availability of exculpatory evidence and witnesses lied in that case. And that wasn't, that was discovered years and years after the fact. So when you accelerate this process, you remove the ability, or you make it less likely that those types of errors are going to be, uh, found out. And finally, with respect to accelerating in with particular this ca uh, what in this bill, you run the risk that the wrong people are going to be executed. And what I mean by that here is that when you look at the bill, um, this bill is geared towards a couple of things. But two of the primary features that Representative Pucci discussed were issues related to intellectual disability and competency to be executed. And the concern that we have is that with, when it comes to intellectual disability, we are pegging intellectual disability based solely on an IQ score. When the Supreme Court has made it clear that intellectual disability is a function of two things, the IQ score and adaptive functioning, if you have adaptive functioning that is significantly limited, um, you can have an IQ score that may be over 75, um, and still be determined to be intellectually disabled. And the Supreme Court says, you know what? You can't execute intellectually disabled people. There are other provisions of this bill that causes concern. One of the, uh, things that causes me concerns the fact that right now in the State of Utah, claims of ineffective assistance of counsel can be raised on direct appeal. And why that's important is when you are on direct appeal, you have the constitutionally guaranteed right to have the effective assistance of an appellate lawyer in exploring issues of ineffective assistance of counsel. And what this bill does is it says, you know what? The Supreme Court and the District Courts cannot determine claims of ineffective assistance counsel on direct appeal. We're gonna take that process and we're gonna put it in post-conviction. And this bill specifically states and in others, other iterations of this death penalty schema stated that you're not entitled to the effective assistance of counsel when it comes to post-conviction litigation. And so that, these are just some of the concerns that, that I have with respect to this bill. There are other speakers here that will be able to, I think, answer questions far better than I, I know that two of the lawyers who represented Mr. Menzies are online and, and would like to provide the committee input. Um, what we would ask that this committee do in this particular situation is hold off on this bill that this is a radical and significant rewrite of death penalty, uh, Utah's death penalty scheme. And there are a number of provisions within this bill that I think we need to look very closely at to determine if there are going to be unintended long-term consequences with respect to the enactment of this bill. And in, if I'm happy to answer any questions, but we would ask that the committee hold this bill and for additional study

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, Mr. Moffitt, currently we're at 34 years average. And I guess, uh, back when these people were tried in the eighties, there was, you know, we weren't as sophisticated. Are we more sophisticated now? And what's reasonable? Um, 34 years seems unreasonable. It's a huge cost. So I mean, how do you know if we're more sophisticated and there's a huge cost in all these things, then you know, what, what, what timeframe is reasonable then how do we trim this down and, and, uh, you know, be better stewards? Let,

Let me try to answer that question as best I can. Uh, Representative Strong, um, with respect to a timeframe. I, I don't know that any of us sitting in this room can come up with a timeframe to say, you know what, with these changes, it's going to result in, in, in, in a shrinkage of the timeframe. And I wanna get back to something I said initially. These, these timeframes, these 30 plus year timeframes, they're, they're not so much a function of what current law is as it is a function of the quality of representation that these people had at the time that they were convicted. I worked on Doug Carter's case. Douglas Carter is a person who was on death row. Um, he's been on death row for something on the order of maybe 34 years or so. I, I, I was a one of the post-conviction lawyers in Doug Carter's case for a period of time. And I can tell you that when you look at the trial that he initially had, and then the trial that he was granted, again, the errors that were committed in both of those trials were, were, would shock you.

Um, okay. But I guess my question is today, are we making those same errors?

I, if, if you know what, I, I don't believe that those errors are going to be as prolific as they were prior to the enactment of Rule eight. That's why I made the comment about Rule eight, Representative Strong Rule eight, um, has done a, a, a significant, um, has give granted a significant benefit, benefit to the state of death penalty litigation in the state of Utah. Lawyers are trained now, uh, Mr. Morrow, who is seated next to me, his office is the Salt Lake Legal Defender's Office. He can talk to you about the improvements that have happened just within his office, um, from the time that that Rule eight was enacted. So I believe that with Rule eight being enacted and with the, the, the qualification that must take place of lawyers doing this important work, that the system has improved, and that as a result of that system, these timeframes that are concerning and, and we understand the concern are going to be reduced simply because of the quality of representation that these people are going to have at every stage of the proceeding, including trial appeal and post-conviction.

How long has Rule eight been around? 86 80?

Oh, no, I think it was in the nineties. Early Nineties. Early nineties. So we've had Rule eight now for 97. 9 97 30 Years. Yes.

20, 28 years, whatever, 29 years. Has it made a difference?

Well, is that, I mean, maybe I think we just look at the current row, right? If you look at who's on Death row now, those people were all tried prior to the time that Rule eight was enacted. And so we don't have any people,

Have we had then, because I haven't paid attention to all these years. You would have, have we had then, you know, people that have been executed that have been done in 20 years.

There's a, Mr. Morrow and I were talking about this yesterday, um, one of the think the benefits of this training that we've talked about in these qualifications, death penalty case is divided into two stages. The first is the guilt innocence phase, and then the second is the penalty phase. And when you prepare for the penalty phase, you do this extensive mitigation investigation. You look at the defendant, you look at his life, you look at all of the circumstances that brought him to the place where they may have committed an egregious homicide, and you compile that information and then you present that information to prosecuting attorneys. Now, some prosecuting attorneys may say, we understand, but we're gonna proceed with death. A lot of prosecuting attorneys, when they look at that mitigating evidence, make a decision to negotiate the case for something other than a death sentence. So when it comes to the, the death row right now,

So that, would that be a result of then this, uh, rule eight? Yes.

Okay. Yes, it is. It's, it's, it's probably one of the most important components of Rule eight when it comes to trial work and post-conviction work. It's one of the most important components.

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, uh, this is a question for Mr. Moffitt. Um, do you believe there's ever instance or case

Go. No, that's fine. Uh, Mr. Moffitt, I have a question for you. I just curious, listening to this back and forth here a little bit, and do you believe there is ever an instance or case where we should give someone the death penalty then?

You know, Representative Lee, that's, I've been asked that question a number of times and, uh, I'm here as a person that is opposed to the death penalty. But I understand that there is a process that is part of it, and I if, if we're gonna have the death penalty, there's obviously gonna need to be a process. The concern that we have with respect to this is that, um, the process right now is going to be accelerated, um, and accelerated in a way that's gonna put Utah at risk for potentially adverse outcomes. So Representative Lee, I, I, I don't believe in the death penalty I've advocated for its abolition. Uh, but having said that, I, I am also trying to safeguard a process that exists so that if we are going to use the death penalty, we do it in a way that guarantees individuals have due process and we do it in a way that reduces the risk of very negative adverse outcomes.

Uh, one last question here, and, you know, thinking about how this would affect current cases, how, how would you anticipate competency being addressed in as it applies to current cases under this proposal?

Under this proposal, we have concerns about the competency. Uh, I think Mr. Zuckerman, who was online can probably answer this question better than I, but we have concerns about the accelerated nature of the competency determination. Um, Ralph Menzies case was, um, highly unusual, uh, because Mr. Menzies had what was called vascular dementia. Um, and vascular dementia is something that will cause a, an erosion of a person's cognitive abilities over time. Um, he had an initial determination, as I understand it, where the court made a finding that he was competent to proceed. But then as vascular dementia progressed, he reached a point where the court made a finding, and I think the Supreme Court upheld that. He, he, uh, did, he was not competent to proceed under this bill. There. The, the competency determination is basically you get one shot and you get it. Um, only after the court has made, basically there's been a warrant of death returned. Um, and so when you have the warrant of death returned, and while this competency evaluation is going on, the court is precluded from staying the execution of an individual while that competency determination is made. And if the competency determination ends up in a way that isn't favorable to the defendant, given the timeframes associated with, with the competency determination, it could very well be that the person could be executed before he could exercise his right to appeal and adverse finding. And is, if I read the bill correctly, um, an adverse finding of competency to proceed is not an appeal of Right. The defendant can ask, but the Supreme Court can say, I'm not gonna hear that issue. And so, um, we we're, we have concerns about the competency. I will admit as I'm answering your question, chair Wilcox, that I'm probably not the best person to answer that question. Others that may speak will,

Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and committee. My name's Richard Morrow. I'm the Executive Director of the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association. That's the Public Defender Office here in Salt Lake County. Yeah, I'm also a Rule eight qualified lawyer, meaning that I meet the qualifications to handle these sorts of cases, um, at the trial level. And I've done several post-conviction cases, represented a number of people on our death row, did one state post-conviction for one of our death row inmates who is still on death row. And they're very complicated issues. Uh, I would, uh, suggest to you that there is a difference between back then and now. Now is a very different right now, I'll give you an example. We have 20 open aggravated murder cases in our office at the Salt Lake Legal Defender office. 13 of those, the District attorney has decided that they are not going to pursue the death penalty. And the reason they've made that decision is because of the work that's been done. You've heard about Rule eight. You've heard about the, a little bit from Mr. Moffitt about the Indigent Defense Funds Board that was formed by the legislature in 1997. I was an original member of that board in 1998, where we funded capital cases. There's been probably over a hundred cases that have, uh, throughout rural Utah. And I've handled a number of those. I've handled capital cases in St. George Cedar City, Davis County Box Elder County. And the results of those are that we have competent, we have qualified counsel, unlike what you see with the people on death row. And we have saved the taxpayers, I would suggest millions and millions of dollars because all of those cases has have resolved, I would suggest in a way that's beneficial to everybody. There's closure for victims. There's long sentences typically that are imposed. Some of those cases have gone to trial, and there have been outcomes, either guilt or not, or, or findings of not guilty, but there has been closure. The problem that you have with the system that we have now is, is that you have two layers of review. You have state review, and you have federal review and federal review. We generally don't have any control over. There's a lot of different sorts of things that happen during Federal Review that if, if the state doesn't provide certain, um, money, if the state doesn't provide certain competent counsel, federal review then takes over and we lose complete control over what happens under those circumstances. The other thing that we are charged with doing as lawyers is we, we have a BA guidelines that govern how we do these cases, and we follow those guidelines. Um, and when we follow those guidelines and we spend the money upfront, I, I would suggest that it's a much cheaper, um, lift for the taxpayer when the work is done correctly. I think Representative Strong, you asked about the delays. Um, in the kinds of cases, if we were to have a death sentence imposed today, I would suggest to you that the review would be much quicker simply because the issues would be much more clear. We'd have much more competent counsel, we'd have much more competent process that have has occurred. So that review becomes much easier when those things occur and when those things happen. When we look at the people that are on death row, we know that didn't happen. There are three people left on death row. Um, I I would, I know I didn't say this at the beginning, but I would suggest that we hold this bill. It's a pretty comprehensive rewrite of something in an area where I would suggest there's not much of a problem. Um, you know, Representative Whyte, you were asking questions about intellectual disability and how that process works. It's a complicated process. I think my, the head of my social services department, who runs our mitigation department, so I'll tell you what we do at our office right now. We get a call from the jail. Somebody's been booked into the jail and aggravated murder. We send somebody to the jail immediately. That didn't happen in the eighties when, when this was going on, we begin mitigation in consistent with our obligations under the a BA guidelines. I assign a lead of a mitigation team. And, and my, the head of my social services division can certainly talk about that better than I, she has a mitigation assistant that helps her. We assign a minimum of two lawyers. Uh, we may assign two or three additional lawyers to assist on legal research. My appellate team gets involved. We do all the work up front and the purpose for doing all the work up front now. And that's the sea change that we've seen with guidelines. It's the sea change we've seen with the formation of the Indigent Defense Trust Board. And it's the sea change that we've seen in how these cases are handled and differently. Most of the, the last time we had a death sentence outta my office was 2008, and we've had a few hundred, um, death eligible cases that come through. 'cause the idea of what we do now is to try to convince people there's probably a better alternative than the death penalty. That doesn't always work. And there are times where we are going to trial, and it hasn't happened very often. Uh, the 2008 client, he, he passed away, uh, on death row about five years ago. He died of cancer. So, um, and so that's sort of, that's sort of how we've had a sea change. This sort of, um, in, in a lot of ways tips over the apple cart in terms of what the, what, how you do these things, the order that you do them in. Um, I, I think on the intellectual disability prong, it's a pretty complicated process. It can take a long time. We gather records, we look at information. Um, this gives us like a 30 day turnaround, which is really a very difficult turnaround. And I have to think about what that means for resources for the office and how we would have to try to address that. My sense about that is that would result in additional litigation, both at the state level and probably more importantly at the federal level. Okay. Um, I, I would suggest that

Okay. That's fine. I'm Trying to be patient, but

I'm done. And happy to answer any questions, Mr. Chair.

Uh, thank you Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. My name is Scott Burns. Um, I'm a county attorney and I'm the executive director of the Utah Sheriff's Association. I also served as the director of the National District Attorney's Association in Washington DC for five years. Uh, the group that, uh, represents 3,500 elected district attorneys and 40,000 deputy district attorneys. I'm also old. And, uh, I was around for the cases that Mr. Moffitt speaks of, uh, in 1986, uh, uh, Joseph Mitchell Parsons murdered Richard Lynn Earnest. And I think I also speak for the victims because, uh, their names will never escape me or their families. And I find it ironic that here in 2026, uh, I find myself defending the competency of defense attorneys back in the eighties. And I submit to you that 20 years from now, somebody will be disparaging Mr. Moffitt and others and say, boy, I wish we would've had these processes in place, because back then they did have competent counsel. James l Shumate represented Joseph Mitchell Parsons. He went on to be a distinguished judge, and he was at the jail immediately. And he reviewed all of the facts. And the case was practiced with an open file. And, uh, I'll spare you the facts. It was a horrific murder. And the jury, after having found Mr. Parsons guilty deliberated for a long time before returning a verdict of death. And I speak for Gordon Ray Church and his family, who was horrifically murdered by Michael Anthony Archuleta. I Uintah the crime scene. I saw his naked body impaled with a tire Iron thrown on a wood pile, a mile post 1 38 dog valley. He was represented by excellent counsel, and the trial was long. And, and, and every, every aspect of the defense, from competency to the facts were reviewed. And a jury found him guilty. And a jury, after deliberating for a long time, returned the death penalty. And I speak for Claudia Ben and the members of the Piute community in southern Utah. When I prosecuted Tabone, Dave Honney, who was executed after 25 years, uh, on death row, he was represented by, uh, Steven McCoy, an excellent attorney from Salt Lake City. I don't know that anyone would question his integrity. Uh, in that case, he was found guilty in the penalty phase. Uh, I watched two jurors pass out, literally pass out, uh, when the photographs, uh, were, uh, exhibited to the jury. Uh, and, and they found that the death penalty, um, was appropriate. And what we, I I just want to thank the sponsor and I want to thank those that have finally determined that in Utah, 36 years of someone sitting on death row is justice delayed. It is time to, uh, acknowledge that these defendants, no question of guilt, uh, no question of having competent counsel and reviews at some point. Enough is enough for the families, enough is enough for the victims, the Ben family, the church family, Richard Lynn, Ernest family, and, uh, no one, uh, suggests that they shouldn't have appropriate review. But over and over and over again to the federal court, back to the state court habeas corpus back with incompetency of counsel, back to the, it's a delay game. And, and I submit that, uh, I agree with the former person that testified they don't file capital cases in Salt Lake County or in metropolitan areas. It, it was us in rural Utah because they're hard and it takes a long time and it's grueling and it's difficult for the victims. But my litmus test in all three of my capital cases was sitting down with the victims. And I said, it is your loved one that was horrifically murdered. I'm the prosecutor, I serve the people. What do you want me to do? And in all three of those cases, they asked me to seek the death penalty. And, and I did and left it in the hands of jurors. And that's the way the system should work. I speak in favor of the bill and I thank the sponsor and I thank those that have worked on this. Thank you. Thank you.

Just My name's Erin Bigler. I am the Assistant Director of forensic social work at the Salt Lake Public Defender's Office. Okay. And this sort of forum makes me feel like I'm gonna black out. So I've written my notes, but I will be brief. Um, I, I'm shaking. I'm here today in both a professional and personal capacity and offer what I think is a unique perspective as a full-time mitigation specialist, a licensed mental health professional, and a mother of seven, I oppose this bill and wanna speak specifically to the pre-screening for intellectual disability component of the bill and address my three concerns, which are legality, feasibility, and morality. So first, the Constitution. It's been briefly discussed that, um, the Supreme Court has already decided we do not execute individuals with intellectual disability. That decision was a, a landmark decision called Atkins from 2002. Um, and the Supreme Court held that the execution of prisoners with intellectual disability violates the eighth amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment. But the landmark decision I wanna call attention to is called Hall v Florida from 2014, um, where the Supreme Court ruled that a strict IQ cutoff for determining intellectual disability and death penalty cases is unconstitutional. As Justice Kennedy stated, intellectual disability is a condition, not a number. The Supreme Court found this to be critical because executing individuals with intellectual disability dangerously increases the risk of wrongful executions in Hall. The Supreme Court holds that the states have a right to establish their own Atkins statutes, but not the right to ignore scientific and medical consensus regarding intellectual disability. The proposed cutoff score of 75 in this bill does not comply with Hall because it doesn't allow examiners or the court to consider other contributing factors like adaptive functioning and personal history. Someone earlier today mentioned a waiver wherein a DEF defendant could waive their pre-screening. Um, I have specific concerns about a, a court asking a person who potentially has an intellectual disability to knowing and vol knowingly and voluntarily waive a right because of a, a hallmark feature of intellectual disability called acquiescence bias. Folks with intellectual disability, um, default to a yes when they don't understand a question. And so if a, a judge says you are waiving a right that you have right now, do you understand that the default answer for someone who actually has intellectual disability is likely to be Yeah, I get it. I don't mind waiving that. Right. Um, a number of factors also impact IQ scores, including which test is used and prior, recent exposure to IQ testing and something called the flin effect, which shows that people's IQ scores improve over time because of social changes, but not because of innate changes in their own Intel intelligence. Um, and so doing a prescreening and then having that be the signal for needing more robust comprehensive screening could itself skew a reliable test. Which brings me to my next point. Feasibility, because intellectual disability is a three-pronged diagnosis of IQ score, adaptive functioning and presentation. In the developmental phase, it requires psychological investigation. You have to review collateral materials about the developmental phase, and that takes significant time to gather those school records, medical histories for appropriate review. Um, the proposed time in this bill, even with the new sub, it was 10 days, which I was gonna get up here and say impossible, but, um, that's been changed to 30 days is still not feasible. Let me give you one very quick specific example. If I'm going to review somebody's developmental history that is birth to the age of 22, then let's say they've been in DCF cus, DCFS custody as a child, right? I'm gonna need to review that history as part of my overall differential diagnosis and my calculus. Right? For diagnosis. Currently in the state of Utah, a request for DCFS records, even with a grandma request and a court order takes a six to 12 month turnaround. Some of the delay that we are, I, I think is sort of misconstrued as a, a delay tactic is actually just that we don't have the information yet to inform what is the standard of practice in, in diagnostics.

At this point I'm going to make my last

Um, which is that as a defense based social worker, I don't check my humanity at the door. And this pre-screening process, I think does significantly increase the likelihood of appeals, which is prolonged suffering for victims, right? When you have serious mental illness or intellectual disability sort of driving the train in a, a crime like this, it's tragedy in all directions. Um, and the reason that I say morality and that I mention being a mother at all, is that things like schizophrenia, for example, and intellectual disability exam, for example, could happen to all of us, right? If I've learned anything in my job, it's that a law that protects everyone also protects my children and not having a robust, appropriate, scientifically driven screening process, or by which I mean assessment process for this puts our kids at risk, puts victims at risk for delays in appeals and is unconstitutional.

Okay. So is it your understanding then that we're violating hall and the bright line unconstitutionality requirement?

Yes, it is. Especially because the cutoff of 75, um, does include that margin of error in general testing of five points in either direction. But, but what this bill is saying is that if you score 76, then your opportunity as defense or as a defendant to bring up the issue of intellectual disability with the collateral records, with the component of adaption functioning and accounting for social history is off the table. But

Didn't, if you didn't, hall, didn't hall also require that both of those were present as a minor? Both the other tests,

Yes. Being present as a minor is the third prong of intellectual disability. So it has to be it, these deficits have to present themselves in the developmental case,

Have to have already presented most of these cases. Well before we got to the point where we're even talking trial. The disability has to have been present, right? In childhood documented.

It does not have to have been DI diagnosed. No, because a lot of times someone gets all the way through adulthood without ever having been diagnosed. It's quite possible that a defendant could be having this examined for the first time in their lives for any number of reasons.

How would you even apply that test then if it never were, was diagnosed as

A minor? So if it hasn't been diagnosed, you still apply the test in a number of ways. You have IQ testing, which is uh, yeah,

But you can't go back in time. You can't. No,

You can't. But what you can do is use collateral records to show that even though nobody ever stopped to provide a full evaluation, um, these things were present. Nobody called attention to them. This person did not do well in school. This person did not learn to read or write. Right? This is across the board. This doesn't have anything to do with just criminal law. Adults are diagnosed with intellectual disability for the first time all of the time because it often gets missed. And that acquiescence bias, that tendency to say, yeah, I get it, is part of the reason it gets dismiss. We understand it's a masking behavior.

Oh, thank you, uh, Mr. Chairman of the committee. My name is Carl Holland. I'm the Executive Director of Statewide Association of Prosecutors. I'll be brief in my comments. Uh, swap supports this bill. I think that, uh, my comments maybe come from a little bit more personal experience level than they do from the, the policy level where I believe Mr. Haynes is probably a little bit more able to speak. Uh, as, as members of this committee know, for four years, I was, uh, in the internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, and I saw horrible things during that time. Uh, but during that time, I never saw anything as horrible as what I saw when I was one of the prosecutors on the double homicide committed by Jared Baum. Uh, and having to review the photos of, uh, what he did to Breland Sison and Riley Powell, um, is something that still affects me today, uh, because of the brutality of his crimes. Uh, and I was on that case when we drafted our notice of intent to seek the death penalty. I, uh, participated in the preliminary hearing, and I participated in that prosecution for several years until ultimately the death penalty was removed from the table in that case. And the reason that it was removed from the table in that case is because of this very issue. There was significant concern that regardless of what the jury decided in that jury room, if they were able to hear the question of death, uh, he would, he would die of natural causes in prison. And so the county attorney ultimately decided not to seek the death penalty in a case that, uh, was horrific. Judge Poland, a distinguished judge when he saw the evidence in this case, stated on the record that he had never, in his 30 years of both prosecutorial and judicial experience, ever seen anything as harrowing as what happened in that case. And we took the death penalty off the table because of the concerns that this process would be delayed so long, that whether he was sentenced to death or whether he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, regardless, he would die of natural causes in prison. He ultimately was convicted. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. But I believe that this bill addresses that problem. This bill will help those victims, those victim families, but more importantly, the community and the people of the state of Utah, to seek an appropriate remedy in appropriate cases, and to have some measure of confidence that while the defendant's rights will be upheld and that they will have the opportunity to have their day in court, the people's rights will also be upheld, and then the state of Utah can implement an appropriate punishment in those cases. Thank you. If you have any questions, I'll stick around.

The decision of participating in a death penalty case was actually a very weighty one. And I think that everybody who has made this,

Uh, I try not to. I try to be very human in everything I do. I

Morning, Mr. Chair. Um, my, there he is. My name is Andrew Riggle. I'm the public policy advocate for the Disability Law Center. As previously noted, allowing only one opportunity to assert an exemption from the sentence of death due to an intellectual disability may violate the Supreme Court's decision in Atkins versus v Virginia, which found executing an individual with an intellectual disability is cruel and unusual punishment. Further, the prescreening determination should be based on the full definition of intellectual disability, which the bill references earlier as a sign, as a significant limitation in, in intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior before 22. Finally, in Hall v Florida, the court ruled states cannot establish a rigid IQ cutoff IQ test cutoff, uh, in Atkins claim because the intellectual disability is a condition, not a number. As previously mentioned, the margin of error can be plus or minus five points. We appreciate the conversations we've had about this issue, and we understand that may not, that may not be the aim. However, we thank, uh, we thank you and the sponsor for your time and considering our feedback.

Thank you. Andrew, is it your understanding that, that this would be a violation of the, the test that came out of Hall,

Uh, poten? Potentially? There is, um, as I, as I understand it, there is, um, a court's, uh, a case working its way through the process now that, that could potentially answer that very question.

Morning, uh, committee members. My name is Eric Zuckerman. I'm an assistant federal public defender, and I represent, uh, principal for a sentence to death. I'm gonna try and be brief. I understand that you are imposing a timeline. Um, so I'll talk quickly, um, to answer some previous questions. One example of how Rule eight is helping the process. The last execution that took place in Utah, uh, was to Ron Hony. He was sentenced death in 1999, and he was executed 25 years later. That's an example of how Rule eight is increasing, um, or decreasing the time that it takes for someone to be executed. Um, there are several problems with this bill, including, um, the definition of competency, removing a hearing on the issuance of an execution warrant. Um, in Mr. Menzies case, we filed a, uh, motion for competency within three days of the state filing an application for warrant. Um, we did not delay. We filed it as soon as it was ripe. Um, and Mr. Menzies was diagnosed by all of the different experts who testified, including state experts as having vascular dementia, and all of them held that he was not exaggerating his symptoms. Um, the, uh, the test coming out of Hall will absolutely be violated by this bill, um, because what Hall very clearly said is that you may not, uh, rely entirely on just a IQ number alone. You must also consider adaptive deficits, which the pre-screening process does not do. This Bill narrows the issues that courts are allowed to consider. It shortened deadlines. It removes judicial discretion. It removes appellate review. When you compress these deadlines, you're reducing the ability of courts to make, to find out whether the system got it wrong. Um, and in capital cases, that's irreversible. I heard Mr. Burns say there's no question of guilt for the people on death row. I represented Douglas Carter. He was convicted of murder in 1985. His conviction was vacated in 2021 by a Utah County Judge, judge Poland, who was mentioned previously, a former prosecutor who found that his trial and sentencing were tainted by serious misconduct, perjury, bribery of witnesses. The court found that the officers were in, that the officers instructed the witnesses to lie in court. The Utah Supreme Court unanimously agreed, um, finding quote, there's no question that these numerous constitutional violations suppressing evidence supporting perjury and knowingly found his correct false testimony. Book's trial. Hear

That one. I'm sorry. Can you hear that sound? Yes. That means we're out of time. But, uh, I do have a question for you. Um, you, we've cited these cases and I've heard the arguments today, um, these cases from the eighties. Um, and I, there's, I don't think it's possible to re-litigate whether they're attorneys did a good job or not. Um, since, you know, we talked about the implementation of rural aid. Um, do you believe that this, that this move compromises the existing cases?

Uh, or the, I'm sorry, which move?

Sorry. If we were to pass this bill, does that compromise anything that's already happened in the existing death row cases?

I mean, either way, the existing death row cases are not going to qualify for fast tracking in federal court. Right? That's done on a case by case basis. Um, so, so that aspect of the bill will not, but it will compromise all future cases that come through and the, um, removal of the ability to appeal important decisions such as competency to be executed, um, you know, has potential implications going forward for anyone who currently is or currently may be on death row.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we pass out house bill 4 95 capital felony case amendments with a favorable recommendation.

There might be a Sub. Do I need to adopt a sub?

I move to adopt first sub,

I move to withdraw that person. Substitute.

I move, I, I have a substitute motion that we adopt substitute one.

Would defer to the good sponsor.

Okay. Now? Yes. Thank you. And if I can also take this moment. Do you want me to sum everything at the end and just for your sake of time?

We just, we'll address hall and everything at the end. I appreciate the motion.

Thank you. I move that we favorably pass out house bill 4 95 capital felony case amendments with a favorable recommendation.

You. I'll let, will first speak more on Hall, and then I'll sum

Yes, there was some reference about the US Supreme Court case Hall versus Florida, and it was stated a couple times that that prohibits a, a strict cutoff with an IQ score. Just to clarify what, um, hall versus Florida said is that when a state does not account for the margin of error, then it cannot use a strict cutoff. Um, because, because this bill would account for the margin of error, then, uh, we believe this would be consistent with Hall. It, it, um, as another speaker said, that, you know, that that could be challenged in the future perhaps. But that is, uh, hall does not prohibit what this bill is doing because it accounts for the margin of error. Um, in this, in this test also, in this bill, it does allow, um, defendants to, um, to rebut, you know, if they pre, pre prescreening comes back with a IQ of 76 or higher, they can rebut that by presenting any evidence of a lower iq. Um, and so that any indication that the defendant has a significant sub average intellectual functioning will require a hearing there. So we believe that is consistent with the current Supreme Court precedent.

Okay, thank you Will, I appreciate that. I just wanna, there were a couple things that are were said and Representative Hall to your question. I looked up the math and did it really quick. If you were sitting on death row for 34 years, just the prison costs alone would be 1.8 million. That's not the actual cost though of the trial and your attorney's fees. Um, and I also will just point out in the most recent Menzies case, the court never said he wasn't competent. The court said he had to have another hearing and he died of the natural causes. Literally, people are dying because we're taking so long. And I will, I will say too, for those comments about ineffective counsel, uh, if you look at the individuals, the next two on death row, they have all said that, and the court has rejected their claims of ineffective counsel. So they have had that opportunity. I'll just say this, we say in Utah that we have the death penalty, but do we really, when you hear these cases and when you hear the debates that happen, especially the prosecutor who mentioned that, that was one of the things considered by the jury was how long this would take. Do we really have the death penalty? And I would encourage you to go read the cases of these gentlemen who are on death row. It is horrific. It is graphic. It's what I was doing last night, and I could not believe their families have had to sit and wait for justice longer than I have been alive. And we, in Utah, we say that we are efficient and effective. We pride ourselves on being major proponents of public safety. But I would submit to you that our current process is broken. It is not working. This is not a radical change. Uh, if I had it my way, this would be expedited in a much quicker fashion. But there are great attorneys who have said, Nope, we've gotta do it the right way. This is not taking us from 36 years to five years. This is potentially, potentially taking us from a 36 year wait to maybe 20 or 15. That is plenty of time. And if there is that much concern for effective counsel, then maybe we should look at the standards around that profession. We are increasing the compensation here, and I really would hope the committee would would look at this and think of all the tax paying law abiding citizens who are paying for these individuals to die of natural causes while sitting on death row. Thank you.

Thank, thank you very much. Representative Pucci capital house Bill 4 95. First Subcapital felony case amendments. Thank you. And if, if it works for the,

Thank you. And if the committee may, I'll be presenting to the second substitute today. The second substitute? Yes. Okay, thank you.

And then, uh, I'll have HB 4 95 and then HDR 28, if that's all right. The two Are, you wanna present them together on the Same issue? Okay, well I can, I can speak to HCR 28 after, but they're on the same policy. Okay. So, and I have with me today Will Haynes with the Attorney General's office. So, uh, here to help answer any of the especially technical legal questions. But, uh, colleagues over interim, uh, many of you'll remember the Ralph Menzies case and what was incredibly unfortunate amongst many things about that case is, was he, uh, died of natural causes and sat on death row for 37 plus years. So he committed his crime before I was born and the system took so long, he literally died of natural causes. And so after that happened, I reached out to get a bill file open and worked with our attorney general on this and his team to try and address how we address competency. And as I dug into this more, learned a lot more about this process and I'll walk through it with you today. But I think it's interesting to point out that right now, nationally, the average time between sentencing and execution in the United States for, uh, capital, uh, felony cases is 22 years. But in Utah it is 34 years. And in the, the three cases we see on death row right now, it is beyond the 34 years. So these prolonged timelines really increase the financial burden on taxpayers and the emotional toll on victims' families. I know this bill is, is being referred to as the death penalty bill. I'll tell you, this is a process bill, and one of the things in Utah that we pride ourselves on doing best is being efficient and proficient in how we handle things and trying to be fair and balanced. And I would tell you, based off of my review here, and I'm working with different attorneys right now, what we have is very much broken. And so this bill trust is two important components in this process. The first is competency, which we'll talk about, and the second is process and how our state can make changes that we can qualify for an expedited federal review, which is how the, the goal of this bill would be to help tighten this a little bit to hopefully where we go from a 40 year stay on death row to 20 years, which is still plenty of time, uh, when we use the word speedy. I just wanna highlight, um, you'll hear today some comments made, speed is very relative in the judiciary. So this is taking it from 40 to 20 years ideally, and that's only if we qualify for the expedited Federal review. So let me just walk through a couple things, then I'll have will, uh, if he'd like to add, add some comments as well and help answer questions. So obviously, just as a reminder, because this does come up, the death penalty is only used in Utah exclusively for aggravated murder, which requires the presence of at least one aggravating factor, such as killing multiple victims, killing a child under 14, or targeting law enforcement. Um, defendants who are under 18 at the time of the offense or who are found to be intellectually disabled are exempt and cannot be tried, um, for the death penalty. So the way that these capital proceedings happen, there's two phases. Uh, and if you have that wonderful handout from staff that they made, you'll see that there's a guilt phase and then you have the sentencing phase. And, um, when you do that, obviously in the guilt phase, the jury's gonna determine there has to be unanimous verdict, whether the defendant committed the aggravated murder, and then if convicted, it enters into the sentencing phase, which is where the jury weighs aggravating factors against mitigating factors. So a death sentence requires a unanimous finding that the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors. And I'll highlight on that second page, you'll see the, the three columns and charts there. A death sentence is subject to multiple levels of review. So you start out, after the initial, uh, trial, you'll go to a direct appeal, which right now the Utah Supreme Court automatically reviews the case. Then there's the state post-conviction relief, then there's the Federal post-conviction relief. So review, excuse me. So there is a whole sequence of events that happens for the attorneys in the room. This is very familiar with them, but to general members of the public, this is a long list of, of legal process. So I wanna highlight the differences that this bill makes between existing law and HB 4 95 before you. So, and then we will address the competency piece. So currently every death sentence triggers an automatic review by the Utah Supreme Court within 60 days. What this bill will do is say, an automatic review only happens when the defendant waives or fails to timely file an appeal. Uh, and the Utah Supreme Court must complete the review within 120 days without briefing unless it identifies a potential basis to modify or vacate the sentence, in which case it can request a briefing from the Attorney General's office. Um, this case also establishes that there'd be priority for capital cases, so that, um, automatic reviews take priority over all other Utah Supreme Court cases. Other capital appeals take priority over all non-capital felony cases before the Utah Supreme Court, and then capital post-conviction. Petitions take priority in the district court over all of our cases except active capital trials. And that's important when you look at the amount of time and the costliness of these cases. Cases. Um, another area that I think to highlight, uh, has to do with ineffective assistance of counsel claims. So, currently there's no restriction of when ineffective assistance of counsel claims can be raised in capital cases. Claims can be brought on direct appeal during automatic review or in post-conviction, uh, proceedings. I'll tell you that to give you an example, we have Michael Archuleta, who's on death row. He raised 30 claims, 30 claims of ineffective assistance of counsel in state post-conviction every time the court rejected those claims. So just to give you an example, the number of times this is actually happening, this bill would say that the Supreme Court and District Courts don't consider IAC claims during direct or automatic review. It would be reviewed in post-conviction proceedings. So that's lines 1285 to 1291. Uh, and this is important again, when you look at the amount of times and effective assistance is claimed. And I think it's important that tactically this is a very smart tool because if you look at how many times they're claiming it, and every time, um, in the next three cases on death row, they have been rejected. Uh, another component is intellectual DI disability and how that's determined. And so the way that the process would operate should this bill pass, uh, before trial and death penalty case, the court would appoint a psychologist to conduct a pre-screening IQ assessment. Now, if the IQ is above 75 and the defendant presents no contrary evidence within 30 days or any extension granted by the court, no full examination is required and the death penalty remains a sentencing option for them. But if the IQ is in fact, below 75, the court may stay proceedings and order a full examination. Now, a defendant may waive pre-screening if the waiver is knowing and voluntary, but doing so waives the right to bring the claim, asserting intellectual dis disability, um, and a finding of an intellectual disability determination can be appealed by the prosecution. I'll also note in the second sub, one of the significant changes that we made after getting feedback from the A CLU and defense was we've added in, uh, additional opportunity and time on this review and to have an evidentiary, uh, window that they could provide evidence should the IQ not be, um, or should the IQ score be something that they don't think is actually, um, intellectual disability. So did I just say the inverse of that? Okay. That's right. Okay. So then, uh, when we look at competency proceedings, this bill would say, uh, and provide that a motion to examine a defendant that is filed less than 21 days before an execution is considered untimely and can only be considered if there is an affidavit from a licensed physician or psychologist in a good cause. Showing this is critical, this change, uh, if you look at the Ralph Menzies case and how many times his competency was established, and then there at the very end had a request again for competency, a competency hearing representative, I really need you to wrap it up.

You bet. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I gave this bill the time. I didn't wanna f**k Through important bill.

You bet. If we don't get to, lemme just wrap up for you'll,

Again, I just wanna make sure I answered questions. So, um, you can see at the core of this, we're trying to adjust competency. So, uh, with that, I'll answer questions.

Good afternoon. My name is Lindsay Laer. I'm an assistant federal public defender. My office has represented most of the men on Utah's death row for over a decade. Um, and I've personally been lead counsel on two of those cases, including for Ralph Menzies. This bill will not make Utah's capital punishment system more efficient. It will make it less so by shifting litigation from state court to federal court where it will take longer and be significantly more expensive for the state. The bill sponsor has said that one of the goals is to qualify for the fast track, or what we call opt-in provisions under the A-A-D-P-A. But even if Utah were to be granted certification for those provisions, there is no guarantee that it would've any impact on any current or future death penalty case. Any decision by the DOJ to certify a state is appealable to the DC circuit. And even if certified, a state must assert opt-in status in each individual case, the opt-in provisions would not apply to any of the three men currently on Utah's death row. There's also no indication that opt-in provisions would apply to a competency to be executed claim at all. The statute attempts to address events that transpired in a few recent death penalty cases in Utah. But these cases, and the delays that have been part of them, are a product of a bygone era of capital litigation. These men were sentenced to death in the late eighties and early nineties at a time when death penalty lawyers did not have the resources or the training that they have now, for example, because of a combination of attorney errors and the state's failure to adequately fund post-conviction litigation or ensure qualified counsel, Ralph Menzies post-conviction case went on for 20 years. It was this delay, not the litigation of his competency, the executed claim that kept him on death row for so long. Michael Archuleta state post-conviction case similarly lasted for 16 years, going through six different attorneys and grinding to a halt for six years while the AG unsuccessfully sought sanctions against Archuleta lawyers litigating it all the way to the Utah Supreme Court. It is the failure of the post-conviction system in Utah, not the opportunity to raise a claim of competency to be executed or an intellectual disability that has resulted in these cases lasting as long as they have. This bill cannot fix errors that occurred in these cases 30 years ago. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

That's a good question. So the reason it would do that is because it takes away process in state court. And what will happen is that those issues will not go away. They will then be litigated in federal court. So, for example, there's a provision that says that if a, uh, if a defendant misses the deadline to file a notice of appeal, they then don't get the full direct appeal process. They get shuttled into this automatic review process. But you have a constitutional right to the effective assistance of counsel in your direct appeal, not filing a notice appeal is unquestionably ineffective. So what happens then is that becomes a, a point to be litigated in, um, federal habeas proceedings. So, um, I assume the handout that Representative Pechi gave you has, uh, what we call the nine boxes. So there is the trial and direct appeal, there is state post-conviction, and there is federal habeas review. So you're essentially taking an issue that would be litigated in that first column before the conviction is final, and now you're shuttling it over to the third column. So it's now not being litigated until many years later. So you're going through a whole section of litigation before you even get to that. And similarly, with the intellectual disability provisions, um, that portion of the statute, if, if you are not given a full and fair opportunity to litigate that at the trial level, you're gonna find cases litigating in that, in federal habeas, similar with competency to be executed. If you cannot raise that, if it's more than, uh, if it's closer than 21 days to the execution, for example, um, what what you're gonna do is you're gonna go to federal court and you're gonna say, I don't, I don't have, I didn't have the opportunity, I was not allowed to raise this in state, in state court. And you constitutionally cannot be executed if you are not competent. So you will then be litigating that in federal court instead of in state court.

My name is Megan Barnes. I'm also an assistant Federal, oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, we had a question. Oh, I, Senator Brammer. Yeah.

So my understanding is that you're opposed to the bill. Yes. And you're opposed to the bill because it will, you believe it will actually slow things down. Yes. And how is that adverse to your general position with regards to your clients? I'm sorry, I don't understand. My, my position with regards to my clients is that my clients are entitled to due process. Yes. But it's to your client's benefit to not have the death penalty carried out to slow it down. So why would you be opposed to this bill if you believe it will slow it down?

So I think that's a really common misconception that it is. Um, and it intuitively makes sense, right? That if your process goes slower, you're benefiting. Um, I think that for anyone who has the experience of sitting on death row, that is just not the case. What you want if you are on death row, is you want your day in court. You want the ability to be able to litigate your issues. I have been doing this work for 17 years. I have never once had a client say to me, just slow this down. Well, I mean, I've, I've acted as appellate counsel on death row cases, and, you know, for the most part, they get their day in court pretty quickly in the timeline of the death row case. And then you're talking about post-conviction, which is a little different than their day in court. They've been found guilty and they've been sentenced to death at that point. Now, their day in court is their appeal and their, you know, post-conviction proceedings, but I don't know that that's the same as their day in court, which they've already had and been found guilty. Um, and so I do, you know, disagree with you a little bit on what their day in court means perhaps. And that just may be a difference of opinion. But I, I do think that generally a delay is perceived by defense counsel as a win. I don't think that's very much in question. You can parse through it, but I fail to understand why. If you actually believe, if you are truthful in your belief that this slows it down, why you would be against it.

So I guess I'm gonna take issue with your characterization of a day in court. Most of the men who are currently on Utah's death row had, um, truly terrible representation, both it at the trial level and in post-conviction proceedings. So they have many of the issues in their case, they have not had fully litigated. So they're looking tobe death

Proceedings. Any, has any death row person in Utah that's been convicted ever had their conviction overturned? Yes. Okay. Douglas Carter had his conviction overturned. So Out of how Many in 2021, I'm Sorry. In the history of the case, it's like one for a hundred, right? Something like that.

Um, n no, there have not been in the modern era of the death penalty. There have not been that many. It's very common people in death row in Utah.

Uh, my name is Megan Barnes. I'm also an assistant federal public defender who represents men on Utah's death row. And I wanted to address the constitutional concerns with the pre-screening process for intellectual disability that are included in this bill. Both the United States and Utah Supreme Courts have repeatedly said that the process for determining intellectual disability and capital cases must be guided by the current medical standards. Any deviation from these standards runs a grave risk of executing somebody with intellectual disability. And there are still several things about this process that would create that grave risk and multiply both each time and the resources that capital cases will take. First, the automatic prescreen turns on whether a defendant gets a IQ score of 75 or below. Now, there seems to be a misconception that the cutoff score falls outside of the range for intellectual disability, but it does not. The medical standards are clear that intellectual disability can be diagnosed with an IQ score above 75. And as the Utah Supreme Court has explained, an IQ score is not determinative of intellectual disability, but it's just one factor to be considered. Diagnosing intellectual disability is a complex process that includes considering multiple cognitive tests, academic records, and a person's real world functioning. An IQ score is just a limited approximation of one relevant fact that can vary for many reasons, is inappropriate, both medically and legally to make the determination based on a single IQ score, especially one that falls below this medical threshold. This is precisely why the drafters of the statute in 2003 chose to omit an IQ score cutoff. Most critically, this bill also bars any later proceedings to prove intellectual disability. For example, an intellectually disabled defendant who scores a 76 on this single pre-screening IQ test is forever precluded from raising an Atkins claim. This puts Utah at risk for conducting an unconstitutional execution. These changes produce the most restrictive intellectual disability determination process in the country. And rather than streamline the process will result in later legal proceedings when evidence of intellectual disability is found and pursued. Thank you for your time.

Chair, members of the committee. My name is Eric Zuckerman. I work for the federal government and I represent death row prisoners in Utah, including Douglas Carter, who had his conviction overturned after 40 years on death row. Um, this bill is a radical rewrite of Utah's death penalty scheme. It incu it includes huge changes that have not been talked about today. For example, this bill guts appellate oversight in capital cases by replacing the current standard for automatic review by the Supreme Court with a stricter manifest injustice standard. This increases the risk that an execution will proceed despite a constitutional error. Slashing judicial review of capital cases will not have the effect that you intend. It's going to lead to further federal litigation across the board. This bill removes the ability of judges to extend deadlines where good cause exists. Imagine a situation where there's a hearing scheduled in a capital case and an expert witness becomes ill. Uh, the judge would be powerless to continue that hearing, even where he believes there is good cause to do so. That's a due process violation. It will produce more delay and it'll produce federal litigation. Um, this bill says that if a court finds someone competent to be executed, um, or that they are not intellectually disabled, that that person cannot appeal that. But the if, but that, if the court finds the alternative, if the court finds someone incompetent or that they do have intellectual disability, the attorney general can appeal. Um, that double standard is a clear due process violation. It will result in a federal stay from the United States District Court. So the federal court can provide the due process that the state would be stripping away. This bill cuts time for competency to be executed, reviewed down to just 30 days. That is not realistic. These evaluations are complex and the cases require flexibility. Exercise at the discretion of a judge. In the Menzies case, which was uh, referenced at the beginning, both court appointed DHS evaluators said they would refuse the appointment if they were limited to the 30 days and did not get the full 60. Just to wrap it up, Um, uh, the, the last thing that I would wanna say is, is this bill, um, triggers an automatic, uh, situation where if there is a stay in place, that stay automatically goes away if the trial court makes a finding. And what that's going to do when there are findings that occur close to an execution, is that it's going to thwart appellate review by the Utah Supreme Court. And there's gonna end up being a federal stay in place replacing the state process with federal process.

Maryanne Christensen, executive Director of Utah Legislative Watch. Um, so for years and years I was executive director of Utah Eagle Forum, and I was the person who was in charge of being the, the point on, um, maintaining the death penalty in the state of Utah. Every, every few years or so, legislation would be brought forth to try and get rid of the death penalty and just go to life without parole. I always oppose that because meeting out justice includes the death penalty for the most heinous of crimes, and we've got to be able to have that deterrent. Um, I've, I I have a whole stack of information on the, the heinous nature of the death penalty crimes that have happened in Utah. And I do know that there are, there are inmates who have died of natural causes on death row. In fact, the people that bring the legislation and say, we need to just go to life without parole, they say that we need to do that because right now our death penalty process is life without parole. 'cause we're just letting them die of natural causes. I don't agree that that's the way to go. I think the way to go is to fix the death penalty process so that we can expedite the, the sentence that's given. So thank you for voting yes on the bill.

Thank you very much. Chair members, excuse me, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. My name is Carl Hall, executive Director Statewide Association of Prosecutors. Uh, just very briefly, the last person who was put on Utah's death row was Troy Kell in 1996. He committed his murder in 1994. It's on video. You can watch it on YouTube if you want. He has still not been put to death. Uh, that is the reality of the delays in these cases. His ga, his guilt is not in question. His guilt. You can watch yourself on YouTube as he murders a black man, uh, for racial purposes. The reality is that these lengthy delays in death penalty proceedings result in a system where prosecutors are unable to use the death penalty. And I was prosecutor on a case where death penalty was sought and taken off the table for the reason of not going through these lengthy 30 and 40 year proceedings. So statewide associations, uh, prosecutors supports the bill and urge your support as

No, and I appreciate that. Mr. Chair, uh, members of the committee. My name's Mark Moffitt. I'm a criminal defense lawyer, um, and a member of the Utah Defense Lawyers Association. Uh, first of all, I'd like to thank, uh, representative Pucci because there have been changes made to this bill that make it somewhat better. We still have concerns, and I know that there is a concern about the length of time that it has taken for some of these people to be executed. And what I would say about that is this, the majority of these cases came from a time, as Ms. Laer said, it's a bygone era of criminal, of death penalty litigation. Um, those cases occurred at a time when death penalty litigation was in its infancy. And there were numerous, numerous errors that were made in those cases by my defense colleagues and in Mr. Carter's case by the prosecution who withheld evidence in that case that was exculpatory. Having said that, when the Supreme Court saw this and they, Supreme Court was seeing all of these cases, when the Supreme Court saw it was going on, they enacted rule eight, rule eight of of criminal procedures set standards for death penalty lawyers to meet before they can even take these types of cases on. And since that time, there have been very, very few people executed because of the standards in Rule eight. And so I'm questioning the need for this bill. Now. I understand the concern with these very, very dated cases. I would submit to members of this committee that those cases are outlier cases and that the system is not broken as it has been claimed. Thank you.

I move that we recommend first substitute adopt second, sorry, sorry. We need to adopt the second sub substitute second sub. I move that we adopt the second substitute.

Sure. I move that we recommend second substitute house before 95 to the full body of the Senate. Alright.

Yeah, I, I think at some point, um, you know, while I have my own feelings about the death penalty and, and they're not always totally in favor of, of the death penalty, I, I have, uh, concerns. But if we're gonna have that as a policy in place, uh, we can't have, you know, institutional nullification of the policy. You know, this is not a, you know, a journey, you know, an exodus through the wilderness to the death penalty of nearly 40 years. That's not appropriate. That's not justice, that's not due process. That's overdue delay. That's the use of procedural, uh, you know, and, and squeamishness to avoid what is the policy and the jury verdict. And so I, I don't want to deny anyone due process, but at some point, you know, an average of 36 years, that's unacceptable. That's not public policy. That's, no, that's nullification of public policy and nullification of the jury decision. And so we've gotta get our arms around this. I think that there's been a lot of work on this bill. I think it's in a good place. And so I fully support it. Thank you.

Yes, briefly and Will Haynes really is an expert on this, so I would sure we could facilitate that discussion as well.

I will just point out though on the second sub, the appellate rights are not changed. And from an intellectual disability perspective, they're still able to appeal and they're still able to offer additional hearing for evidence. If you were to look at other states that have this policy on the books or a similar policy in this area, Kansas has a 14 day turnaround and no appeal. So really what we're asking is not out of boundaries or out of the realm of possibility. And I think helps us actually get to a better place. Um, I wasn't able to walk through the other changes in this. It increases pay for defense attorneys and tries to increase some of the things we do at the state level so that we can qualify for that expedited federal review. But I'll be brief.

Senator Es? Senator Baldry, would you like to summ? I waive.

Thank you Mr. Speaker. Motion to circle

Briefly. It'll be ready tomorrow morning.

Thank you Mr. Speaker, colleagues, uh, this bill is one that I have been working on all interim with the attorney general and his staff and that office. And it has to deal with how we handle capital. Felony case amend, uh, capital felony cases in our state. So, um, if you'll remember over this summer, uh, we had an individual who was on death row, uh, Ralph Menzies who sat on death row for 37 and a half years. He committed his crime before I was born and he was still on death row. Uh, and he had an execution date set and the district court had this worked out and then there was an appeal for, uh, a competency hearing again. And the court said, yes, he can get a competency hearing. And then he passed away of natural causes. So, um, they never had a chance to actually adjudicate on his final competency because that was enough to slow the process down. So because of this case, I, um, in working with the attorney general's office really started digging into what's going on in Utah. So we say we have the death penalty, but if you look the average amount of time, uh, an individual is on death row, uh, nationally is roughly 22 years. But in Utah it's 33 years. And we pride ourselves on being efficient and effective and, um, and, uh, doing our public safety and due process well. But I will say this process right now is broken. And so in, in working with the Attorney General's office, there are two pieces and components of the law that we are working to address. So the first is the competency component. Now we are making sure that there is still the pre-screening for intellectual disability. Uh, and the attorney general's office has worked very carefully on this language and how we craft it based off some feedback we got. We did adjust the timeline here and the substitute from 10 to 30 days. Um, and that was a request when, when you look at an appeal after a case, um, right now in code, uh, the, our law currently authorizes the Utah Supreme Court to conduct an automatic review of a capital case. But this bill's going to clarify something important, that the automatic review is only when the defendant waives his right to appeal. And why that's important is because if not, you essentially have two separate sets of appeals on that. You have the automatic and then the appeal. Uh, the other component is the court reviews the conviction, the sentence only for manifest injustice and justice. And the court initially conducts its review without briefing from the parties. But it may reverse only if it gives the attorney general a chance to weigh in. So that's the important component as it relates to the appeal and the automatic review, it also addresses ineffective assistance claims. One of the important components of this bill, as we shift from the competency piece to the process piece, is we're actually going to be increasing pay for the defense in these capital cases to make sure that we are elevating the quality of the defense for these individuals so that, uh, ineffective assistance claims will then need to be raised exclusively in a separate post-conviction case. I wanna highlight that because this has come up quite a bit in the discussion around this bill that ineffective counsel has brought up. But if you look at the next individuals on death row, uh, Michael Archuleta Von Taylor once been there 36 years, one been there, has been there 34, both of them filed for an effective counsel and it was rejected. So this is a very technical and legalese bill. The two important changes though, that we're going after here is the competency piece and putting some parameters around that. Well, protecting due process and an individual's right to appeal. And the second is how we handle our state process will determine if we get an expedited federal review of what we're doing. And that's what will help us accelerate this. Now this is a judiciary, this is not the legislative branch. So when we say expedited, we are talking taking something that is right now, taking 40 years or 37 and a half years and bringing it to 20 years. So, uh, for those of you in this room, you and i's children will still be, uh, there will still be people on death row who exceed their lifetime. Uh, but we are trying to strike the right balance here and have a good process in Utah. Uh, this is about how we handle these capital felony cases and, and quite frankly, is important to make this change because we owe it to the tax paying law abiding citizens of Utah who right now are footing the bill for a broken process and there are victims who are not actually getting justice for horrific crimes that were committed against them. And with that, uh, Mr. Speaker, I'll conclude my presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Uh, it probably comes to no one's surprise that I rise in opposition to this bill. Uh, our current law exists for a reason. What this bill does is it removes guardrails and diminishes guardrails in cases where the state moves to execute individuals with a mental disability. I know that I'm probably in a minority of this chamber that opposes the death penalty, but I'm also one of the minority of this chamber that has tried a murder case before a jury. And I hope that I can impart some counsel. I want to first talk about some of the technical aspects of the bill before finishing on just some fallibilities of what we can do as humans and what we can do as government. What this bill does is twofold, as the bill sponsor mentioned. Uh, there are two components that it mainly focuses on. First is whether or not someone qualifies for the death penalty as a mental condition. The second is this competency issue. I'll do my best to be brief. 'cause as you are very technical, um, when we contemplate whether or not someone qualifies for the death penalty, uh, we have to contemplate whether or not they have severe mental disability. It's an eighth amendment issue. The eighth Amendment says there's no cruel and unusual punishment in this state or in this country. And the Supreme Court says, we don't kill children. If you wanna know why, Google George Stinney and you'll see something awful. Now, the idea here is if we don't kill children, what about those who have the mental capacity of children? They don't kill children because they can't comprehend fully the world around them. What about adults that have a similar diminished capacity? Our current laws are crafted to be in line with what the Supreme Court has guided with us, and this creates some pretty significant changes. The Supreme Court has said that generally those with an IQ of 70 or lower have a significant diminished capacity to really understand the world around them, but they're also inconsistent with themselves saying there's no hard cutoff to when one has diminished capacity. It's more of a subjective argument. This Bill says that 75 IQ is the cutoff. I think it's to give a little bit of buffer here, and that's perhaps the purpose. Now, what's really something that jumps out at me is you have to raise this issue at the beginning of the case. You only get one shot to raise this, uh, mental condition issue. Once the case is certified for death. After that, it gets taken off the table. Now this is a problem because it takes time to gather evidence. What you have to do under law is establish if your client has a mental disability. You have to get evidence that it was persistent existed before the age of 22. I don't know if you've ever tried to find the childhood records, the medical records, the educational records of a full grown adult, but it is hard. You're lucky if you find grade school documents from the 1970s, let alone the grade school itself. A lot of times evidence corroborating a disability can appear deep into a case. The other problem here is it takes a second to know your client. People with severe and persistent disability that have had their entire lives become good at masking them. They don't want to admit that they have some sort of diminished capacity, and you might think that they're okay because they're smiling and they're, or they're nodding. They seem to understand what you're telling them until one day, months down the road, all of a sudden you realize lights are on and no one's home. Now these are just a sampling of what concerns me about the mental condition component. I wanna move on real quick to competency. This is an entirely different part. Competency is whether or not your client can help you as a lawyer with defense of their case, whether or not they could tell you about evidence, whether or not they could tell you what happened, whether or not they could take the stand and articulate in English or whatever is a native language that exists on this planet that isn't garbled, something coherent. Can they do that? Can they articulate their own defense? Competency is important for several reasons. First of all, from the jump, you need someone to be able to help in their own defense because if they can't articulate their defense and they didn't do it, you have a big problem. Secondly, it's not just like someone can be competent one day, people can't decompensate, things can change and this bill has an, uh, to discredit, has a condition for change of circumstance. But it can be very difficult to, to bring up. And when it's a matter of life and death, it can be a difficult thing to articulate. I could go on for quite a while. I've already taken on five minutes and we have a lot of work to do. I wanna finish with this. We are humans. We are fallible, we are government. We are more fallible. Yet it's why we meet here every year. Jury trials are necessary. They're really good that the best thing we have, they are not absolute. I've done close to a hundred jury trials in my career. I've had juries come back and convict clients, I swear we're innocent. I've had juries baffle me and acquit clients that really didn't deserve it. If you ask why anyone would admit or confess to conduct, they didn't do. I invite you to spend a day with me in court. I want to give you one example. I once had a client that was falsely accused, and I knew he was falsely accused because I had the evidence to prove it. I had it. I set the trial and I told him, I advised him one of the few clients I ever advised, go do this trial. And on the eve of the trial, he chickened out. He didn't trust me. He was scared, and he was thinking that if he pled guilty, they'd go easy on him. And he pled guilty to a crime he didn't do, and he Uintah jail. Since the 1980s, there have been over 200 exonerations of people condemned to die in this country. We can't undo that. We don't remove guardrails in an imperfect system. Our system exists for a reason. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this time and your consideration. It's literally a matter of life and death. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I want to start Mr. Speaker by saying I agree with much of what my colleague, good colleague from Salt Lake City said about the importance and the weightiness of these matters before us. But I also want to talk about something that is important as well in terms of justice. The idea of trust in the legal system and what happens when that trust is eroded. The case that my good colleague from Salt Lake County, the sponsor of this legislation mentioned there's some severe miscarriages of justice that occurred and the most important miscarriage, the most important tragedy that happened that during this case is that there was a woman who did absolutely nothing wrong who was working at a gas station here in our state who was brutally murdered by a repeat offender who was on parole for previous violent crimes that he committed. That crime, that homicide that occurred occurred y uh, almost a decade before I was born. And so the question is that's in front of us today is does the system work as appropriate? Now, I understand Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues are opposed to the death penalty, but I don't believe that's the question in front of us today. The question is in front of us today, is that, is the process working. The piece about decompensation that was raised happened because of the legal maneuvering over years and years and years and years. And I want to be clear about something that there was more than one judge, there was more than one set of eyes who looked at this case over the span of decades. And not once was this individual found to have not committed this crime. And what happens is you have a family who is led on by our legal system who years and years and years and years to the point when the, the most recent communication from that family of Maureen Hunsaker, who was brutally murdered for doing nothing wrong, she was a mother working at a gas station trying to provide for her family. The most recent communication from that family that's been published is that sheer disappointment and a broken heartedness that the system that they trusted, the system that went through a number of reviews and appeals and every single time was upheld. Eventually the clock ran out. Eventually what happened, the degradation piece that my good colleague from Salt Lake County is talking about is the fact that these appeals went on for so long that this individual eventually had dementia. And that was, that was the finding from the court. And so what's in front of us today is to make sure that when our constituents drive on I 15 and they get pulled over, they get a, they get a ticket. They, they accept that. But how are we supposed to ask our constituents to accept that ticket when that same legal system pushes the most heinous crimes unspeakable acts that I would never repeat on the floor? Mr. Speaker heinous acts that they push that justice on for years and for years and for years, all while the, the whole time the family is begging for justice and justice was denied. And so this piece is about the, the trust in our legal system. The question in front of us is not should we have the death penalty or should we not have the death penalty. It, it's, it's, are we going to fulfill on our word that when a court that has specific instructions about what findings need to be made to have this weighty matter in front of them, that every single time they did, but because of legal maneuvering and appeals, after appeals, after appeals, they ran the clock out and it was mission accomplished. That cannot happen. And so the justice system has to work for everyone. It has to work for defendants, it has to work for public safety. But I would also say that it has to work for victims. And too many times, victims' voices at the table are the ones that are left behind. And I have, I have listened to those hearings and I've heard the pleas from those families who have been led on and led on and led on. And I believe that my good colleague from Salt Lake County has a bill in front of us that can help us bring the trust in the legal system and make it, make us follow through on what our system says it will do. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Further discussion to the bill Representative Owens, Mr. Speaker, uh, Mr. Speaker, I'd like to, uh, first preface this comment by saying I don't think there are crimes that there are, I, let me start that over. I want to preface by saying I believe there are crimes that warrant the death penalty. What we're talking about is the process that gets us to where that penalty gets imposed. Um, and at times, at its very best that process, the criminal process generally. And then with death penalty litigation in particular, that process can seem clunky and slow, and that's when it's at its very best. Um, but it's easy to make overgeneralizations about the way the criminal process works. And it's easy, for example, to say, oh, most of those people are guilty. Why are we taking so long? But let's just refresh our recollection and have some context. The first great liberty of this country is to be able to have your life, your liberty, and to pursue your happiness. And, uh, the, and the first great guardrail of that is not to be put in jail when you're innocent and not to have your life forfeited to the government when you're innocent. And that does happen in this country. There's a wonderful, interesting documentary, the Thin blue Line, if you ever get a chance to see it, it's a film that actually ended up exonerating a man on death row in Texas. Um, and you can see firsthand how these errors accumulate in the system and, and we're ready to put an innocent person to jail. It's, uh, one of the most riveting two hours you could ever spend on that movie, the Thin Blue Line. If you don't, if you want some insights about what I'm saying. So I just think we need to be careful about saying we need to speed this up. Um, and, uh, I think these methods have been worked out over years, decades, and generations in the court systems to make sure the, uh, procedures grind. There's an old adage in law, the the law grinds slowly, but it grinds exceedingly fine. We, we want to have these issues resolved properly before these heavy, heavy penalties are imposed. And I, I do think it is the great, uh, solid and careful criminal justice process is the first bulwark in defense of our liberty. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, I rise in support of this bill and I, I think it's important to remember who is on the other side of this, who, who we are trying to serve. We're making this about people who have done horrendous things for at least a portion of this debate. But there are real people who are harmed on the other side of this. And my good colleague from Salt Lake County talks about timeliness 22 years is not, do not families who have had their, their beloved and most cherished members of their family brutalized and murdered in the most gruesome of ways, deserve to have something in terms of justice happen to them on a timeframe much shorter than a lifetime, than a 22 year timeframe. Is that not fair to them to expect justice in a reasonable period of time? We in see in Cash County, we went through some of the trauma. We never ended up in a death penalty case because of other ancillary uh, issues. And I won't go into that, but I want you to know that the trauma that impacts those families impacts communities too. And we had a little girl in Cash County that was brutally murdered with the death penalty on the, on the table by the name of Lizzie Shelley. And we still in Cash County have stickers of butterflies on vehicles because people remember her and justice is coming to her per the perpetrator who took her life. But for many of these families, and we have heard the debate again and again, every time there is another appeal, they are retraumatized. Every time there is another year they are re harmed every time they are yet for another period denied justice. All of that evil that has befall them comes back to the forefront. And I appreciate people on this floor, Mr. Speaker, the perspectives that are shared. But we must always in all things when justice has been found, put the needs of victims first. And that's what this bill does. Anything short of this and its timeliness only harms them further with a clock. Mr. Speaker, thank you.

Thank you Mr. Speaker representatives. A few years ago we had the death penalty debate. We had a committee, I promise I didn't do it on purpose, but it was, the debate was held on Valentine's Day. That conversation led to a study of each of the cases that we have on death row right now. And as part of that, including some that just concluded, as was mentioned earlier, several of those cases have gone on so long that in the most recent highlight, low light, they're now dying of natural causes waiting for justice at each step along the way. The families aren't just waiting for justice. They're re-traumatized by being forced to relive it with every appeal, with every discussion. And frankly, by even having to come up and talk to us about it again, meeting with those families, with the victims, with the mother of little girl, five-year-old little girl whose daughter was brutally assaulted and murdered and left for dead, who we only found because of the death penalty. Who on the table are things that I can't forget, it was brought up in committee, but the cha society cha uh, standards change over time. We've seen that on Atkins or Hall that revised it a number of years ago at the Supreme Court was kind of forced to study those cases too. As we prepared for this. Now I'll mention this, justice Alitos dissent on hall. If you go back and look at it focuses primarily on a handful of things, but mostly on the fact that we can't hand over this decision to societies or organizations whose standards are not fixed, who constantly adjust and whose primary aim is not the one that we are charged with. Is it constitutional? Is it just, does it preserve the interest of liberty? Does it not? You can argue, and I understand the argument that preserving liberty and life, is there a legitimate reason for that, for the taking of life by this state? And it should be difficult. But we've also seen in other studies that the disassociation from the moment of the event actually creates the problem down to an including childhood. When we're correcting our children when they make a mistake, the most likely factor in them learning the lesson is the immediate correction and conversation. Even if it's the hard one, it's proximity to the event. What we've done with the system that we've created, though I don't believe it's by design we've just kind of happened into this, is that we've created a justice system that is anything but because it prolongs the pain and it disassociates from the moment of the crime, yes, it should be difficult. Yes, it should not last also for 30, 40 years at that point, what even is justice anymore? This is hard. It's not easy stuff and I'm very sympathetic to the arguments that I've heard from the other side. It may have been the best speech I've ever heard from a freshman on the other side of the aisle. And I appreciate his perspective representatives. I can't look at those families in the eye and say that this is justice, what we're doing now, isn't it either. And this isn't a wiping away of their rights, it's an opportunity for us to try to guide it a little closer back to where it was intended to be. That doesn't absolve us from past wrongs, but it gets us a little bit more, right? Thank you Mr. Speaker.

Thank you Mr. Speaker. There were a couple of things that were shared that uh, I just wanna make sure we correct the record and, and have a discussion a little bit about it. There's nothing in this bill that is going to change the determination of whether or not someone gets capital punishment that that comment was made. This is talking about the process that happens once that's been put on the table. And when we talk about intellectual disability, you can go in and look at the bill specifically. All of you should have a handout in your piles of papers that actually walk through this bill very specifically and go through the details. But when we talk about this, this is not generally speaking, intellectual disabilities are developed between the age of zero to 22 years old. Uh, now you can talk about deficiencies or adaptive functioning, but all of this, it gives them the opportunity to establish intellectual disability. It gives them the opportunity to appeal that and it gives more time on that. So I would say this is to pull that into this is that is not being harmed by this bill. They still have the ability to demonstrate intellectual disability and they still have the ability to appeal it. Um, and this is in line with the margin of error and accounting for someone's IQ and has been carefully crafted by the Attorney General's office to make sure we are being constitutional on how we handle this case. I also will just say this, when the death penalty discussion came up around repealing it, it was largely because of the costs and time, not whether or not people believed if capital punishment was a good thing or bad thing. If you look at how much it cost to have Ralph Menzies just in, uh, department of Corrections just for his, his stay there, we're talking upwards almost $2 million. And that doesn't include the actual legal counsel fees and everything that was paid. I will tell you, if you have not had a chance to look at this, what's being said that this is gonna be a flyby expedited process is ridiculous. And I think it highlights how absurd we've gotten in being able to debate everything and not having some common sense. Reality checks 37 and a half years is not fast. I would argue 22 years is not fast, but that is the national average and Utah is well above that. Averaging 33 with the next two gentlemen surpassing that amount on death row. And so I will just say what we have right now is broken. We say we have capital punishment in Utah, but do we really? I would argue we do not. And the way that our process is created is to create more and more legal fees, more and more appeals and kick the can farther and farther down and not have justice. I would also encourage you to take a look at this process because you go through the district court, you go up to the Supreme Court, then you have post-conviction review, and then you have federal post-conviction review. This is in no way expediting things at a pace that is going to skip over someone's due process. And if we can't figure things out in 22, 25 years, we have bigger problems with our legal system that need to be addressed. I would just say lastly, I would encourage you because these happened so long ago and to the good colleagues, uh, comments from Northern Utah that a lot of us are unaware of these horrid crimes that were committed. I would encourage you to go read the next four people on death row's crimes. And what happened? It is disgusting. I stayed up late reading them again and as a mother, it makes my blood boil that we have made these parents sit and wait for justice. We are literally taking so long. People are dying of natural causes. They are dying because government is taking so long to deliver justice for these victims and their families. I think this is the best thing we can do to refine this process and get Utah to a much better place where justice is being served. And I'd ask for my colleague support on this.

Thank you President. This bill seeks to eliminate unnecessarily delays in capital cases. Uh, it contains an express statutory mandate that all capital cases should pri be prioritized and expedited and it makes the following changes in the process for challenging the death sentence. This summary is organized chron chronologically through the various stages of the capital case. First, the trial pre-screening, they do pre-screening. Now for in intellectual delay or intellectual disability, the constitution prohibits death penalty for someone who is intellectually disabled to avoid going through the time and expense of seeking the death penalty. Only to have the defendant argue long after the fact that they're intellectually disabled a status that does not change over time. The bill requires a prescreen prescreening for intellectual disability at the beginning of the capital case where an IQ test is performed. And we can talk more about that in a moment. Uh, the appeal, there's an automatic review. The code currently authorizes the Utah Supreme Court to conduct an automatic review of a capital case. The bill clarifies the automatic review process in the following ways. The automatic review is conducted only when the plaintiff, only when the defendant waives his right to an appeal. The court reviews the conviction and the sentence is only for manifesting justice. The court initially conducts its review without briefing from the parties, but it may res may reverse only if it gives the Attorney general a chance to weigh in. The other, the one of the other popular claims on appeal is in effect assistance of counsel claims on appeal. Defendants often ask for new trial or sentencing by challenging the representation they received at trial to create a record in support of that claim. Defendants are currently able to ask the Supreme Court to send the case back to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing. This bill states that the Supreme Court does not have jurisdiction to hear claims of ineffective assistance of counsel on direct appeal in a, in a capital case. Now the state post-conviction review the appointment of post-conviction. The code currently requires the appointment of post-conviction counsel for Indigent Capital defendants. This bill expands that requirement for all capital defendants so they can waive counsel if they'd like. It clarifies the timeline for appointing counsel re uh, requiring it to occur within 30 days. The end of appeal. It requires the Utah Supreme Court to maintain a list of counsel qualified to handle post-conviction capital cases, and it removes a provision that allows the court to dismiss a post. Pardon me. Thank you. Uh, it removes a provision that allows the court to dismiss a post-conviction petition with the court. Can't find a willing counsel for indigent defense defendant who wants counsel now. Payment for post-conviction counsel, this bill increases the compensation for post-conviction counsel in capital cases and the amount of litigation expenses authorized under the statute. This change will help the state qualify for expedited review in federal habeas cases. Let's talk about the Federal review once the state for expedited review. Once the state meets the conditions that we've talked about before, to ensure that indigent defendants have qualified adequately compensated counsel in post conviction review, it can be certified by the US Department of Justice for expedite, for expedited habeas review. Expedited review requires the Federal District court to rule on the case within 450 days of the initial petition. It requires the Federal Court of appeals to rule on a case within 120 days. There are a bunch of other tests and parts that bring, uh, that this bill brings in. The bill also brings the test for competency, uh, to be executed in line with the US Supreme Court precedents. The timing of a petition, the claim, the claim that a defendant is competent to be executed can only be raised once an execution date is set. When a death warrant is issued, the court sets an execution date within 30 to 60 days out. This Bill Prohi prohibits late competency challenges within 21 days. Successive position, uh, petitions, this bill increases the standard for getting another competency evaluation once a court has already found the defendant is competent to be executed. The petitioner must show a substantial change in circumstances that were created, a significant question about competency and provide an affidavit from a physician or psychologist who has examined the defendant after the previous finding and states that based on the new facts, the defendant is in fact incompetent. The court can consider any competing evidence presented by the state in deciding whether to hold a second hearing stays. The bill specifies legal reasons that could prevent the issuance of a death warrant limiting these reasons to the existence of a stay or some procedural defect in the warrant application. Happy to address any of those issues, but I, uh, I feel like it's important that we talk about where our death penalty is currently. The average time. That's that our current death row inmates, we only have three now, after a new trial was ordered on Doug Short, uh, a new trial was ordered for him. And so we now only have three on death row. The average time that a current convicted and waiting for execution, death row inmate is on Utah's death row is 33 years. The na the National standard is, is much lower at 22 years. Something in our process, and obviously, and I think I will say in my my belief, the biggest piece of this is the fact that we are funding indigent defense for per post-conviction relief. We are funding that and in funding that we are increasing the quality and competency of the council for these individuals. And by doing that, we can speed it up and somebody say, well, why would you want to speed this up? It's a fair question. A few years ago we argued and, you know, uh, the, the consideration was for the removal of the death penalty. And at that time, for me, uh, in, you know, as we were getting ready to prepare to build the prison, one of the issues that was clear is when I talked to staff as they were designing the prison, we could save more than a hundred million dollars in the prison if we didn't build a death chamber. For me, the money made sense. If you add the amount of cost that it takes to keep someone on death row, including all of their, all of their post-conviction work and everything else in Utah Study found a few years ago that that cost was over three and a half million dollars versus someone in life sentence was serving around one and a half million dollars for the term of their sentence. And that is because of the, the, the, uh, the judicial process that requires to get someone to carry out the death penalty. So for me, it has always been about, uh, it is, there is always a cost factor to this, and that is a certain, a certain part when we're trying to balance tax dollars. The other part of this that is important to consider is in, you know, these families that are families of the victims are drug out for years and years, 33 years here in Utah, 10 years longer to 11 years longer than the average. And that becomes, and and literally in Utah, people are more likely to die in on death row from old age than they are to die from the death penalty, which makes the promise or the sentence of a death penalty, an allusion to the family of those victims. So for that purpose, I wanna thank the sponsor. Representative per Pucci has worked hard on this bill and poured through this with the Attorney general's office, along with several legal experts trying to put this all together. And I'm really grateful for the amount of work that went into collaborating and putting this together to make this policy be what it is that we may actually make this an effective tool, uh, for the state of Utah. With that, Mr. President, I'm happy to yield

Thank You. I rise in support of this legislation. I ran, um, I ran a bill and did an interim study about a decade ago trying to speed up the death penalty process in Utah. And at that time, Virginia's average weight between conviction and uh, execution was seven years. And, and as the good senator pointed out, we're three or four or five times that, which is still a mystery to me. I do believe having dug into this issue a little bit in committee, that, uh, what the Senator said is correct, during the eighties and nineties, early nineties, the defense counsel was not up to the same standards that they are today. We passed Rule eight, uh, I actually have two death penalty certified defense attorneys in my law firm, Christensen and Jensen, where I work. And I know that they are really at the top of their profession. So I do believe that the delays will be coming down because I, I don't think that there will be as many appeals, uh, with more qualified counsel. Um, I was asked by defense counsel, I was given some language to vet to potentially sub this bill. I'm not gonna do it. Um, there are other states that use the 75 iq, um, to determine intellectual disability in Utah. If this bill passes, if some, if, if, uh, and by the way, very, very few death penalty, uh, inmates are, uh, challenging on intellectual disabilities. It's, it's the rare exception rather than the rule. But I wanted to point out that even if this bill passes, as I understand it, um, and somebody is determined to be above 75 iq, they can challenge that. Uh, they don't have to wait until their execution is tomorrow to challenge it. They can challenge it immediately. And there are other, are other states that use 75, uh, many states like Florida, Alabama, and Georgia use 70. Uh, and, and this bill, as I understand it has 75. Um, and so in those states, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, if the inmate scored 71 on the IQ test, they were considered eligible for execution. Remember all 50 states, we, we all fall under the same US constitution. So I know there's some concerns. I know I get accused of being too defense friendly and I'm not gonna try to sub this bill. I'm gonna vote for this bill. I am pro death penalty. Um, and I do think that we don't wanna make it too easy for people to delay and use excuses after a jury and a judge has determined that they should be sentenced to death. So I'll be voting aye

So much weight around this issue of, of capital punishment and the death penalty. And I feel like part of the conversation around this for me is my fundamental concern that we would ever execute an innocent person. And I don't have enough trust or faith in what I have seen with, um, capital punishment cases and cases that have ultimately been overturned or someone has been found to not have been guilty. So, you know, I I am fundamentally opposed to the death penalty and to the state taking life, although I certainly hear of cases where I even within my own self understand where it comes from. I think the hard part is I don't think it is the right thing to keep someone in a, in an ongoing undefined, where is this going to end up peace. But that possibility that we executed an innocent person is, is something that I, I just cannot get out of my head or my heart. So, um, ultimately I suppose that's the fundamental piece of where this comes down to, but for me, that that's the thing that makes me uncomfortable with voting to speed something up that ultimately could result in us executing the wrong person. Thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you President. A rise, support of the bill a, um, have a, a prison in my district and I have an county attorney who asked for this exact thing to speed this up because this sentence, the most severe of any on the planet is supposed to be a deterrent. And it is, but not if it takes 33 years and it's not justice for the victim or their families or the taxpayer when it's gone on. We're 11 years over. We like to lead the nation in, in statistics and this is one we can do a lot better, uh, in, in addressing So I applaud the work of, of this bill and hope that, yeah, in the amount of time, 22 years, I think we can certainly vet out whether somebody, uh, is guilty of this crime or not, and it, and in making it a deterrent. So this is what, this is what does keep people from committing crime. And if you're in prison for a life sentence, which we have, they become, they can become verily violent. We had one in down in Gunnison who killed his cellmate. What, what do you give him another life sentence. So I rise in support of the bill. Thank you.

Thank you very much. You know, you know the crazy thing about the death penalty is the person, the murderer, frequently because they live on, they become the ones that, that are infamous famous. You know, their, their names be become known in the public every time their hearing is covered. Every time the facts of the case are told. It's, it's frequent that we forget the victims. One of those victims, Lance Conway wood student at SUU kidnapped by two men raped arms, broken throat cut and left for dead. Kd and her mother Beth Blind, partially handicapped from Murray, arrived at a cabin where two people were hiding out. Within minutes, the women were shot and killed. Husband was robbed, shot multiple times left for dead. Lonnie Blackman was an inmate, I think that's who Senator Owens was talking about, stabbed 67 times while incarcerated in Utah. You know, when you think about the families of these victims and they're waiting for this time to, for this sentence to be carried out and the torture really that they go through. I remember my good friend Sharon Weeks telling me about the difficulty in her family of going to trial after trial, after hearing, after hearing over and over and over again. It got so bad for her that she just doesn't believe that death penalty works as a sentence period. I feel like the impetus behind House Bill 4 95 is to deliver on a promise that the state made to the families of those victims at sentencing. And with that, Mr. President, I move the first substitute house Bill 4 95 capital felony case amendments pass.

And do we have time to go with the consent or we wanna do that after?

Thank you. Just, uh, I won't belabor this. Uh, this one will be much quicker. Do I need A motion to Uncer motion? Yeah, A motion to encircle house joint resolution 28 joint resolution amending court rules related to capital felony case. You have a Motion to Uncer first subject to house joint resolution 28.

Thank you. Motion to Concur.

Yes, briefly. We took some of the recommendations of A CLU and the ags office, uh, and it made the bill better.