{"id":2213,"date":"2006-01-30T15:08:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-30T20:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinbryant.com\/2006\/01\/30\/s-997-update-jessicas-law-plus-2\/"},"modified":"2006-01-30T15:08:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-30T20:08:00","slug":"s-997-update-jessicas-law-plus-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/s-997-update-jessicas-law-plus-2\/","title":{"rendered":"S. 997 update: Jessica&#8217;s Law Plus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have long been concerned that the penalties for the worst crimes against our most <span style=\"font-size:85%;\">vulnerable<\/span> citizens, children, carry far too light a punishment. Currently, criminal sexual conduct committed upon a child eleven or younger carries a mandatory sentence of only 10 to 30 years.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot fathom the rationale in sentencing the rapist of a child as young as eleven, or younger, to not more than 30 years when the victim faces a lifetime sentence of fear and humiliation. I filed S. 997 to ensure that sentences for these unspeakable acts fit the crimes.<\/p>\n<p>If passed, this bill will increase the penalty for sexual battery on someone 11 or younger to a minimum of 25 years to life. A second offense carries a minimum of life in prison and the option of imposing the death penalty. In fact, the last time South Carolina executed a criminal for something other than murder was 1972. He was convicted of rape.<\/p>\n<p>Senator McConnell, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has assigned this bill to a subcommittee chaired by Senator Hutto with Senators Knotts , Jackson and myself. I have full confidence that they will give this bill a full and fair hearing, and should this new law face a court challenge I look forward to its review by our new and improved United States Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll keep you posted on the developments with S. 997 and feel free to let me know your thoughts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have long been concerned that the penalties for the worst crimes against our most vulnerable citizens, children, carry far too light a punishment. Currently, criminal sexual conduct committed upon a child eleven or younger carries a mandatory sentence of only 10 to 30 years. I cannot fathom the rationale in sentencing the rapist of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2213","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2gEQ0-zH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinbryant.com\/kbarchive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}