Delaware General Assembly Pre-Game Show: Tues. March 8, 2016

We already know what won’t be addressed by the returning General Assembly this week: Abolition of Delaware’s death penalty. However, it’s for the best of reasons.  It’s quite possible that the United States Supreme Court has already sounded the, um, death knell for Delaware’s capital punishment statute.  The ironies involved in this are dee-lish.  The Delaware legislative hardliners some twenty years ago decided that juries were sometimes too namby-pamby when it came to doling out the death penalty, so they decided to give the judges (who must come before the State Senate for  nominations and renominations) the exclusive life and death authority.

Which is precisely why Delaware’s statute appears to have run afoul of the recent Supreme Court ruling, which ‘deemed unconstitutional part of a Florida statute that grants exclusively to judges the right to determine a sentence of death in capital cases’.  Delaware has the same language in its statute, which is why the Delaware Supreme Court has placed a moratorium on any capital case moving forward until it can review the statute and determine whether Delaware’s statute can pass constitutional muster.

So, let’s assume for argument’s sake that the Court determines that the statute fails the test established by the US Supreme Court. To me as a non-lawyer, it certainly appears that it does.  In order to keep execution legal in Delaware, the General Assembly would have to change the statute.  In other words, the onus would no longer be on death penalty opponents to eliminate the death penalty, the onus would be on those who want to keep the death penalty to change the statute. And, let’s remember, the State Senate has already voted to eliminate the death penalty.  I don’t think that death penalty opponents are gonna bail out the hardliners.  So, right now, there’s no need for death penalty opponents to do anything but to wait for the Delaware Supreme Court to make its determination. Especially since I don’t think there have been enough flips in the House to pass the bill yet.

There’s only one bill on today’s Senate Agenda.  SB 19(Marshall)  permits undercover cops to purchase firearms utilizing Community Firearms Recovery funds.

One of this session’s worst bills tops today’s House Agenda.  HB 124 (Wilson) is the first leg of a constitutional amendment to require that the General Assembly spend at least $10 mill a year for farmland preservation.  Blatant special interest legislation that continues to throw good many after bad to an undeserving bunch.  Mostly R sponsors, so I guess they don’t see this sop unto perpetuity as a waste of taxpayers’ money.  But it is.

Oh, boy, here’s a bill that appeals politically while raising all sorts of issues.  HB 239 (The Right-Reverend Dukes) establishes a ‘new’ crime of ‘Drug Dealing-Resulting in Death’.  The bill’s stated purpose is to ‘address the recent spike in deaths resulting from substances such as heroin and fentanyl’.  My experience has been that, when the General Assembly rushes in to address a recent spate of something, the legislation invariably sucks. As does legislation creating new crimes (There’s no such think as an original sin–Elvis Costello). Betcha that won’t stop the House from rushing this through, most likely today.

I’m surprised that HB 220 (Lynn) is not already law in Delaware.  The bill enables the prosecution of animal fighting under Delaware’s Racketeering and Organized Crime statute.  The list of political strange bedfellows sponsoring this bill suggests that it will have widespread support.

Since I’m not sure that all of the committee notices have gone up yet, I’ll be back tomorrow with an in-depth look at committee activity and a wrap-up of today’s session.

See ya’ then.