- By Longwell Lawyers
1. Fleeing Police may carry harsher penalties.
2. Prohibited Lights/Concealed Tags. If a driver uses prohibited lights or tries to stop a car that driver may be charged with a third-degree felony. If a driver purposefully alters or covers up a license plate or vehicle registration, or if a person buys or owns a device to obscure his/her license plate, it is now a second-degree misdemeanor (or a first-degree misdemeanor if you sell a tag obscuring device). If a device is used to obscure a license plate while committing a crime or avoiding law enforcement, it is a third-degree felony.
3. Leaving the Scene of a Crash. Drivers who leave the scene of a crash after striking property must make restitution to the property’s owner.
4. Driving and Boating Crimes. Provides enhanced penalties for DUI & BUI manslaughter & vehicular & vessel homicide if a person has prior conviction for specified offenses.
In addition, the law makes a first refusal to submit to a breath/urine test after a DUI arrest a second-degree misdemeanor.
5. Electronic Monitoring Device Tampering. Possible enhanced penalties (depending on the level of the charge) for those who tamper with an electronic monitoring device that is court ordered.
6. Aggravating Factors. Allows juries consider additional factors (whether the victim was gathered with others for a school activity, religious activity, or public government meeting) when determining whether someone convicted of a capital felony is eligible for the death penalty or a life sentence.
7. Sexual Images. Prohibits the possession of a “lewd or lascivious image” with the intent to promote it, making it a second-degree felony.
Additionally, the law prohibits anyone from knowingly soliciting child pornography, which will become a third-degree felony.
Furthermore, the law criminalizes the generation, solicitation, and possession of deepfake pornography, which is a third-degree felony, and gives a victim civil recourse.
8. Luring Children. Creates harsher penalties for the crime of luring a child under 14 into or out of a building, home, or vehicle for illicit purposes, and eliminates legal defenses against this sort of charge, including ignorance or misrepresentation of the victim’s age.
9. Human Trafficking. Creates a new crime under state law: Capital Human Trafficking of Vulnerable Persons for Sexual Exploitation, and applies to adults who knowingly start, manage, plan, or fund the human trafficking of children under 12 years old and people who are “mentally defective” making it a capital felony.
10. Sexual Predators. Revises reporting requirements for sexual predators and offenders to report where they work and their work phone number and requires law enforcement to verify the home address of a sexual predator at least four times per year (only once per year for sexual offenders).
11. Court Officials. Establishes new rules and harsher penalties for those who tamper with, harass, or retaliate against court officials.
12. Unmanned Aircraft. Makes several changes to state statutes regarding drones and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), including:
Harsher penalties if someone operates a drone over a critical infrastructure facility, owns or operates a UAS with an attached firearm, owns or operates a UAS carrying a weapon of mass destruction, whether real or a hoax, and imposes criminal penalties for anyone who illegally uses a drone to spy on a person or private property, with harsher penalties if a violator distributes the surveillance video.
13. Sexual Cyberharassment. Enhances penalties for sexual cyberharassment, making it a third-degree felony instead of a misdemeanor if done for financial gain, and extends the statute of limitations for sexual cyberharassment. Allows grants victims civil recourse.
14. Minimum Sentencing. Establishes mandatory minimum sentences for sexual offenders and predators if they are convicted of yet another sex crime.
Under this law, the minimum sentences are as follows:
- Lewd/lascivious molestation of a victim under 16 years old
- Lewd/lascivious molestation of an elderly or disabled person
- Possession of child pornography, soliciting a minor online, traveling to meet a minor, or prohibited computer use, Transmitting child pornography: 10 years
- Possesses child pornography with intent to promote: 15 years
- Use of a child in a sexual performance, promoting a sexual performance by a child, buying or selling minors: 20 years
- The law also prevents a person sentenced under these rules from gaining discretionary early release (aside from pardons or conditional medical release) before serving the minimum sentence.
15. Chaining Animals. Makes it a felony to abandon an animal while leaving it chained up during a natural disaster.
16. Mental Illness. A defendant who faces certain charges and suffers from mental illness, an intellectual disability, or autism may instead be placed in a diversion program (if this is a feasible alternative to incarceration) and authorizes law enforcement officers to implement crisis intervention team training.
17. Tracking Devices. Anyone who — during the commission of a dangerous crime — places a tracking device on someone’s property without consent to track them, commits a second-degree felony.
18. Utility Workers. Addresses offenses where someone assaults or batters a utility worker while he/she is working on critical infrastructure.
