After staying quiet on the policy front in recent weeks, Attorney General Liz Murrill released a list of bills Monday her office will support during the ongoing regular legislative session. Murrill says her focus is to “make Louisiana safer and more attractive for families and businesses.”
Prioritizing American citizens over illegal immigrants will be a legislative theme for her office this spring, as well as ensuring victims’ voices are heard in the judicial system and advancing post-conviction relief reforms. Building on a wave of arrests over the last two years, Murrill will seek to criminalize the use of artificial intelligence to generate child sexual abuse material. With an eye to digital racketeering, she also wants her department to have the ability to apply RICO charges to predatory online gambling syndicates.
Here are all of the bills (so far) in Murrill’s package:
—SB 110 by Sen. Heather Cloud to criminalize the creation of computer-generated child sexual abuse materials using artificial intelligence.
—HB 53 by Rep. Bryan Fontenot to add gambling offenses to the list of predicate crimes under Louisiana’s RICO statute, “recognizing the increasing prevalence of internet-based and electronically facilitated gambling operations.” The bill would allow the AG and district attorneys to pursue the high-level organizations that use gambling rackets to fund trafficking operations and organized crime.
—HB 335 by Rep. Chance Henry to require the verification of citizenship status before an individual receives government funds through a non-governmental organization. Murrill says this would “even the playing field for any group receiving federal or state dollars and ensures illegal immigrants do not touch taxpayer dollars.”
—HB 336 by Speaker Pro-Tem Mike Johnson to expedite the adjudication of post-conviction relief cases by requiring the timely submission of unexhausted claims.
—HB 51 and HB 58 by Rep. Debbie Villio to prohibit a judge from granting post-conviction bail for individuals convicted of aggravated offenses against minors. “This ensures dangerous offenders remain in jail pending their final sentencing,” the attorney general says.
—HB 789 by Rep. Jay Galle to permit the seizure of off-road vehicles from criminals who flee from law enforcement. She said this would “empower officers to take on these 4-wheeler street gangs terrorizing our neighborhoods.”
—THEY SAID IT: “I went to law school. They mess our brains up.” —Rep. Jeremy LaCombe, talking about how voters often struggle to understand the ballot language for proposed constitutional amendments, in the House Ways and Means Committee
