Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch today criticized two bills that the House Judiciary Committee approved during the Tuesday night session of the General Assembly, calling them “anti-public safety measures that will have drastic, real-world consequences on real people.”

If enacted, one bill would “gut the state’s current probation-violation system,” he said, and the other would require police to record all confessions by defendants in all capital cases. “This bill will undermine the efforts of police and prosecutors to fight violent crime by impeding our ability to introduce what’s often the most valuable evidence available, which is the defendant’s own confession,” he said.

Lynch said he was especially “irked” that the House panel passed the measures, H5040 (S0086) and H5134 (S0212), without soliciting any input from the Attorney General’s Office, Rhode Island State Police or Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association, or from any victim-services agencies.

“Although my office was available to testify in opposition, we had no notification as to which version of the probation-violation bill would be considered,” Lynch said. “Even worse, we hadn’t heard anything from anybody involved with the taped-confessions bill since May. Yet, Tuesday at 4 PM, the committee posted a notice that it would be considering this bill 90 minutes later. Nobody thought to give the law-enforcement community or victim advocates a little bit more advance notice? That’s inexplicable.”

Lynch said the current probation-violation system provides important protections that safeguard the public, allows offenders conditional liberties as an alternative to imprisonment and allows the Court discretion not to impose the underlying sentence of a violator. He said a recent case involving the arrest and imprisonment of Paul Stockford, a registered sex offender who allegedly asked two young teenage girls at Scarborough State Beach Aug. 18 if they wanted to take his bathing suit off, “put a spotlight on the wisdom and value of our current law.” A Superior Court Judge Sept. 29 ordered Stockford, who has been convicted of at least three sex offenses in Massachusetts dating back to 1993, to serve 18 months at the ACI for violating the terms of his probation.

“Perhaps the public won’t realize how important our current law is until it’s gutted and criminals like sex offenders are not held accountable for the crimes that they commit, even if they’re misdemeanor offenses, while out on probation,” Lynch said.

The bill pertaining to recorded confessions would require police to record all confessions by defendants in all capital cases, and would render any confession not taped as inadmissible in criminal prosecution.

“Rhode Island already has ample criminal-procedure mechanisms — such as pre-trial motions to suppress evidence, trials by juries of peers, the appellate process and post-conviction relief actions — which are specifically designed to protect defendants and ensure that truth drives the criminal-justice system,” Lynch said. “Also, this measure would unfairly place unfunded mandates on police departments at a time of extreme fiscal uncertainty, when police officers are already being laid off. Ultimately, this bill will be disastrous for the people who need it most — the victims of the most serious and violent crimes.”

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