FLORIDA
Orlando Sentinel
By Gray Rohrer
TALLAHASSEE – Rep. Rene Plasencia, R-Orlando, said he will call out the Senate for stalling and sabotaging his bill to increase the time period to prosecute charges in sexual battery cases.
His bill, HB 133, passed by a 115-0 vote on April 9. It passed through the Senate on a 39-0 vote on Friday, but only after tacking on three amendments that were the subjects of other bills, sending it back to the House.
Plasencia says if the House passes the bill as is, it will violate the Legislature’s rule against multiple subject bills, making it unconstitutional and allowing sexual batterers outside of the current statute of limitations to go free.
“If a defense attorney challenges any of those laws they’re going to win because it’s a blatant violation of those rules,” Plasencia said.
He specifically laid the blame at Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, the chairman of the Senate Rules Committee.
The underlying bill would increase the amount of time prosecutors can bring charges in sexual battery cases from four years after the offense to eight years. Florida’s statute of limitations is currently the third-shortest among the 50 states for sexual battery. Plasencia’s original bill would have increased the time period to 10 years, but the companion bill in the Senate, from Sen. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, would have only increased it to six years.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.