A bill that would have reclassified sex trafficking as a violent felony in California was blocked by the Legislature’s Assembly Committee on Public Safety March 14.
Six Democratic Assembly members voted against Assembly Bill 229 authored by Joe Patterson (R-Rocklin).
The measure would have expanded the Three Strikes Law—a state law passed in 1994 that requires a felon convicted of two or more violent crimes to receive increased prison sentences—to include sexual crimes, human trafficking, and felony domestic violence. Some of the offenses reclassified would have also included domestic violence, rape, sodomy, and sexual penetration if a victim was unconscious.
“Current California law has become too lenient on some of the most atrocious crimes,” Patterson said, according to a legislative analysis of the bill. “AB 229 will penalize those individuals who harm individuals in the most serious manner by making felony domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking of a sexual nature a violent crime.”
Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer (D-Los Angeles) voted against the legislation, saying the bill was an attempt to revive the state’s three-strikes mentality.
“What you’re proposing is a back-to-the-future kind of thing where we did three strikes. That’s how we got to overcrowding in the prisons,” Jones-Sawyer said.
Assemblyman Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles) agreed and also voted against the bill, along with Assemblywoman Mia Bonta (D-Oakland)—who is the wife of California’s Attorney General Rob Bonta— Assemblyman Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), Assemblywoman Liz Ortega (D-Hayward), and Assemblyman Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles).
Assemblyman Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) voted for the bill and told committee members he thought current law didn’t make sense.
“Why in the world would offenses like rape, and other sexual assault of an unconscious victim or rape another sexual assault of a victim who is too drugged or too intoxicated to give valid consent, why in the world are those not considered violent?” Lackey asked during the committee meeting. “It defies logic to me.”
