Monday, July 25, 2011
Legislature Ketron Calls Back!: The Senator's Thoughts On 'Caylee's Law'
Posted by Stephen George on Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 11:27 AM
Unfortunately, Ketron didn’t respond to an interview request before press deadline, so the story only quoted from his recent op-ed on the matter. But he did get back to Hale eventually. Here, in its oblique glory, is what Ketron had to say.
On the possibility of scenarios in which the law could ensnare parents with no ill intent: “The language says ‘knowingly refuse to make all reasonable efforts to report a missing child.’ So I would imagine that would cover that. ‘If a parent is physically able to do so and they fail to make or knowingly refuse to make all reasonable efforts to the appropriate authorities’.”
On whether the proposed law will be vetted by legal experts who can evaluate such scenarios: “I think the Judiciary Committee, I would assume it will probably be referred to that. That will be the lieutenant governor’s choice, obviously. I think we have several bright, brilliant minds in the Senate that will be able to appropriately vet that. ...
“If a child is not reported quickly, the investigation to recover the child is compromised, and in the event that the child is not living when the child is found, it compromises the investigation to figure out what happened to the child. That’s the point of the legislation. We’re not trying to make a value judgment on whether or not the verdict was correct or incorrect. The investigation was clearly compromised, which is the problem here. And that’s what we’re trying to solve.”
On whether the law would, at best, do work already done by laws against lying to police, abandoning a child, etc.: “We just feel that there’s a huge gap in the code when it comes to reporting missing children, and I think this rectifies that.”
On concerns that the law could result in an increase in erroneous missing child reports by parents who don’t want to risk receiving a criminal penalty if they don’t report: “Our focus is ensuring that the integrity of the case and the integrity of the search is provided for, and that there’s a penalty if it doesn’t occur. It’s all about protecting the integrity of the investigation.”
On whether and how Casey Anthony’s lies to police — for which she was convicted and penalized — affected the integrity of the investigation: “We would say that the integrity of the investigation was even more compromised by the time period between the child actually going missing and being reported missing. That was where the main compromising of the investigation occurred.”
On questions about whether this law would deter any negligent parent or one with bad intentions: “No, but at least there’s a penalty for that. … The code currently states that it is required that a parent report their child missing, there is just no punitive part of the statute. This creates a punitive part of the statute.”
Comments (9)
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I wish he'd stop being so vague and misleading on the "does he have a mustache or not" issue.
" ... bright, brilliant minds in the Senate ..." What? Maybe the "bright" ones could mark that on their foreheads, and the "brilliant" ones do likewise, so we'll know which is which.
"Ah'm bright ... "
"And ah'm brilliant ..."
"Together, we're pickin' and a-grinnin' ...
shootin' and bootin'
tonight on HEE HAW!"
Why do you libtards hate little children so much?!?!! Mr. Ketron just wants to do his part to protect little kids! And CMaldonado, you only wish you could grow a manly mustache like Mr. Ketron's! Senator Ketron's colleagues even call him Magnum! That's how great a mustache it is!
This not reporting does in fact have serious consequences. Whether this piece of
legislation is premature or not I'm not sure, but do know it's needed in some form.
A recent Tn case involved finding the identity of a body found in a river 29 yrs ago,
one of the reasons it took so long was because the person had never been reported
as missing. Is the problem here who is introducing the legislation or it's content?
The problem could be that Michelle Crowder, the Oklahoma woman who's responsible for Caylee's Law, never consulted any law enforcement officials on it. She just came up with these time limits arbitrarily. It could also be that it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. According to an actual Justice department report, over 99 percent of missing children are returned home safely. http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a09… It could also be that it's quite clearly a revenge law, hastily conceived after a verdict that people weren't happy with and to be utilized simply to prosecute someone, anyone, in the event of a tragedy, even if those people may have been, say, looking for their missing child in a panic (understandable) or, maybe unaware that their child was yet missing. That last one sounds like negligence if you don't bother to think about it for two seconds. This literally requires that a parent, even a parent of a high school kid, know his or her precise whereabouts, not at reasonable intervals, but EVERY MOMENT. If they fail to put a tracking device on their children, which they monitor at every moment, and the children turn up missing, they might be prosecuted. Yes, people are criticizing the sponsor, but it may be because he has a pattern of sponsoring useless, unnecessary bandwagon bills like this one.
Radley Balko had a very good piece on this, too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/c…
"Is the problem here who is introducing the legislation or it's content?"
The problem is that good parents will always report their missing children, and bad parents will ignore the law, so this legislation won't actually do anything to change the status quo and actually help children. It's meaningless legislation designed to make the sponsors feel good about themselves.
If the legislature really wanted to help children, they'd do something about DCS.
