Committee backs strangulation bill

BOISE – Idaho Senate lawmakers are set to consider a bill that seeks to fight domestic violence by making attempted strangulation a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Members of the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee on Monday unanimously backed the bill.

Proponents said the measure would fill a hole in existing laws they say now makes it difficult to prosecute perpetrators of strangulation with more than misdemeanor charges.

“We need serious penalties to show this is a serious crime,” Melissa Moody, a deputy state attorney general, told the committee members. “The Legislature needs to be strong.”

According to Senate Bill 1062, any person who chokes or attempts to strangle a household member by willful and unlawful application of pressure to the neck or throat would be guilty of a felony punishable by incarceration for up to 20 years.

No visible injuries would be required to prove the attempted strangulation.

The prosecution also wouldn’t have to show the strangler was attempting to kill or injure the victim, according to the bill’s text.

Supporters of the measure, which didn’t meet any opposition in the afternoon meeting, said it’s needed to send a message to domestic abusers responsible for one-third to one-half of all murders in Idaho.

When the bill is considered by the full Senate, members of the rules committee indicated intentions to strike references in the bill to “household members,” replacing that with “anyone.”

Senators including Gerry Sweet, R-Meridian, expressed concerns that narrowly defining victims as household members could exclude from prosecution boyfriends or others who don’t live in the same residence as the victim.

“Are we leaving people out who should be addressed in this situation?” Sweet asked Moody and other advocates of the bill, who included Jan Bennetts from the Ada County prosecutor’s office and Brenda Cameron, director of Hope’s Door, a shelter for domestic-violence victims in Caldwell.

While Bennetts said most of the strangulation cases her office prosecutes involve people who live in the same house or have common children, panel members want to see the bill written as broadly as possible to make sure nobody slips through the cracks.