Often referred to by defendants (without irony) as “getting violated” the old hair-trigger violation threshold of the Rhode Island criminal justice system is now a thing of the past. According to R.I.’s Future, as of last Saturday a law sponsored in the Senate by Senators Perry, Levesque, Miller, Metts, and Sosnoski, and in the House by District Two rep, and Dose contributor David Segal,

. . . now requires the dismissal of any probation violation or violation of a suspended sentence that is based on a new criminal charge for which the defendant is not convicted within a reasonable period of time, or is acquitted or dismissed.

This has been a long battle and the parties involved should be proud of their hard work. The legislation had previously been vetoed twice by Governor Carcieri, who seems to be consistently on the wrong side of everything. Matt Jerzyk does a great job explaining the changes in the law over at R.I.’s Future. This new law corrects a gravely unjust regime — we are all better for it. And don’t forget the above names come election time. . . Dave worked real hard on this one.

Tags: David Segal, probation, probation violation

comments feed for this post

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.