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Lawmakers mull domestic abuse penalties (UPDATE)

By: Jack Zemlicka, [email protected]//December 30, 2011//

Lawmakers mull domestic abuse penalties (UPDATE)

By: Jack Zemlicka, [email protected]//December 30, 2011//

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Wisconsin legislators are seeking stiffer penalties for repeat domestic abusers.

Assembly Bill 449, introduced on Thursday, would allow courts to add up to two years to a domestic abuser sentence if the person had prior convictions of the same crime at the time of arrest.

Rep. Alvin Ott, R-Forest Junction, the primary sponsor of the bill, could not immediately be reached for comment.

According to the proposal, a repeat offense would increase from a misdemeanor to a felony and apply to a person convicted on two separate occasions of a felony or misdemeanor involving domestic abuse during the 10-year period immediately preceding the latest crime.

A surcharge, often about $100, is imposed by the court as part of a criminal sentence or in addition to an ordinance fine in crimes involving an individual’s spouse, former spouse or person with whom the offender has created a child.

But Waukesha criminal defense lawyer Craig Kuhary, of Walden, Schuster & Vaklyes SC, said the legislation is “overkill” as statutes already provide repeater penalties for domestic abusers.

Current law provides for the same two-year sentence addition and increase in severity of the crime from a misdemeanor to a felony, but only if the crime is committee during the 72 hours immediately following an arrest for a domestic abuse incident.

“Ten years is pretty broad,” Kuhary said. “This seems like a not-so-subtle attempt by the Legislature to give prosecutors more leverage to negotiate and settle these cases as crimes.”

Kuhary said, if passed, the law change could allow prosecutors to use disorderly conduct ordinance violations that included a domestic abuse surcharge to push for jail time for repeat offenders during the 10-year window.

“Even in situations where the person isn’t considered in a classic sense to be a serial abuser of men or women, this could be used to put them behind bars,” he said. “I would hope prosecutors will use discretion if this becomes law, which I hope it doesn’t.”

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