Walker signs law-related bills

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker signed 62 bills on Tuesday, including several bills that may affect legal proceedings.

A few of those bills include:

• AB 120, which allows doctors and health care providers to apologize to patients without worrying about whether the statements could be used against them in court.
• AB 180, which states that a person convicted of a seventh, eighth or ninth OWI offense must spend at least three years in prison. It also requires a 10th-time offender to spend at least four years in prison, and requires require judges to sentence a drunken driver who injures somebody to at least 30 days in jail.
• SB 68, which requires a person receiving alimony payments following a divorce to notify a court if the person remarries.
• SB 223, which prohibits bosses from asking workers or job applicants for access to their social media account.
• SB 266, which allows for evidence used in a child enticement case to be taken for use in trial, and possibly forfeited after the case is completed.
• AB 274, which creates harsher penalties for family members that help felons evade police.
• AB 290, which approves a $90,000 payout to Robert Stinson, who was wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder in 1985 and spent 23 years in prison. The $90,000 is in addition to a $25,000 payout Stinson received from the state’s Claims Board in 2010.
• SB 367, which criminalizes so-called “revenge porn” – or explicit images posted on the Internet out of anger.
• SB 373, which allows police to take DNA upon arrest only if the person has been arrested for a violent felony such as rape or assault.
• SB 561, which allows research agencies doing work under a federal court improvement grant to have access to juvenile court records.
• SB 631, which allows district attorneys who are later hired as an assistant district attorney after leaving office to count time spent as an elected official toward their pay scale.

The Associated Press also contributed to this report.