Yesterday, the Judiciary Committee made available the 14 proposals submitted by various lawmakers to reform the criminal justice system. I’ll go through each one in later posts. First up, though, is the proposal submitted [pdf] by the Judiciary Committee co-chairs, which has already received some press coverage.

First, Burglary in the First Degree is amended to include an element called “home invasion”. Home invasion is defined as:

a person “commits a home invasion” when such person enters a dwelling while a person other than a participant in the crime is actually present in the dwelling with intent to commit a crime therein and such dwelling, at the time of such entry, is not open to the public and the actor is not otherwise licensed or privileged to enter such dwelling.

So basically, with this amendment, a burglary would be a home invasion, which is a burglary, unless no one is actually present in which case it is a burglary.

This bill also Continue reading →