These are some of the steps I went through to get laws passed.
Joan’s Law
For the first Joan’s law which was in New Jersey I began with making up the wording for the proposed bill. I decided the law should not be for the death penalty but I would go for no parole for those who murder and molest children. They would die in prison. In our case Joan killer had come up for parole 1987, 1993 the 1993 hearing lasted until 2002 because of appeals and in 1998 the entire hearing had to be redone and it never stopped. In 2008 he came out again and in 2027 he will be eligible again so that had to stop. It all began when I started the movement in 1993 to keep Joan’s killer in I saw what had to be done because no one else had done it. This law wasn’t going to help me but knew if there was a like this for my family then we would be freer and I just couldn’t continue that cycle so I started getting into laws. I was clear about the Bill.
It took three years to get Joan’s Law passed in 1997. It was difficult because it had been2 0 years since the crime and it had been quiet all that time and I had to bring her story to life again that was not easy to go through.
It was the first law I worked on and it was a grassroots movement. I gotten a few hundred signatures from people and then I looked to see who the Assembly and Senator’s where in my district, our district was 39 and I found out that the Senator there was Kosco and I started with the Senate. There was more clout with the Senate I felt. I brought him the signatures and my ideas to him and he agreed to introduce the legislation. At first nothing was moving so I started talking to the legislative aides. I made a very good connection with one legislative aid and he was tremendous in showing me what to do and communicating and I would call him, any kind of question I would have, or what the next step or why is it was not moving. I would not hesitate to call because the Senator was doing nothing with it. So he gave the Senator a message about it and he was starting to show him what I was trying to do and explain it and finally the Senator started to move that might have taken about 9 months.
Also during the process of working on the bill I learned about dealing with the media and to this day working with the media has been very important in getting the laws passed and keeping the killer in prison. By getting the story out there I was able to gather letters and petitions of support and put pressure on the legislature
So the whole process takes a lot of time and you have to keep on after it you need a lot of perseverance. So it has to be something you completely believe in or else it’s going to get to discouraging and there isn’t going to be the support you think there will be. This is what I went through. I just kept on and on because I believed it so much. Then what happened is we had to get a sponsor in the Assembly so that we had sponsors from both houses. It had to get assigned to a committee, I believe it was the judiciary and it has to be given a hearing date and that takes time, to get the bill to be put up for a vote. When it has a hearing date you are closer to get the bill through but it takes time so it’s a very big step. I had to get the public to write letters to the head of the committee and leaders. If the Senate president or the leadership tell the head of the committee not to give it a hearing then it can be stopped right there so there is many people you are working on to move the bill. When it got a hearing date I had to Trenton to explain about the bill to the committee then they make a decision at this time they also could make suggestions for amendments to the Bill. Then the same procedure it went through in the Assembly. Then you wait another few months, then it was voted on by the full Senate and Assembly and the voting dates can change. Then finally it went to the Governor. That was the process for the first Joan’s Law passed in 1997. There would a be a Federal version in 1998 and New York version passed in 2004
Justice For Victims’ Law
Now for the Justice for Victims law which eliminated the statute of limitation for filing a wrongful death suit against a murderer, it used to be two years. That was if the perpetrator comes into any money the victims’ family has a chance to recover that money. With this law, which was passed in 2001 one victim’s family got $9 million, they would never have been able to get it if I didn’t get that law through. It took more than a year and I explored different theories and to find out what the law was in this area. I went to different attorneys and got different ideas on how to word the law, and I got ideas from them on what to call it.
