STAND. COM. REP. NO. 295

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 186

       S.D. 1

Honorable Donna Mercado Kim

President of the Senate

Twenty-Eighth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2015

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Transportation, to which was referred S.B. No. 186 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO RESISTING AN ORDER TO STOP A VEHICLE,"

beg leave to report as follows:

     The purpose and intent of this measure is to:

     (1)  Establish the offense of resisting an order to stop a motor vehicle in the first degree as a class C felony; and

     (2)  Reclassify the existing offense of resisting an order to stop a motor vehicle, which is a misdemeanor, to resisting an order to stop a motor vehicle in the second degree.

     Your Committees received testimony in support of this measure from the Honolulu Police Department.

     Your Committees find that an offender, while fleeing in a vehicle from a law enforcement officer, often places another person in danger of being injured or damages property.  Existing law does not adequately address these situations.  The offender may be arrested for the offense of attempted murder, assault in the second degree, or terroristic threatening in the first degree.  However, the alleged conduct does not fulfill the elements of those offenses, as the offender's intent is not to commit murder, assault, or terroristic threatening or to damage the property of another, which causes the charges to be changed or dropped.  Implementation of this measure will provide prosecutors with an additional offense with which to charge an offender who is resisting an order to stop while fleeing in a motor vehicle.

     Your Committees have amended this measure by making technical, nonsubstantive amendments for the purposes of clarity and consistency.

     As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Transportation that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 186, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 186, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Labor.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Public Safety, Intergovernmental and Military Affairs and Transportation,

____________________________ CLARENCE K. NISHIHARA, Chair

____________________________ WILL ESPERO, Chair