Idaho House unanimously passes child sex abuse death penalty bill
As lawmakers anticipate court challenge, Idaho Republican House legislative leader says U.S. Supreme Court was wrong
Members of the Idaho House of Representatives hold a floor session on March 10, 2025, at the Idaho Capitol Building in Boise. (Pat Sutphin for the Idaho Capital Sun)
The Idaho House on Monday unanimously passed a bill to allow the death penalty for adults who sexually abuse children age 12 and younger in Idaho.
Similar to his bill that stalled last year, House Bill 380, cosponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, would allow the death penalty in a new criminal charge the bill creates: aggravated lewd conduct with children age 12 and younger.
Skaug’s bill also would add mandatory minimum prison sentences for cases of aggravated lewd conduct with minors — which would only apply to abuse of children age 16 and below — that don’t meet the bill’s proposed criteria for death penalty eligibility.
“Unfortunately, Idaho has some of the widest or most lenient statutes on rape of a child in the nation,” Skaug told House lawmakers.
No negative debate on death penalty bill on Idaho House floor
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 blocked death penalties for child rape in Kennedy v. Louisiana. Florida passed a child rape death penantly law two years ago.
Five other states are considering child rape death penalty bills, Skaug said.
He said the death penalty would be rarely sought under his bill. Nine people are on death row in Idaho, according to the Idaho Department of Correction.
Bracing for a legal challenge to the bill, Skaug told lawmakers in committee he expects the U.S. Supreme Court would rule differently.
“You can say, ‘Well, that’s unconstitutional, Bruce. Why would you bring that?’ Well, it was — according to a 5-4 decision in 2008. I don’t think that would be the case today,” Skaug, an attorney, told lawmakers on the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee last week. “That’s my professional opinion. That’s the opinion of many other attorneys.”
The Idaho House passed the new bill on Monday with 63 votes in favor and no votes against.
No lawmaker debated against the bill on the House floor.
To become law, Idaho bills must pass the House and Senate, and avoid the governor’s veto.
Idaho law only allows the death penalty in first-degree murder cases with aggravating circumstances.
Last week, Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a bill into law that will make the Gem State the only state to use firing squads as its main execution method. Skaug also cosponsored that bill.
Seven lawmakers were absent for the child sex abuse death penalty bill’s floor vote — including four of the nine House Democrats, including House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel and Rep. Chris Mathias, both from Boise, who opposed advancing the bill in committee last week.
The five House Democrats present for Monday’s House floor vote all voted in support of the bill.
Idaho House Republican leader says U.S. Supreme Court was wrong
House Assistant Majority Leader Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, another cosponsor of the child sex abuse death penalty bill, said the U.S. Supreme Court was wrong.
“Reading back through that Supreme Court case, it shocked me that they could get it so wrong — that you could rape an 8-year-old girl in a way that she had to have massive surgery just to just to get by from the aspect of the physical damage, let alone the mental, emotional damage that they deal with for decades after this,” Tanner told House lawmakers. “But I don’t think this is necessarily a good bill. I think this is just a necessary bill that we have to do to protect the children of this great state.”
Rep. John Shirts, R-Weiser, a prosecutor in the Air Force Reserve, said “there are things that are so horrific that people do to children there’s nothing more than ultimate punishment that is just.”
And he suggested Idaho’s bill would help the court re-evaluate the issue.
“Some people might argue that this doesn’t have any binding on the court. It really does,” Shirt said. “It shows what our will, what the state’s will, in these types of cases, are. It goes to that national consensus analysis under the Eight Amendment.”
This is Skaug’s second attempt at child sex abuse death penalty bill
This year’s child sex abuse death penalty bill is Skaug and Tanner’s second attempt at such a bill. Last year, another bill they brought widely passed the House but never received a Senate committee hearing.
Skaug and Tanner’s new bill this year — cosponsored by eight other Idaho lawmakers — would establish the new crime, and mandatory minimums criminal sentences. For instance, the bill’s proposed mandatory minimum sentence for aggravated lewd conduct with minors under age 16 would carry at least 25 years in prison.
Under the bill, lewd conduct with a minor would include but is not limited to “geital-genital contact, oral-genital contact, anal-genital contact, oral-anal contact, manual-anal contact, or manual-genital contact” when such acts are meant to arouse, appeal to or gratify “lust or passions or sexual desires.”
Lewd conduct against minors age 12 and younger would only be eligible for the death penalty if cases involve at least three aggravating factors.
The bill spells out more than a dozen aggravating factors, including already being found guilty of a crime that requires sex offender registration, committing lewd conduct against the same victim at least three separate times, being in a position of trust or having “supervisory or disciplinary power over the victim,” penetration with a penis, kidnapping, human trafficking the child, torture, using force or coercion, and being armed with a weapon.
Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, was among 10 House Democrats who voted against the bill in the House last year. But he was the first lawmaker to debate in favor of the bill on the House floor Monday.
“I see this as a kid’s bill,” Gannon said on the House floor. “And I see it as being extremely important — that those who have that proclivity now, today, go get your help, stay away from kids, and let’s not have to ever use this bill — because you did the right thing and took care of the issue that you have.”
Man gets 98 years in prison for child sex abuse
Sacramento DA says he could get elderly parole
By Rosalio Ahumada
March 17, 2025 10:53 AM| 1
By El Dorado County District Attorney's Office
A 56-year-old man sentenced last week in Sacramento County to 98 years in prison for sexually abusing a child could be released after serving 20 years of his sentence because of his age, prosecutors said.
A Sacramento Superior Court judge on Friday sentenced Alfred Bryant Tribbey for sexually abusing a girl over eight months while threatening to kill her if she told anyone, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release.
On Feb. 7, a jury found Tribbey guilty of nine counts of forcible lewd acts upon a child and one count of committing a lewd act upon a child. Prosecutors said Tribbey’s conviction also included enhancements for sexually abusing a vulnerable victim and taking advantage of a position of trust, along with committing crimes involving great violence, great bodily harm, threats of great bodily harm or other acts of a high degree of cruelty, viciousness or callousness.
Bizarre case - 5th judge recuses from Utah fire chief's child sex abuse materials case
BRIGHAM CITY, Utah (KUTV) — Former Tremonton Fire Chief Ned Brady Hansen made his initial court appearance in Utah's Second District court on multiple counts of child sexual exploitation.
Monday's appearance was the second failed start in the case, in which Hansen faces eight counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, after the judge rescheduled the court date to Wednesday and recused himself.
This makes the fifth judge recused from the case.
The judge first assigned to the case, First District Judge Kevin Christensen, allowed Hansen to be let out on bond after his arrest, despite investigators' recommendation to hold him without bail due to the potential danger to community children.
Christensen was later arrested after investigators found evidence tying him to Hansen's case, court documents state.
PREVIOUS REPORTS: Box Elder County officials accused in child sex abuse materials case
- Charges filed against Tremonton fire chief for sexual exploitation of a minor
- Fire chief, judge who released him on bail had sexual relationship, shared child porn
- Box Elder County judge accused of multiple child sex crimes
- Ex Tremonton fire chief Ned Hansen to plead not guilty in child exploitation case
- Tremonton fire chief vetted before alleged child sex crimes, but how?
- Tremonton to initiate changes after ex-fire chief charged with child sex crimes
The Utah Attorney General's Office alleged in charging documents that investigators found evidence that Hansen had been communicating with another person in the case, and the two of them discussed in graphic details sexual acts they wanted to do to children if they "could get away with it." That other person was identified as Christensen.
Hansen's case was reassigned to First District Court Judge Brandon Maynard, who signed an arrest warrant and ordered police to take the suspect back into custody.
However, before the court process could begin again, Maynard was recused, due to Christensen being his former colleague, and Presiding judge Brian Cannell issued the following order recusing the remaining judges in the First District:
Presiding Judge Brian Cannell hereby recuses all judges in the First District from this case based upon their relationship with the co-defendant and witness. In accordance with recusal and reassignment procedure, and to avoid a possible conflict, this case is hereby ordered to be transferred to the Second District Court-Ogden for all further proceedings.
In all, the order affected four judges total.
Hansen's initial hearing on March 12 was continued to Monday, where Judge Reuben Renstrom was set to make some of the first courtroom decisions in the case. However, the only decision officially made was to move the appearance to Wednesday after added his name to the list of recused judges.
The case has been assigned to Second District Judge Joseph Bean.
Hansen is scheduled to appear in court March 17 at 2 p.m. In the meantime, he will remain in custody.
Good grief!
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