Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Editor
A bill intended to strengthen New Mexico’s child pornography laws has passed the House, 60-2, and is headed for the Democratic-controlled Senate.
House Bill 65, co-sponsored by Clovis Republican Rep. Randal Crowder, would allow prosecutors to charge one count of possession for each pornographic image. The law currently limits charges to one count, no matter how many images are possessed.
“The vote came out very good, but there was a lot of debate. It wasn’t easy,” Crowder said.
Democrats Moe Maestas of Albuquerque and Eliseo Alcon of Milan opposed HB 65, saying it was too complicated to sort through in a 30-day legislative session.
One issue is the concern that an individual with thousands of pornographic images could be sentenced to hundreds of years in prison.
But Crowder said that scenario is not “logical” because of the time-consuming process for filing charges related to each image.
A similar bill did not get out of committee in the Senate a year ago, but Crowder said this version has “bi-partisan support,” including the backing of Attorney General Hector Balderas, a Democrat.
“Because of the loophole that currently exists in New Mexico law, a collector of images of child sexual abuse can receive only an 18-month sentence whether the predator possesses one image or thousands of images,” Balderas wrote in an opinion piece for the Albuquerque Journal.
“The loophole essentially creates a market for exploiting children in our state. ... New Mexico must fix this law.”
State Sen. Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, said he’s certain the bill will be heard in committee.
Ingle said his primary concern would be that bill has “safeguards” that prevent someone from being charged for having a photo of a child in a backyard pool, for example.
“We just have to make sure it has some common sense in it,” he said.
