The fallout from the Casey Anthony trial has brought out the stupid in a lot of people. Folks have been sending hate messages to a guy with the same name, a man allegedly punched a woman over the verdict, and lawmakers across the country have been proposing "Tot Mom"-related legislation.
Boca Raton's Republican State Rep. Bill Hager was part of the wave of state legislators nationwide who have proposed bills making it a felony for a parent or legal guardian not to call the cops when their youngsters go missing, and now Rep. Scott Randolph is planning to drop another bill related to Anthony's trial.
Randolph is hosting a news conference this afternoon in Orlando but has already dropped some details about his proposed bill -- he wants to prevent jurors from making money from trials they serve on.
Randolph's bill would ban jurors on any trial from making money by exchanging information about the trial after its over:
"The legislation seeks to prevent jurors from receiving compensation or monetary benefit in exchange for supplying information related to the trial after discharge," Randolph's camp says. "The legislation is intended to maintain fairness and integrity in our system of justice, especially for jurors selected for high-profile cases such as the recent Casey Anthony trial."
Depending on what the actual text of the legislation he's submitting says, this could possibly ban book deals for jurors -- which has been a staple in nationally recognized trials for years.
What does Randolph have against random people -- who probably do not want to be jurors -- being paid $30 a day without any sort of reimbursement for expenses and being forced out of work for the extent of a criminal trial wanting a little cash for their duty to American justice?
We'll see what sort of reasoning he has when details come back from this afternoon's announcement.
Aside from Randolph's bill, the Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the Florida Civil Rights Association is lobbying for another legislator, Sen. Gary Siplin, to sponsor a bill that creates a "cooling-off period" before releasing the names of jurors.
The group's idea is that there would be a waiting period after a felony criminal trial before the names of jurors are released to the public and would make it a felony for anyone to contact jurors if they've publicly said they don't want to be contacted.
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