Jakes Law

Jake's Law was signed into law on March 4th 2000 with the help of committee members and a lot of tears and pain . 

A needed change to current sentencing in child death homicides in Maine.

Quoting from the 2001-2002 Maine Criminal Statutes 17-A 1252 section 5-B Compassionately known as Jake's Law

In using the sentencing alternative involving a term of imprisonment for a person convicted of the attempted murder, manslaughter, elevated aggravated assault, or aggravated assault of a child who had not in fact attained the age of 6 years at the time of the crime was committed, a court shall assign special weight to this objective fact in determining the basic term of imprisonment as the first step in the sentencing process.  The court shall....

Now what this means is:
In a class A crime Murder or Manslaughter in Maine the sentencing is based on 3 facts, which can be read in 17-a 1252 5-A section B #2
    Heinousness of the crime
    Criminal history
    Chance of rehabilitation
    Remorse

Murder carries a sentence of 25 years to life,
Manslaughter carries a sentence of 0 years to 40 years ( usual starting point is 20 years),
This is a true LAYMAN explanation but basically how sentencing works is you start with a 20 year sentence and work downward with the above criteria.

 +5     years for heinousness of the crime
  -5     years for no criminal history
  -5     years for change of rehabilitation
  -5     for remorse
= 5     year sentence for taking the life of a child. 

NOW Jake's Law states:
That the judge has another sentencing recommendation to use, being the age of the child.  Jake's Law has been used one time here in Maine and the perp received a 10 year sentence instead of the average of 5 years.  Their is also a child homicide case that is pending right now that the AG's office
has charged the perp with Depraved indifference murder, this is what we fought for and Jake's Law was originally written as. This is the first time since 1978 that Depraved indifference murder (murder 2 as is described in some states) has been used in Maine.  We'll see what happens so far they refuse to plea the perp down to manslaughter...:)

More importantly as I sat in the court room as the sentence was handed down the Judge in the case spoke of Chelsie the victim by name not as only the "victim" .  Because of Jake's Law her voice was heard on behalf of all the children that have been killed or injured by someone else's abuse.

Please email me privately if you would like me to share with you statutes from other states and the research we used to successfully pass Jake's Law.  Please do not reinvent the wheel. We worked for months to compile the research we have and I am happy to share it with anyone interested.

State Statistics

Information is available at hospitals to new parents in the following states:

¨ Maine-(yes) through Don't Shake Jake Awareness Program~ prevention labels given to all new families at time of birth

§New York ©Florida

¨Utah ªMissouri

©Iowa ¨Pennsylvania

ªIllinois §RI

¨Connecticut §Minnesota

©Wisconsin ¨Nebraska

ªMassachusetts ¨Indiana

§Tennessee ©Texas

ªVirginia §California

¨Washington ©Arizona

©Ohio ¨Colorado

§Oregon

Provision for sentencing in child death or assault?  (criminal statutes)

Alaska-11-41.100	Arizona-13-1105	Arkansas-5-10-102
California-273ab	Colorado-18-6-40	Delaware-11-633
Florida-782-04	Hawaii-yes no numbers	Idaho-18-4003
Indiana- yes	Iowa-707.2	Kansas-21-3436
Louisiana-14.32	Mississippi-97.3-19	Minnesota-609.185
New York-125.25	North Dakota-12.1-16-01	Ohio- bills pending
Oklahoma-21 701.7	Oregon-163.11510	Penn-2504
South Carolina-16-3-85	Tennessee-39-13-202	Texas-19.03
Utah-76-5-203	Washington-9a 32055	West Virginia-61-8D 2a
	Wyoming-6-2-101

States who have recently passed bills supporting the efforts of Don't Shake Jake... South Carolina

No State contact info for:

Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, South Dakota, Idaho, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Washington.