http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080418/VIDEO01/804180735//
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A catharsis in legislation
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By
Carol E. Lee
Published Friday, April 18, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
TALLAHASSEE The family of
Denise Lee boarded a six-person plane at Venice airport Thursday morning and flew to the state Capitol. It was exactly three months after the 21-year-old mother of two had been kidnapped, raped, murdered and buried in a shallow, dirt grave near her North Port home.
"One day we want to be able to explain to our grandchildren and Nate's children that their momma -- that it wasn't all in vain,"
Denise Lee''s father, Charlotte County sheriff's Sgt. Rick Goff, said after testifying at a Senate committee meeting.
"She fought for her life and she wanted to be saved."
Goff, his daughter's husband, Nathan, her mother, Susan, and her little brother, Tyler, were in Tallahassee to lobby for a bill that state lawmakers now plan to name after
Denise Lee..
Their journey is one-half of a familiar exchange. Families who have weathered tragedy increasingly find catharsis promoting legislation they believe will spare someone else their pain. Legislators, in turn, can replace dry government jargon with emotional, real-life stories that help bills get passed into law.
In Florida alone, the number of bills in the Legislature named in commemoration of a loved one has nearly tripled over the past 10 years, to about three dozen. Not all of them pass. But when grief and politics intersect, legislation tends to move faster, garner broad support and get the attention of lawmakers who see thousands of bills in a 60-day session.
"When you hear that person tell that story, you feel the difference in the room," said former Sen. Nancy Argenziano, who sponsored Jessica's Law in 2005.
The legislation strengthened Florida's sex offender laws after the murder of a 9-year-old Homosassa girl.
"There's nothing that puts a fathead legislator in their place more than when they hear something like that from a regular person who lives in the real world," Argenziano continued. "By naming it, you make the family feel that at least their child wasn't lost in vain ... and also you expedite the political process."
The Goff and Lee families believe a mishandled 911 call to the Charlotte County dispatch center cost
Denise Lee her life.
They want lawmakers to adopt legislation that would create statewide standards for the training and certification of 911 operators. Their lobbying over the past 10 days has given a routine bill a sudden rush of attention.
"People expect every 911 operator to have the same training, and they just don't," said Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Democrat who represents part of Charlotte County and is sponsoring the legislation.
The Senate committee unanimously passed the bill Thursday. It will likely be introduced in both chambers of the Legislature before May 2 and is among several other bills advocated on behalf of lost loved ones this year.
Lawmakers are working on a bill to require driver education for minors that is named after Tyler Isenhour, a Manatee County student who died in a car accident shortly after receiving his license.
The House passed dating violence legislation that is named after an Ocala girl who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend. And the Amber May White Act, which would regulate the parasailing industry, has gained traction since it was renamed after the teenage girl whose death prompted it.
"Naming the bill after the victim provides a means for the public and policymakers to immediately connect the bill to an issue, a sort of shorthand for the issues the bill tries to address," said Susan Smith Howley, the director of public policy for the National Center for Victims of Crime.
>Denise Lee was abducted from her North Port home on the afternoon of Jan. 17 while tending to her 6-month-old and 2-year-old sons.
Screaming and banging on the back window of her abductor's Chevrolet Camaro, Lee got the attention of a woman at a stoplight. The woman called Charlotte County's 911. But the call was never conveyed to police just blocks away searching for Lee.
Within hours, Lee was dead. Her body was found two days later less than three miles from where the 911 caller saw her screaming for help.
As her father, Goff, stood at a podium in the Senate office building and retold the story, Lee's husband, Nathan, seated in the front row, fiddled with his wedding ring and wiped tears from his eyes.
"What happened to Denise is not something that people should go through," Nathan Lee said in an interview. "If Rick and I and our family have the ability to help bring light to the issue and maybe fix some problems and make things better than what they are, then that's what I am committed to doing."
Channeling the pain and anger of losing a loved one into a cause is often the best survivors can do to find a sense of justice in it all, said Connie Ankney, head of Southwest Florida's chapter of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children.
"It's a healing process," said Ankney, who lobbied for change after her son and daughter-in-law were murdered in Charlotte County in 1997.
But passing bills when emotions are high does not always result in the best public policy, said Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota.
"When a bill is hard to criticize because of the emotional impact, it doesn't often get the most careful scrutiny," said Fitzgerald, a political science professor at New College.
And sometimes a rush to pass emotionally charged legislation can leave unanticipated loopholes.
Jessica's Law, which required increased background checks on school employees, was revised the year after it passed because a lack of clarity led to schools banning some workers with decades-old convictions for minor drug or alcohol charges.
Argenziano, the law's sponsor, said it was better to have stronger standards adopted quickly than to wait another year for the perfect bill.
>Denise Lee''s family shares a similar sentiment about the 911 bill. They want the state to require all 67 counties to adopt the training and certification standards.
But it would cost money, and the state has little of that. So for now, a state law to create a training program for dispatchers, even if it is not required, would offer the Lee and Goff families some solace.
"Unfortunately, we wish we could have all those things put in there right now, but it's got to be a step-by-step process," Nathan Lee said. "We're trying to make as much positive out of this as we can."
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