Senators advanced a bill Feb. 15 that would enhance penalties for assaulting health care professionals.<\/p>\n
Under the original provisions of LB677, introduced by Omaha Sen. Steve Lathrop, a person who is convicted of assault on a health care professional while the health care provider is engaged in his or her official duties, would serve a mandatory minimum sentence of:
\n\u2022 six months imprisonment for third degree assault;
\n\u2022 one year imprisonment for second degree assault; or
\n\u2022 two years imprisonment for first degree assault.<\/p>\n
Lathrop introduced an amendment that replaced the original provisions of the bill and instead would provide enhanced penalties for assault on health care professionals on duty at a hospital or a health clinic. A person convicted of such an assault would be guilty of a felony.<\/p>\n
Lathrop said that requiring mandatory prison sentences for assaults raised some concerns on general file that the bill would override judges\u2019 sentencing discretion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a better approach to dealing with assaults on health care professionals,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The amendment was adopted 39-0 and the bill advanced from select file on a voice vote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Senators advanced a bill Feb. 15 that would enhance penalties for assaulting health care professionals. Under the original provisions of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[93],"class_list":["post-6386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-steve-lathrop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6386"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6388,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6386\/revisions\/6388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}