DES MOINES (AP) — A legislative panel on Wednesday rejected a proposal requiring parents to report a child going missing within 24 hours, making Iowa the latest state to have a so-called Caylee's Law stall.
Lawmakers on the panel opposed the measure out of concern it was too broad. It would, in effect, require parents to know whether their children were safe at all times.
At least 17 states have introduced similar bills in response to the Casey Anthony case. The Florida woman was charged and ultimately acquitted of murder in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Anthony didn't report her daughter missing for a month, and it took six months before the child's body was found in woods near her grandparents' home in Orlando.
Iowa Rep. Julian Garrett said he's heard from constituents outraged over Anthony's acquittal.
"They saw what they thought was an injustice. We need to have some response," said Garrett, a Republican from Indianola.
The Iowa bill led Marty Ryan, a lobbyist for the state's chapter of the Sacramento, Calif.-based Justice Reform Coalition, to speculate that the measure would require that if children were sent to summer camp, their parents would need to call and check on them every day.
Rep. Jeff Kaufmann, who co-sponsored the Iowa bill, acknowledged the measure needs more work. "We clearly are moving too fast on this," said Kaufmann, R-Wilton.
By not approving the bill, the panel made it likely the proposal wouldn't meet a legislative deadline and will be dropped for this session.
Rich Williams, a policy associate with the National Conference of State Legislature's Criminal Justice Program, said New Jersey is the only state of those 17 considering measures to have approved a law. Signed last month by Gov. Chris Christie, the New Jersey measure made it a crime not to report a child younger than 13 as missing within 24 hours.
Besides New Jersey and Iowa, states that have explored the matter include Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee and Wyoming.
In Iowa, the Attorney General's Office has opposed the bill, arguing that current law already gives police and prosecutors the ability to charge parents who don't report a missing child, said Eric Tabor, a State Justice Department spokesman.
Rep. Mary Wolfe, a Democrat from Clinton, also criticized the Iowa measure, saying it was a wrongheaded reaction to the Anthony case. The lesson from that case was not that penalties should be enhanced for not reporting a missing child, but that prosecutors needed to do a better job of building their cases, she said.
"They didn't have the evidence in that case," Wolfe said of the Anthony case.
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