Virginia House Bill 1584 (Prior Session Legislation)

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Spectrum: Partisan Bill (Democrat 1-0)
Status: Introduced on January 6 2023 - 25% progression, died in committee
Action: 2023-02-07 - Left in Courts of Justice
Pending: House Courts of Justice Committee
Text: Latest bill text (Prefiled) [HTML]

Storage, preservation, and retention of biological evidence Storage, preservation, and retention of biological evidence in felony cases. Requires any governmental entity that possesses any biological evidence, defined in the bill, collected or obtained during an investigation of a felony case to ensure the storage, preservation, and retention of such biological evidence or representative samples for such period of time that (i) the defendant remains incarcerated or under any registration or supervision requirement in connection with the felony conviction or (ii) until the expiration of the statute of limitations for the alleged offense has lapsed in such case where a felony remains unsolved or no charges have been filed. The bill requires biological evidence to be preserved in a condition that is suitable for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing and analysis, and such evidence shall be made available for DNA testing. The bill requires the court, upon motion by the defendant, to order the Department of Forensic Science to submit an inventory of the biological evidence that has been preserved in the connection with the defendant's case, a copy of which shall be provided to the defendant. The bill requires the chief evidence custodian of a governmental entity to submit an affidavit if such government entity cannot locate biological evidence that it is required to preserve, under penalty of perjury, that describes the biological evidence that cannot be located and details the efforts made to locate such evidence. The bill provides remedies the court may order if it finds that biological evidence has not been properly preserved, including (i) granting a new trial; (ii) dismissing the charges; (iii) reducing the sentence; (iv) vacating the defendant's conviction; or (v) entering a finding that a presumption exists that the evidence would have been exculpatory to the defendant because the biological evidence has not been preserved properly.

Biological evidence; storage, preservation, and retention of evidence in felony cases.

Del. Richard Sullivan [D]

2023-01-20 - House - House: Subcommittee recommends passing by indefinitely (5-Y 3-N) (Y: 5 N: 3 NV: 0 Abs: 0) [PASS]

Date	Chamber	Action
2023-02-07	House	Left in Courts of Justice
2023-01-20	House	Subcommittee recommends passing by indefinitely (5-Y 3-N)
2023-01-17	House	Assigned Courts sub: Subcommittee #1
2023-01-06	House	Referred to Committee for Courts of Justice
2023-01-06	House	Prefiled and ordered printed; offered 01/11/23 23101673D

Chapter	Article	Section	Citation Type	Statute Text
19	2	270.4:1	(n/a)	See Bill Text

Type	Source
Summary	https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?231+sum+HB1584
Text	https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?231+ful+HB1584+hil
Amendment	https://committees.lis.virginia.gov/pdfs/drafts/23105019A.pdf
Roll Call	https://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?231+vot+H0801V0107+HB1584