Call your Senator and ask them to pass HB 1169 as it passed out of the Law and Justice Committee and to oppose any amendment to HB 1169 that strips out retroactivity.
When a government recognizes that a criminal sentencing law is excessive, unfair, and disproportionately harms BIPOC communities, it has two equally important responsibilities: it must change the law to fix those sentences going forward, and it must address the harms already done. People serving these excessive, unfair, and racist sentences must have a chance at being resentenced.
This is the challenge today in Olympia. HB 1169 would help to remove some mandatory sentencing enhancements that have lengthened already excessively long sentences, but an amendment now threatens to make it prospective only, which means it would strip the ability of people to seek resentencing.
The legislature is right to fix these harmful sentencing enhancements. But it shouldn’t close its eyes to the harms already done.
Call your Senator today and tell them to keep HB 1169 retroactive.
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