Bill advances that would expand list of crimes eligible for enhanced penalties for traveling criminals

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 2/10/23-Rep. John Snyder, R-Stuart, urges the House to pass the migrant relocation bill, Friday at the Capitol in Tallahassee. COLIN HACKLEY PHOTO

The Grinch is real, Rep. John Snyder told lawmakers, and apparently the Stuart Republican believes he’s got more on his mind than ruining Christmas.

Snyder’s bill (HB 531) that the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee advanced at its first committee stop would expand the crimes eligible for enhanced penalties if the perpetrator traveled across county lines to commit them. Right now, burglary is the only crime that gets an enhanced charge for traveling across county lines to do the deed.

Snyder’s legislation follows two other laws that he proposed and had signed into law to bolster punishment against burglars called “traveling criminals.”

If it clears subsequent hurdles, this law will enhance charges against those who traveled to commit grand theft and “forcible crimes.” Burglary is on that list of crimes. So is treason, murder, manslaughter, sexual battery, carjacking, home-invasion robbery, kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, aggravated stalking, aircraft piracy, unlawful throwing, placing, or discharging of a destructive device or bomb, and any other felony which involves the use or threat of physical force or violence against any individual, state statutes say.

“What we’re doing in this bill is expanding grand theft and forcible felonies into our traveling criminal statutes to give law enforcement and prosecutors the ability that if they could prove that that individual left their county of residence with the sole intention to go commit that crime, it is eligible for a one degree penalty enhancement,” Snyder said.

Rep. Mike Gottlieb of Davie was among the Democrats objecting, however. He argued that a crime of opportunity, say, taking a bike worth less than $750 off someone’s porch, could turn into 15 years in prison.

“There’s a very good likelihood that someone … is going to go to prison, potentially as a first-time offender because there’s no safeguards in the bill to prohibit it from applying to a first-time offender,” Gottlieb said.

But Rep. Webster Barnaby said that he was in full support of the bill and recalled when his home was broken into.

“We will make sure that the Grinch doesn’t visit your house,” the Deltona Republican said.

Republican Sen. Gayle Harrell has filed an identical bill (SB 538), awaiting its first committee hearing.