House Judiciary Committee gives favorable reports to several criminal-justice bills, including parental-consent vaccination measure

The Alabama House Judiciary Committee on an abbreviated agenda voted to give favorable reports to several criminal-justice bills, advancing measures on parental consent for vaccinations, emergency child-removal authority, prosecutorial immunity, a 30/10 sentencing split and a statute aimed at permitting capital punishment in some child sexual-abuse cases.

Representative Brown, who presented House Bill 2, said the bill would change current practice in Alabama by requiring parental consent for vaccination of minors; he told the committee, "right now in Alabama, the age of medical consent is 14," and said HB 2 "just says that parents have to give consent for being vaccinated." The committee approved a motion for a favorable report on HB 2 without recorded opposition during the session.

The committee also advanced House Bill 54, a bill prompted by a Mobile County domestic-relations incident in which, committee members said, a judge did not feel he had jurisdiction to order removal of a child; Representative Simpson described the aftermath in which the mother later killed herself and two children. Simpson said HB 54 would allow a judge hearing a related matter to create jurisdiction for an emergency ex parte order to remove a child and to refer…