The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday voted to give a do-pass recommendation to legislation that would assess a $100 fee against a defendant when digital forensics is used in a case and deposit the money into a new Internet Crime Investigation Fund, lawmakers said at a committee hearing.

Supporters said the measure is intended to help state and local law enforcement afford specialized digital-forensics software and hardware that are increasingly necessary for investigations, especially those involving child exploitation.

Steve Harstead, a chief agent with the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, told the committee that the cost of extracting and unlocking data from phones and other devices has risen sharply. "The cost becomes a very, very big problem," Harstead said, saying the bill is written as a $100 fee "per defendant" when digital forensics was used in the case. He described the fee as mandatory for judges under the bill's current language and said the revenues would be deposited to the attorney general's office but distributed to local departments as well as to BCI for equipment, training and public-education efforts.

Harstead said the bill's language is modeled in part on statutes in other states and noted the bill would not charge per device or per charge. "We're only gonna charge $100 fee per case is what it boils down to, and per defendant was the option here," he told the committee.

Committee members questioned whether the mandatory "shall" language removes judicial discretion to waive the fee for indigent defendants. Harstead answered that, as written, judges would not have authority to waive the fee. Senator Brownberger said he supported the bill but recorded concern on the record about limiting judicial discretion.

After testimony and questions, Senator Lueck moved a do-pass recommendation; the motion was seconded and the committee recorded the motion as carried.

The bill sponsor and BCI emphasized the fee is intended to fund recurring costs for cell-phone extraction and unlocking tools, training, and outreach. Harstead told the committee the bureau currently spends about $500,000 a year on cell-phone unlocking and extraction tools for BCI and the six other agencies it supports. He also acknowledged the committee lacked a precise statewide count of how many cases use digital forensics because that statistic is not consistently tracked by courts or agencies.

A motion for a do-pass recommendation carried on the committee record; the committee recorded vocal roll call support and the chair announced the motion carried.