House adopts amendment to require prosecutor review before recalling decade‑old municipal misdemeanor warrants

The Alabama House took up Senate Bill 82, a criminal-procedure bill that grew out of a single case and would have allowed certain misdemeanors to be removed from records after a 10-year period. Lawmakers adopted a floor amendment that requires the prosecuting attorney (often a city attorney) to review outstanding warrants alongside a city judge before an order recalling a warrant may be entered; the amendment passed 70–3.

Representative Ron Hill (chairman identified on the floor as Judge Hill in remarks) explained the amendment: "What this amendment does is it allows the district attorney or the prosecuting attorney and the city judge to look through the these warrants to determine if it's gonna be recalled and then the judge to actually enter the order recalling the warrant." Hill and other supporters called the change a safeguard to ensure the judge has prosecutorial input before recalling long‑standing warrants.

Opponents — notably municipal judges and representatives from small cities — argued the underlying bill would impose significant administrative burdens on small municipal courts with limited staff and paper records. Representative Hall, a former municipal court judge, told the House: "This bill is an awful bill. The effect that it's gonna have on our little towns and our little cities is horrible." She and others said clerks in many small city courts would be forced to review thousands of paper files to locate old warrants and that the state does not currently have a unified electronic reporting system for municipal courts.

Background and amendment history summarized from floor remarks: - Sponsor and origin: Members said the underlying proposal was prompted by a specific case in Morgan County and that the original bill would have allowed certain misdemeanors (excluding violent offenses and specified sex‑offender categories) to be dropped after 10 years. - Earlier amendments: Representative Faulkner withdrew an earlier amendment; Judge Hill brought a substitute that adds prosecutorial review and narrows which courts are involved (city courts rather than circuit courts). - Floor vote on the amendment: The adopted amendment (described above) was recorded as passing 70 ayes, 3 nays.

Municipal officials and small-city representatives urged the body to postpone final adoption and instead develop a centralized reporting or integration solution (for example, integrating city courts into an electronic reporting system) to avoid imposing manual record searches on under‑resourced clerks. Judge Hill said the amendment "does not alleviate" the clerks’ workload but creates a process with prosecutorial input that the judge can consider.

Final passage was moved on the floor after amendment adoption; the provided transcript includes the motion for final passage but does not show a recorded final passage tally in the excerpt. The transcript therefore documents amendment adoption (70–3) and the substantive debate, and it records that a motion for final passage as amended was made but does not include the final roll‑call result in the captured excerpt.