The Missouri legislature is close to officially passing a measure to outlaw the practice of “revenge porn”.
Missouri Senate dais
A bill that cleared the House in late February has been modified and approved by the Senate which means it’ll need one more vote in the House.
It would create a felony crime for distributing intimate images of another individual when a reasonable person would understand that the image was private.
Senator Gary Romine, R-Farmington, the sponsor of the legislation in the upper chamber, says it’ll prohibit a person from using such images to harm another individual when a relationship ends.
“What this bill is about is to make sure that we have a path forward, that we have a law in the statue that provides the prosecutors an opportunity to protect the victim, (protects) those that have had photographs taken of them while in intimate personal relationship, and then have fallen apart and (have had those picture) used against them at a later date,” said Romine.
The bill was amended in a Senate committee to hold internet service providers liable if they don’t remove revenge porn images within five days of being notified of them.
The measure also creates a felony offense for threatening to distribute nonconsensual private sexual images.
That provision was added on the House floor in late February, three days before Republican Governor Eric Greitens was indicted on what has turned out to be the first of two felony charges.
In that charge, he’s accused of taking a non-consensual photo of a partially nude woman and threatening to distribute it if she spoke about their encounter.
The bill’s sponsor at the time, Representative Jim Neely, R-Cameron, said there was no connection between Greitens’ alleged activity and the new addition to the measure.
Under the legislation, distributing the images would carry a penalty of up to seven years in prison while making a threat to do so would carry a milder sentence of up to four years.
The bill was also successfully amended on the Senate floor by Democrat Jill Schupp of Creve Coeur to include an emergency clause, which means that if it passes the legislature it would take effect as soon as the governor signs it. It would also become law on August 28th if the governor declines to veto or sign it.
Leaders in the Senate and House who sign bills before they are sent to the governor have indicated they could hold off until the last possible date, May 30th, to do so this year.
Members of both parties have said they hope the legal and legislative challenges in front of the embattled governor will be resolved before then.
Greitens’ criminal trial involving the encounter with the woman starts next Monday. Meanwhile, lawmakers plan to convene a special session to consider impeachment of Greitens immediately following the end of the current session which is the following Friday, May 18th.
Further complicating the course of events is the possibility that the revenge porn bill could impact the future of Governor Greitens as a public official, given his legal troubles.
Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia have outlawed revenge porn. The current bill in the legislature marks at least the fourth year Missouri lawmakers have pushed to follow suit.
The measure passed the House by a 149-1 margin in its first go-around there this year and was approved by a unanimous 33-0 count Wednesday in the Senate.
During Wednesday’s floor debate, Republican Senator Bob Onder of Lake St. Louis said he was dismayed that the Show-Me State has failed thus far to establish its own revenge porn law. “It’s really kind of startling to learn that that’s not against the law right now in the state of Missouri,” said Onder.
