Bill passes restricting crime art profits

MONTGOMERY -- The state House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill requiring money collected by prisoners from their crimes to go to restitution, victims' compensation and fines.

The legislation, which passed 91-0, would not prohibit a criminal from selling art related to their crime, but would send any money generated to victims of crime or their families. The bill would allow a county attorney or the attorney general to petition the court to order the defendant to forfeit sales proceeds.

"The problem is the perception out there that a person gets glorification from a crime they've committed and makes a victim's family suffer over and over again," said state Rep. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, the sponsor of the bill.

The bill came out of advertised sales by Alabama death row inmates Daniel Siebert and Jack Trawick. Trawick, convicted of murdering two women in Birmingham in 1992, attracted national attention when he published writings on an Internet site giving details of the murders and providing advice on rape and murder.

Siebert was convicted of strangling his hearing-impaired girlfriend and her two sons, aged 4 and 5, in 1986. Both men are being held at Holman Correctional Facility in Escambia County and were selling sketches of murder and beheadings through an Internet site. Siebert and Trawick are on death row at the prison, located in southwest Escambia County.

Under the proposed law, the Alabama Board of Adjustment would hold the forfeited payments in an escrow account for the victims or their families. The bill includes penalties for failure to pay the money to the board; any entity that failed to pay would be charged with a Class C felony.

The bill now moves to the Senate.

The legislation requires profits derived from a crime to first pay restitution, then any civil actions against a defendant and then any remaining fines. The bill initially contained language that would have prohibited those indicted of a crime from collecting money from art depicting it, but an amendment sponsored by state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, took the language out.

Holmes said he had been indicted 27 times related to civil rights activities.

"They indicted Martin Luther King 15 or 20 times," he said. "An indictment don't mean nothing."

Ward supported the amendment and later thanked Holmes for bringing it to his attention.

"It never was intended to cover indicted people," Ward said.

State Rep. Marc Keahey, D-Grove Hill, introduced a bill that would have made it a crime to sell art or artistic expressions related to the artist's crime or victims. Keahey said after the vote Wednesday that he was supporting Ward's bill. Keahey's bill remains in the House Judiciary Committee.

"Mine still might come up, but (the bills) are pretty close to the same thing," he said.