1402 RES CITY COUNCIL IS AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN PRESERVATION OF ORDERLY SOCIETY

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R ESOLUTION NO. 1402 WHEREAS, the City Council of the City of Paris is and has always been interested in the preservation of an orderly society governed by reasonable and adequate laws; and, WHIIZEAS, the City of Pazis is interested in the furtherance of this philosophy through improvement and change of laws, where such change has been studied and approved by knowledgeable per- sons actively engaged in the area of said change; and, WHEREAS, it has been brought to the attention of the City Council of the City of Paris that there is proposed before the 62nd Legislative Session of the State of Texas sweeping changes in the Texas Criminal Law in the form of a proposed Penal Code, which would establish the following: 1. A minimum penalty of one (1) year in the peni- tentiary for Murder, Rape and Robbery; 2. The minimum penalty for any felony may be a fine without penitentiary sentence; 3. The fine for any felony may be as little as $1.00 and shall not exceed $5,000.00; 4. The maximum sentence for most of the serious crimes would be substantially reduced; 5. That a person may only be punished for one crime for all offenses committed during a criminal episode, regardless how many are committed; 6. That a person found to be an habitual criminal could be sentenced to as little as one (1) year nor more than thirty (30) years, vice life, as provided in the present law; and 7. The section dealing with the crime of statutory rape, consentual fondling of a child and con- sentual indecent exposure to a child, which re- quires the age of the victim to be fifteen (15) years or under, provides for an affirmative defense to prosecution for the conduct that the defendant believed the child -to be sixteen (16) years of age or older, i.e. mistaken belief as to age; and, WHEREAS, our Nation, State and City are and have been for some time experiencing an every increasing crime rate, which in- dicates the need for increasing rather than decreasing penalties for crimes to act as a deterrent to the commission of such crimes; and, WHEREAS, the proposed Penal Code has not been available for examination and study by interested persons and bodies for more than twenty (20) days and that, therefore, such persons and bodies have not had sufficient time to prepare objections or recommendations or to submit the same to their members fox endorsement; and,