By Brown                                                S.B. No. 38
       74R1591 GWK-D
                                 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
    1-1                                AN ACT
    1-2  relating to individuals permitted to attend the execution of a
    1-3  capital felon.
    1-4        BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
    1-5        SECTION 1.  Article 43.20, Code of Criminal Procedure, is
    1-6  amended to read as follows:
    1-7        Art. 43.20.  PRESENT AT EXECUTION.  The following persons may
    1-8  be present at the execution:  the executioner, and such persons as
    1-9  may be necessary to assist him in conducting the execution,<;> the
   1-10  members of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice <Board of Directors
   1-11  of the Department of Corrections>, two physicians, including the
   1-12  prison physician, the spiritual advisor of the condemned, the
   1-13  chaplains of the institutional division of the Texas Department of
   1-14  Criminal Justice <Department of Corrections>, the county judge and
   1-15  sheriff of the county in which the unit of the institutional
   1-16  division <Department of Corrections> is situated, <and> any of the
   1-17  relatives or friends of the condemned person that he may request,
   1-18  not exceeding five in number, and close relatives of the deceased
   1-19  victim, as defined by Article 56.01, shall be admitted.  No convict
   1-20  shall be permitted by the prison authorities to witness the
   1-21  execution.
   1-22        SECTION 2.  The importance of this legislation and the
   1-23  crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
   1-24  emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
    2-1  constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
    2-2  days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended,
    2-3  and that this Act take effect and be in force from and after its
    2-4  passage, and it is so enacted.