1-1 By: Place (Senate Sponsor - Whitmire) H.B. No. 312
1-2 (In the Senate - Received from the House March 17, 1997;
1-3 March 18, 1997, read first time and referred to Committee on
1-4 Criminal Justice; May 15, 1997, reported favorably by the following
1-5 vote: Yeas 7, Nays 0; May 15, 1997, sent to printer.)
1-6 A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
1-7 AN ACT
1-8 relating to the offense of tampering with a witness.
1-9 BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
1-10 SECTION 1. Section 36.05(a), Penal Code, is amended to read
1-11 as follows:
1-12 (a) A person commits an offense if, with intent to influence
1-13 the witness, he offers, confers, or agrees to confer any benefit on
1-14 a witness or prospective witness in an official proceeding or
1-15 coerces a witness or prospective witness in an official proceeding:
1-16 (1) to testify falsely;
1-17 (2) to withhold any testimony, information, document,
1-18 or thing;
1-19 (3) to elude legal process summoning him to testify or
1-20 supply evidence;
1-21 (4) to absent himself from an official proceeding to
1-22 which he has been legally summoned; or
1-23 (5) to abstain from, discontinue, or delay the
1-24 prosecution of another [witness].
1-25 SECTION 2. (a) The change in law made by this Act applies
1-26 only to an offense committed on or after the effective date of this
1-27 Act. For purposes of this section, an offense is committed before
1-28 the effective date of this Act if any element of the offense occurs
1-29 before that date.
1-30 (b) An offense committed before the effective date of this
1-31 Act is covered by the law in effect when the offense was committed,
1-32 and the former law is continued in effect for that purpose.
1-33 SECTION 3. This Act takes effect September 1, 1997.
1-34 SECTION 4. The importance of this legislation and the
1-35 crowded condition of the calendars in both houses create an
1-36 emergency and an imperative public necessity that the
1-37 constitutional rule requiring bills to be read on three several
1-38 days in each house be suspended, and this rule is hereby suspended.
1-39 * * * * *