Reality Check: Local leaders pushing for Aniah's Law to get passed

MOBILE, Ala (WPMI) — Local leaders are pushing for Aniah's Law to be passed. The law is named after 19-year-old Aniah Blanchard. She was kidnapped at an auburn gas station and killed back in 2019. Her alleged killer, Ibraheem Yazeed, was charged with kidnapping and was out on bond prior to Aniah’s murder. Mobile Public Safety Director, Lawrence Battiste, is saying this law is a necessity.

Mobile has seen a trend of violent offenders in jail one minute then out the next, recommitting violent crime.

"We need Aniah’s Law. We need the people in our community not just here in the City of Mobile, but across the state of Alabama to get out to the polls and vote," says Battiste.

But it's not always so easy to keep these offenders off the streets. The Alabama constitution, written back in 1901, allows everyone the right to bail- except for people charged with capital murder.

"People are entitled to bond, but there are those instances where a person has shown propensity to continue their either violent or negative behavior and, in those situations, we need to have at our disposal the ability to hold them accountable by keeping them in jail," he says.

20-year-old Brandon Ely was arrested and released on bond for a murder charge in April. Now, Ely was put back in Metro Jail on the September 24th after allegedly opening fire into an occupied dwelling on Greenwood Avenue. In this case, a judge denied his bond, but that's not always the norm. If Aniah’s Law gets passed, the constitution will be ratified. In turn allowing judges to deny bond to people charged with things like robbery, assault, and kidnapping. I asked director Battiste if he's worried about people finding loopholes in Aniah’s Law if it passes by claiming to be mentally ill.

"Even under those circumstances, if they're not in jail they need to be held in a mental health facility so that we get whatever their condition under control and even after we've done that we need to look at if they need to be detained in jail," he says.

Battiste tells me if this law passes, law enforcement will have a responsibility to do everything it can to present probable cause to judges and make sure violent offenders stay off the street.