ENGROSSED
Senate Bill No. 743
(By Senators Kessler, Dempsey, Fanning, Foster, Hunter, Jenkins,
Minard, White, Barnes, Caruth, Lanham, McKenzie and Weeks)
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[Originating in the Committee on the Judiciary;
reported March 24, 2005.]
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A BILL to amend and reenact §62-2-12 of the Code of West Virginia,
1931, as amended, relating to allowing preindictment detainees
an opportunity for bail reduction at change in term of court.
Be it enacted by the Legislature of West Virginia:
That §62-2-12 of the Code of West Virginia, 1931, as amended,
to read as follows:
ARTICLE 2. PRESENTMENTS AND INDICTMENTS.
§62-2-12. Discharge of imprisoned person upon failure to indict
within certain time; person not indicted by reason of
insanity; show cause requirement regard bond.
(a) A person in jail, on a criminal charge, shall be
discharged from imprisonment if he be not indicted before the end
of the second term of the court, at which he
or she is held to
answer, unless it appear to the court that material witnesses for
the state have been enticed or kept away, or are prevented from
attendance by sickness or inevitable accident, and except also
that, when a person in jail, on a charge of having committed an
indictable offense, is not indicted by reason of his
or her insanity at the time of committing the act, the grand jury shall
certify that fact to the court; whereupon the court may order him
or her to be sent to a state hospital for the insane, or to be
discharged.
(b) Every person held in jail on a criminal charge awaiting
presentation of his or her case to the grand jury shall be entitled
upon his or her request to a hearing upon the beginning of a new
term of court at which the state must show cause why the defendant
should not be released upon a personal recognizance bond or on bond
with home incarceration being a condition thereof.