Weekly News Update: Week of October 19th

October 26, 2009 |
Valor

Gov. Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation to Restore Funding to State’s Domestic Violence Shelters
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed SBX3 13 by Senator Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose) to restore $16.3 million of state funding to support California domestic violence shelters.
“I want to congratulate the many groups that put victims first and came together to find this creative solution that will keep domestic violence shelters throughout the state open,” said Governor Schwarzenegger.
CDCR Asks Crime Victims to Register for New Automated Database to Keep them Better Informed about their Offenders
SACRAMENTO – In its effort to keep crime victims informed, the Office of Victim and Survivor Rights with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) is asking crime victims to register for a new automated system that will soon provide real-time information about the custody status of their offenders. The new system was made possible by a federal grant.
Rape Victim’s Choice: Risk AIDS or Health Insurance?
By Danielle Ivory
Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month’s worth of anti-AIDS medicine.
Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.
Court rejects governor’s plan to solve prison overcrowding
Schwarzenegger’s plan to solve California’s prison overcrowding crisis, giving the state three weeks to devise an alternative or risk an order that seizes control of how more than 40,000 inmates are released from the prison system over the next two years.
After 20 years, Minnesota still wonders, Where’s Jacob?
On Oct. 22, 1989, Jacob Wetterling vanished – kidnapped in rural St. Joseph, Minn. Twenty years later, his disappearance endures as one of the state’s greatest criminal mysteries. But his family has never given up hope that, one day, he will come home.
U.S. formally asks for Polanski extradition
(CNN) — The United States has formally asked Switzerland to extradite film director Roman Polanski, Swiss authorities said Friday.
The Academy Award-winning director was arrested in Switzerland last month on a U.S. arrest warrant stemming from a 1977 sex case involving a 13-year-old girl. He is fighting extradition.
Opinion

Vetoing Justice for Rape Victims
by Sarah Tofte
Over the weekend, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California vetoed legislation that would have made California the first state in the nation to collect comprehensive data on the physical evidence collected from rape victims that is sitting in police storage facilities.
The bill, AB 1017, which sailed through both houses of the state legislature, had been hailed by advocates as model legislation and an important first step in reckoning with the huge backlog in the United States. But Governor Schwarzenegger, citing the time and money it would take law enforcement agencies to collect the data, decided to oppose a law that would help bring justice to rape victims.