| Senator Gladden,
Nature has gotten in the way today of our being able to help with the research you requested on the substitute motion debate.
For the future, you might suggest to Legislative reference that they place the rules of the Senate on line, as Montana has. We will be placing an older version on line as soon as weather permits. I hope to have it up by Friday in our on-line reference section (mdgovpubs.net).
Under U. S. Senate rules and those of Montana, any legislator can offer a substitute motion for an unfavorable report on a bill from Committee (as I understand the rules) which means that your motion to adopt the bill rejected by committee would take precedence over the motion to adopt the committee report rejecting the bill. The form your motion takes is something I assume legislative reference has told you. I suspect the Senate Secretary or his office has the institutional memory with regard to how frequently the motion has been used and in what cases, but I do not have a quick answer to the question, as it is buried in the journals and proceedings of the Senate which are not yet on line.
I was hoping to be able to send on to you the Legislative Council's 1962 Ralph G. Murdy study and hearings (you may already have it). That was the basis of Governor Agnew's support of the abolition of the death penalty, and the source of Senator Mooney's amendment which the Committee rejected (the use of the death penalty only in the case of the murder of a prison guard). I assume Legislative Reference has a copy of the Murdy study and could get it to you today, if you do not already have it.
Hopefully we will be back in business tomorrow.
Ed Papenfuse |
