The Senate Public Affairs Committee on Tuesday unanimously approved the bill, which would make it a crime to use a biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear weapon in the state.
Mark Rowley, director of hazardous materials and radiation protection for New Mexico State Police, said it’s likely that if the state faces the threat of a WMD or such a weapon is released, “the federal government will take the lead.” However, he said, there are reasons for New Mexico to have its own law. “There might be instances where federal government doesn’t take the case, maybe because it is not a large enough incident,” he said.
Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, sponsor of Senate Bill 180, said before Tuesday’s committee hearing that New Mexico does have its own laws that “prohibit the use of explosives, but that’s it. We have no state law that prohibits chemical weapons like nerve gas, nuclear weapons, radiological agents like Americium in smoke detectors or biological weapons, such as anthrax.”
Rodriquez’s bill exempts weapons authorized by the federal government, such as those built at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The Public Affairs Committee approved a substitute bill that would make Rodriguez’s proposal part of the existing state explosives law. The bill would make it a first-degree felony to kill a person with a WMD and a second-degree felony to cause great bodily harm with one.
Weapons of mass destruction can range from a communicable virus purposefully unleashed on a community to a bomb made of common chemicals — like the ones used by Timothy McVeigh to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995 in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
The bill also would make it a crime to produce, manufacture, develop or transfer a weapon of mass destruction, including rapidly developing technology like genetic engineering to produce new pathogens. Federal, state and local governments have recognized the evolving threat from a wide variety of WMDs.
Several state agencies weighed in on Rodriguez’s bill prior to Tuesday’s committee hearing, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Attorney General’s Office and the Administrative Office of the Courts.
The Attorney General’s Office said most state-level attorneys would lack the security clearance levels needed to enforce the law in state courts. But the Administrative Office of the District Attorneys said the bill would give the state a way to prosecute crimes it cannot prosecute under current law and crimes in which the federal courts lack jurisdiction.
Lawmakers will consider a mirror bill, HB 195, sponsored by retired police officer Rep. Bill Rehm, R-Albuquerque, on Thursday in the Safety and Civil Affairs Committee.
©2015 The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, N.M.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
