One of the issues that I worked on this year was addressing domestic abuse in the wake of Brooke Koch’s death and what could be done to prevent future domestic abuse deaths. With that in mind, I introduced LB1009 to create a domestic abuse death review team. LB1009 was eventually amended into LB741. Last week I was interviewed by CSG Midwest (The Council of State Governments is an association of state officials) about domestic violence and LB741, and here are snippets from the report:

Nebraska is taking a deeper dive into domestic violence-related deaths to understand and prevent them

When he first began working on a bill to create an administrative body to examine domestic abuse-related deaths, Sen. Tom Brandt says, Nebraska was one of nine states that did not have such a review team in place. The absence of one made it more difficult to identify patterns of behavior and implement preventive measures.

Working with victims’ families, advocacy groups and others, Brandt developed the framework for a State Domestic Abuse Death Review Team. Run out of the attorney general’s office, the team would investigate contributing factors to these deaths and provide recommendations for change. Members would be privy to a large number of records associated with individual cases, including, when applicable, information from the state prisons.

Brandt initially thought his bill would only get a hearing, and not pass, as it was getting late into the Unicameral’s 2022 session. However, during that hearing, another senator, Wendy DeBoer, asked to include the measure in her own omnibus priority bill, LB 741. “That happens like zero times — that somebody asks to include somebody else’s bill,” Brandt says.

LB 741 passed unanimously and was signed into law in April. The result: Brandt’s vision for a Domestic Abuse Death Review Team is now a reality.

Read the entire article here.