Gov. Bill Lee (R) last week signed into law a bill that will require some accused domestic abusers to wear GPS monitors if they are granted bail.
SB 1972, also known as the “The Debbie and Marie Domestic Violence Protection Act,” will take effect on July 1.
According to the bill, the courts can now order defendants to wear GPS monitoring systems if they are accused of “stalking, aggravated stalking, or especially aggravated stalking, any criminal offense against a person, in which the alleged victim of the offense is a domestic abuse victim, sexual assault victim, or stalking victim, or is in violation of an order of protection…”
In addition, courts will provide the victim with a mobile phone application that can track the whereabouts of the alleged abuser at all times, and will alert them if the alleged abuser is nearby.
In the case of aggravated assault, the court must mandate GPS monitoring for the alleged offender unless that person “no longer poses a threat to the alleged victim or public safety and [the court] makes such a finding in a written order.”
The bill is named for Debbie Sisco and Marie Varsos, who were killed in a 2021 murder-suicide by Marie’s estranged husband Shaun Varsos, who was out on bail for strangling Marie at the time of the crime.
During the spring legislative session, the General Assembly worked on tackling the issue of domestic violence.
One bill, which was tabled before the end of the session, would have created a domestic abuser registry to be maintained by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).
HB 2898, which was a bipartisan bill, was unofficially titled “Savanna’s Law,” named for Robertson County Sheriff’s Deputy Savanna Puckett, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend James Conn on January 23, 2022.
Conn had been involved in three other domestic disputes between 2019 and the time he killed Puckett.
He eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on X/Twitter.
Photo “Ankle Bracelet” by Adirach Toumlamoon. CC BY 4.0.
