(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa House has voted to ban warrant resolution clinics after a participant in a Polk County clinic was charged a week later with murder. Tawnya Swanson — the mother of Ashley Marie Hall, the 36-year-old murder victim — was at the statehouse to watch the debate.
“She’s looking down on us now and she’s thankful that we’re all here to make sure this doesn’t happen again to another family,” Swanson said. Republican Representative Steven Holt, of Denison, says the woman accused of shooting Hall to death is a career criminal with a violent background who should never have been able to get her arrest warrant for a parole violation set aside.
“Some things transcend politics. This should be one of them,” Holt said. “…This is about three girls who lost their mother, a lost daughter, a life taken way too soon and whether or not laws should be tightened.” Other lawmakers also criticized the Polk County Attorney’s office for failing to ensure judges at the clinic had access to the criminal records of those who were there to get an arrest warrant set aside.
Representative Larry McBurney, a Democrat from Urbandale, says there are really serious questions about how the warrant resolution clinic was handled, but legislators should set clear standards for the process rather than ban it. “But eliminating an entire approach because it was mishandled in one instance is not a targeted solution,” McBurney said. “It is an over-correction.”
Swanson, the mother of the murder victim, says the people who ran the clinic didn’t do the right thing. “They should have done more footwork and my grandkids might still have their mom,” Swanson said, “and I might still have my daughter.” The murder victim’s father spoke to reporters last week, on the day the bill was being considered in a House committee.
Ralph Hall said his daughter’s murder was very, very tragic, but Hall said he doesn’t feel the crime is directly connected to the warrant resolution clinic. The bill to ban warrant resolution clinics passed the House on a 71-to-20 vote and goes to the Senate for review.
