Lisa’s Law signed by Governor Ivey, is a bill recently passed in the Alabama legislature that gives victims of crime and their families the ability to prevent a convicted perpetrator from profiting off their crime through books, movies, or other entertainment.
The bill, named “Lisa’s Law” is named for Lisa Ann Millican, a 13-year-old girl who was tortured and killed in DeKalb County, Alabama in 1982. The bill passed and was signed into law by Governor Kay Ivey on Monday, June 17, 2019.
The sponsor of the bill, Representative Proncey Robertson (R-Moulton) said Lisa’s family has been trying to have a bill like this passed for years.
“Some of those crimes get sensationalized, and it creates an opportunity for folks to profit from the stories of those crimes,” Robertson said. “They keep seeing the crime reenacted over and over again. Sometimes, telling the story over and over incorrectly because [the writer] is using the person who committed the crime’s storytelling.”
Robertson said this bill doesn’t apply to news stories about the crimes, but rather to producers or writers who give proceeds from work or pay the convicted criminal for information about the crime.
The bill would require the creator, producer, or writer of any book, TV show or documentary about the crime to notify the attorney general of any profits from that work of $5,000 or more. The victim or the victim’s family would then be notified and have five years to file a civil case to recover restitution, money damages, or both, from the convicted individual who committed the crime or the individual’s representative.
The law only applies to “crimes of moral turpitude,” as defined by Alabama law.
Cassie Millican, Lisa’s sister-in-law, said, “This law isn’t just about Lisa, it’s about the other families who may be re-traumatized through reenactments of their loved one’s death.”
Millican and other family members attended judiciary hearings and voting on the house floor so they could witness the bill’s passage.
“I just hope this law brings some peace to other families so that they won’t have to go through what we did,” she said.
When Lisa was a little girl, she would sign her letters to her mother with the phrase “too good to be forgotten,” Millican said. “And now Lisa is a voice for thousands of others. She gets to live on through this.”
The family is very proud that Lisa’s Law signed by Governor Ivey.