If Missouri lawmakers agree with a Missouri Bar subcommittee's last four years of work, the state's criminal code will be rewritten during the next year or two.
The Bar's Board of Directors OKed the proposal Friday, with no negative votes.
"Missouri's criminal code came into existence about 30 years ago - at that point in time, there was a hodge-podge of statutes that comprised the criminal law in Missouri," Jason Lamb, executive director of the Missouri Office of Prosecution Services, told the Bar leaders before Friday's vote.
"Then-Attorney General Jack Danforth formed a committee to come up with a comprehensive criminal code ... put them into a precise, structured order and produce a body of law that could be understood and used with ease and efficiency."
But, after lawmakers put that plan into Missouri's lawbooks in the late-1970s, Lamb noted, "Through the legislative process, there have been, obviously, a ton of modifications (and) what we have (now) is a code that does not resemble its original structure, and has kind-of reverted back, in some ways, to that original hodge-podge."