News : Iowa AG pushes for constitutional amendment on child testimony

By Clark Kauffman

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird is calling for a constitutional amendment to ensure that child victims of crime do not have to testify inside a courtroom alongside their alleged abusers.

In June, the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a man who argued it was unconstitutional for two children to testify against him though a live, closed-circuit video link that allowed the children to sit in a remote location just outside the courtroom.

In the wake of that ruling, Bird announced her intent to draft a constitutional amendment that would restore the ability of child victims to testify from remote locations outside the presence of the defendant. On Thursday, Bird announced that such an amendment had been drafted but was not yet ready to be made public.

"No child should be forced to be stared down by the person who hurt them in court," Bird said at Thursday's press conference, where she appeared alongside Iowa sheriffs, prosecutors and advocates. "When a child is testifying in court, they're between six and 10 feet away from their abuser - just an arm's length away. Imagine testifying in that scenario."

Prior to the court's ruling, child victims were allowed to testify remotely against their alleged abusers, but only in cases where the prosecution showed that in-person courtroom testimony would cause additional trauma to the child.

"For decades in Iowa, kids and people with intellectual disabilities were protected from having to testify in court against the person who hurt them," Bird said. "And then, with one ruling, all of those protections vanished… Iowa is the only state in the country that fails to offer closed-circuit testimony for these kids."

To appear on a ballot for voter approval in the general election of November 2028, a constitutional amendment would have to be approved by the Iowa Legislature this year or next year, and again in 2027 or 2028.

Bird predicted that unless a constitutional amendment is passed, children "will be too scared to testify and those cases will be dropped. Criminals will walk free."

However, she said, she and Iowa's county attorneys are prepared to "do everything we can" to make sure that doesn't happen during the years-long process of winning final approval for a constitutional amendment.