PHOENIX — Arizona lawmakers are not going to give business owners the right to kill vandals who damage or deface their property.
But the reason for that decision is less than clear.
Only 13 of the 16 Senate Republicans voted in support Monday for Senate Bill 1650. The proposal by Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita sought to expand the ability of not just business owners but their employees to use deadly force beyond saving lives or stopping rapes to criminal damage if the perpetrator also was armed with a deadly weapon or “dangerous instrument.”
And that latter category, it was pointed out, could include anything that, depending on how it is used, is “readily capable of causing death or serious injury,” something lawmakers debated in committee could include a block of wood or even a pen.
Monday’s vote was a surprise as it reflected what appears to have been a change of heart by Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City.
In committee, Borrelli said he sees the issue through the eyes of business owners who, unless they act, could see their entire livelihoods destroyed. He even recalled the 1992 Los Angeles riots that occurred in the wake of police being acquitted in the beating of Rodney King.
By Monday, though, Borrelli was telling a different story.
“I can understand you use force to save your life, of your friends, your family or another person,” he said. “Any kind of reasonable force I will stand for, will stand with.”
But this, Borrelli said, is different.
He noted the crime of committing criminal damage is a Class 3 felony. It carries a presumptive prison term of 3.5 years.
“You can replace property,” Borrelli said.
“You can’t replace life,” he continued. “This bill is a little on the extreme side.”
Borrelli said he had hoped Ugenti-Rita would have “watered down” the measure. She did not.
But Ugenti-Rita told Capitol Media Services after the defeat she sees something quite different in his vote.
“I think he was retaliating because I voted against his bill,” she said.
That refers to Senate Bill 1457, which dealt with security issues for voting machines. It came up two votes short on Monday as Ugenti-Rita and Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, joined with Democrats to vote against it.
Borrelli, for his part, said that has nothing to do with it.
“It’s not spite,” he told Capitol Media Services. But he declined to answer other questions including why his views reversed in the six weeks between the time he supported it in the Senate Judiciary Committee and when it came for a final vote Monday.
Ugenti-Rita also lashed out at Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott. She said Fann knew she was two votes shy of the majority 16 she needed but chose to schedule it anyway.
Fann, however, said there was nothing sinister about that, pointing out she had delayed a final vote before. And the Senate president said she was trying to get final votes on all Senate measures by Monday so they could go to the House.
By 
