Crystal Rogers Act passes Kentucky House unanimously, heads to Senate
– 3 min read
Sherry Ballard's fight in Frankfort is full steam ahead, with the Kentucky House passing her proposed change to grand jury proceeding policy without any pushback.
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The Crystal Rogers Act cleared another hurdle this week.
House Bill 305 passed the Kentucky House with a unanimous 93-0 vote, sending the legislation to the Senate for consideration. The bill, which extends the statute of limitations for secretly recording grand jury testimony, sailed through without a single vote against it.
The legislation is named for Crystal Rogers, the Bardstown mother of five who disappeared on July 4, 2015. It took a decade to bring her killer and his accomplices to justice- and along the way, investigators discovered a problem in Kentucky law that this bill aims to fix.
During the FBI's investigation into Crystal's disappearance, agents searching the Houck farm found recordings. Brooks Houck, his mother, his brother, his sister, and his mother's boyfriend had all secretly recorded their grand jury testimony. But by the time the FBI discovered those recordings, the one-year statute of limitations had expired. Prosecutors couldn't do anything about it.
Crystal's mother, Sherry Ballard, traveled to Frankfort earlier this month to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, asking lawmakers to close that loophole- not for her family, but for the next one.
Sherry Ballard won’t stop fighting: her push to close the legal loophole that let Houck family off the hook
They broke the law, they faced no consequences, and now Sherry Ballard is fighting to change that. “I’m Shay McAlister, and this is Shay Informed: an independent, ad-free platform dedicated to honest journalism with compassion and clarity. Are you new here? Sign up for the free weekly newsletter or subscribe
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"I know this will not help my family, but hopefully it will help another family, and they will not feel the pain that my family has had to go through," Ballard told the committee.
The bill passed out of committee 17-0 and picked up a floor amendment before Wednesday's House vote.
Grand jury secrecy exists for good reason. It prevents witnesses from coordinating their stories, protects jurors from retaliation- especially in small communities where they may be hearing cases involving their neighbors- and keeps sensitive information about ongoing investigations from leaking to targets. When someone secretly records that process, it undermines the entire system.
Committee Chair Rep. Daniel Elliott (R), who shepherded the bill through his committee, called it what it is: obstruction of justice.
The Crystal Rogers Act now moves to the Senate. If it passes there and is signed by the governor, Kentucky will have stronger protections for the integrity of its grand jury proceedings- a change that came because one mother refused to stop fighting, even after ten years.
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