(1) A city, county, or district court may establish a review team to review fatal and near-fatal incidents of domestic violence, related domestic violence matters, and suicides related to domestic abuse.
(2) In establishing a review team, a city, county, or district court, to the extent practicable, shall select team members with subject-matter expertise from the following entities, with an attempt to reflect the racial and ethnic makeup of the city, county, or judicial district:
Appropriate county departments;
Domestic violence service providers;
Law enforcement agencies;
Prosecutors' offices;
One or more county departments of public health;
One or more county departments of human or social services;
One or more coroner's offices or county medical examiner's offices or designees thereof;
Batterer intervention services providers;
The local parole division of the state board of parole;
The local probation department;
Hospitals;
Judges of the county and district courts;(m) Clerks of the county and district courts; and (n) Survivors of domestic violence.
(3) (a) Each review team shall collect data on domestic violence fatalities and near-death incidents, conduct individual case reviews of domestic violence fatalities and near-death incidents, document case characteristics of those case reviews, and report this information to their communities and to the review board.
Each review team shall determine its own structure and activities; except that, toensure statewide consistency, each review team shall use any uniform method for collecting, analyzing, or storing data that is established by the review board pursuant to section 24-31-702 (1)(c).
Each review team shall determine which incidents to review. A review by a reviewteam may include examination and consideration of:
Events leading up to the domestic violence incident;
Available resources of the criminal legal system and community;
Current laws and policies;
Actions taken by individuals and agencies, including individuals and agencies ofthe criminal justice and human services systems, related to the incident and the parties; and
Any other information or action deemed relevant by the review team, including areview of public records and records for which public records exemptions are granted.
Each review team shall submit data and recommendations to the review board:
On or before September 1 of each year following the year in which the review teamwas established; or
In the case of a review team in existence on August 9, 2017, on or before September1, 2018, and on or before September 1 each year thereafter.
(a) Notwithstanding subsection (1) of this section, no more than one review team may be created in any judicial district. Review teams in existence on August 9, 2017, are recognized as review teams under this part 7.
(b) Nothing in this section requires the formation of a review team.
If a local or regional child fatality prevention review team is created in a judicialdistrict pursuant to section 25-20.5-404, it may operate as a domestic violence review team pursuant to this section, so long as it:
Uses a uniform method for collecting, analyzing, or storing data that is established bythe review board pursuant to section 24-31-702 (1)(c); and
Includes domestic violence expertise from entities described in subsection (2) of thissection.
Notwithstanding any provision of this section, a local or regional child fatality prevention review team is authorized to review case data only from cases that have been closed by each law enforcement agency that investigated or prosecuted each such case.
Source: L. 2017: Entire part added, (SB 17-126), ch. 400, p. 2085, § 2, effective August 9.