As a new legislative session begins, initiatives to criminalize the act of moving property boundary markers and additional legislation to establish felony charges for coercing someone to commit suicide via social media are being introduced.
State Representative Ryan Williams working with the Attorney General’s office to revise current state laws regarding protected speech and digital harassment. The session will also feature proposals addressing local zoning laws and agricultural boundary disputes brought forward by constituents in Putnam County.
“I also have another bill from a mother in Cookeville, and there’ll be a press release come out on it later because I’m not sure I can share their names yet, but a mother called me where her daughter for many years was coerced using social media platforms, her daughter was coerced into taking her own life,” Williams said. “And currently there’s no penalty for that in the state of Tennessee.”
Williams said the proposed legislation would create a felony charge for individuals who coerce another person into taking their own life. The bill aims to address growing problems with social media and artificial intelligence, and it will be named in honor of the Cookeville mother’s daughter, Williams said.
“I also have a bill from one of the local surveyors in town,” Williams said. “Ironically, I found out that the state does not protect property corners or have a way to punish people if they move their property corners.”
The property rights bill would make it a misdemeanor offense to pull up and move a property corner stake. The Tennessee Farm Bureau is actively involved with the legislation because individuals could potentially claim ownership of land they did not purchase through adverse possession after several years.
“And so if you’re a farmer and you’ve got hundreds of acres and somebody moves your property corner one foot in one direction, that pie shape could be 10 acres,” Williams said. “You know, it could turn into a lot of property.”
Currently, state statute does not classify pulling up a property stake as a criminal proceeding. In a previous Cookeville court case, a property owner accidentally paved across a boundary line and was awarded the adjacent land after using it for seven years.
“So I suspect this year we’ll probably get finished around late April,” Williams said.
The legislative session will also include discussions on a $1 billion Rural Health Transformation application and new nuclear technology investments at Tennessee Tech.