Aniah Blanchard was like many other 19-year-old girls. Raised in a homey, tight-knit suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, she was beloved by her friends and family. She was a high school softball player and began studying early childhood education at a local community college. She planned to eventually transfer to Auburn University.
But those dreams were cut tragically short.
In October 2019, Blanchard was abducted from a convenience store in the Auburn area and later murdered. Her body was discovered a month later, some 20 miles away. Investigators soon learned that Blanchard’s killer was out on bond when he abducted her, for charges related to a separate instance of kidnapping, attempted murder, and robbery.
Blanchard’s disappearance and murder sparked national interest, but it also led to Constitutional Amendment 1, also known as Aniah’s Law, which the state enacted in 2022. Aniah’s Law authorizes judges to deny bail to defendants charged with certain violent offenses after a hearing, if prosecutors successfully argue that no conditions of release can protect the public or ensure the defendant’s appearance in court. The 2022 amendment specifically addressed capital offenses like kidnapping, murder, rape, arson, and robbery.
Had a policy similar to Aniah’s Law existed in 2019, Blanchard’s killer likely would not have made bond on his previous offenses, and would not have been out on the streets to harm yet another individual.
Building off the success of Aniah’s Law, this year Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey introduced a collection of bills titled Safe Alabama. Within that group was State Bill 119, also called the Governor’s Inner City Gun Violence Bill, which proposed expanding Aniah’s Law to include more offenses, most notably “solicitation, attempt, or conspiracy to commit murder,” and discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling. This expansion drew further attention in the aftermath of a mass shooting in Alabama’s capital, Montgomery, in October 2025, which wounded 12 individuals and killed two.
SB 119 was included as part of May’s primary election and passed successfully.
For victims, survivors, activists, and advocates throughout the state, both Aniah’s Law and its expansion are the result of decades’ worth of resolve.
Wanda Miller, executive director of the Montgomery-based organization Victims of Crime and Leniency, calls its expansion “a win for victims.”
“More importantly,” Miller told IW Features, “I think it is a positive outcome for public safety overall.”
Like the Blanchard family, VOCAL’s advocates are no strangers to the horror of losing a loved one to violent crime. VOCAL’s founder and first executive director, Miriam Shehane, lost her 21-year-old daughter Quenette in 1976. Quenette, then a college student, was abducted from a convenience store by three men and was then brutally tortured, raped, and murdered as she attempted to escape.
In 2012, Shehane told The Associated Press that she couldn’t “stand the thought of Quenette being forgotten.”
Since its creation in 1982, VOCAL has pushed the state legislature to enact policies that ease the burden of the criminal justice system on victims and their families. Some of these policies include establishing an electronic victim notification system and a crime compensation fund. The notification system can text or e-mail a victim when their perpetrator is released from prison, and the crime compensation fund reimburses victims who have lost wages or incurred funeral, counseling, or other expenses as a result of their victimization.
VOCAL also connects victims with different non-profit and legal organizations, provides court accompaniment and peer support groups, and can help record victim testimony for parole hearings—all of which are provided at no cost and are meant to break down the most common barriers faced by victims in court.
Aniah’s Law belongs to a criminal justice position known as preventive detention, which allows courts to deny bail and keep a defendant in custody before trial if prosecutors demonstrate that the person poses a significant threat to public safety, or is otherwise too dangerous to release. Other states besides Alabama, like Florida, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Texas, have preventive detention policies on the books already.
Miller and her organization argue that the implementation of such a policy in Alabama via Aniah’s Law specifically addressed “a failure in the system.” In fact, that’s exactly why VOCAL was created in the first place: to fill the gaps left by the state and its criminal justice system.
Because of VOCAL’s work and Aniah’s Law, people within the state now know who Aniah Blanchard was. And that is key—because as Miller knows from her long career in victim services, it’s crucial to remember that there are real people behind the legislation, true crime stories, and news headlines.
“There are few people in Alabama and beyond that don’t know Aniah Blanchard’s name. Her life and her story are a testament to why we advocate for crime victims and the safety of the public every day,” Miller said. “Her family has honored her by ensuring that no other family experiences the loss that they live with every day.”
