Virginia’s House of Delegates on Tuesday killed a state Senate bill that would have ended a mandatory minimum sentence for assaulting police officers.

This was among dozens of bills under discussion in the General Assembly’s special session, where lawmakers are meeting to discuss police reform and the state budget in the shadow of the pandemic and protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd.

The bill would have scrapped a six-month minimum sentence for assaulting a law enforcement officer. It would have also allowed a court or jury to reduce the charge for that kind of assault from a felony to a Class 1 misdemeanor if the victim had no bodily injury or if the perpetrator had “diminished physical or mental capacity.” Further, the bill would have required any alleged assault and battery to be investigated by another law enforcement officer.

Delegates from both parties voted to refer the bill for study in the Virginia State Crime Commission rather than advance it out of committee.

“Words, definitions, standards matter, when we’re talking about these very weighty issues … It needs to be done right,” said Del. Jeffrey Bourne (D-Richmond).

“I’m concerned that this bill in itself will basically declare open season on police officers,” said Del. Ronnie Campbell (R-Rockbridge), who supported Bourne’s motion to pass on the bill and refer it for further study.

Sen. Scott Surovell (D-Fairfax), who patroned the bill that passed the Virginia Senate, vowed to bring it forward again, either in the coming regular session or the one after it.

“A six-month mandatory minimum sentence does not make a lot of sense when somebody has no injury,” he said. “The penalty system is just totally out of whack for most of the conduct that we’re talking about.”

Police opposed the bill. Wayne Huggins, executive director of the Virginia State Police Association, told lawmakers he objected to using bodily harm as a standard for assigning charges.

“The fact that there is no bodily injury does not mean that an assault was not attempted,” Huggins said. “Somebody throws a punch at us, or somebody swings an object at us, and we’re able to block it and not get injured — that person, in my opinion, should be as culpable as somebody who does connect with a punch or a blunt-force object.”

The House committee advanced several other bills to change policing and criminal justice in Virginia. Lawmakers moved the Senate omnibus bill on police reform out of committee; that bill‘s many provisions include creating standards of conduct and a process for decertifying police officers who violate the terms. Another bill would eliminate some causes for traffic stops, including possessing marijuana or driving without a light illuminating the license plate. The House committee also advanced a bill to give prosecutors discretion to drop criminal cases and voted to move forward a bill that would create an Expungement Fee Fund to cover the cost of expunging some records.

Also on Tuesday, the House Courts of Justice Committee voted down two Republican-sponsored Senate bills that would have affected the Virginia Parole Board. One would make individual votes of Board members public. The other bill would have required the Parole Board to include in its monthly report not only the names of prisoners considered for parole but also the offenses for which they were convicted and the jurisdictions where they committed their crimes. Both bills failed to report out of the House committee even though they passed in the state Senate.

“Once again House Democrats have demonstrated that their top priority in this special session is making life easier for criminals,” said House Republican Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) in a statement.