“I'm here to share how proud I am. But also, most unfortunately, I'm here as a victim, because my daughter was assaulted and murdered in Baltimore,” said Caroline LaPere to the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee on Tuesday afternoon.
LaPere has testified multiple times this month before a state legislative committee in favor of legislation named after her daughter Pava LaPere, a Baltimore-based tech CEO who was killed in September 2023.
SB 1098, known as the Pava LaPere Act, would get rid of automatic diminution credits for offenders who commit first-degree sex offenses. Diminution, known colloquially as “good time credits”, allows people serving time for violent crimes to earn up to 20 days a month off their sentence under current state law. The House of Delegates is looking at its own version of the law HB301.
Jason Billingsley, 32, is charged with killing Pava LaPere, 26, in addition to charges of arson and sexual assault against two other people for an attack on West Edmondson Avenue just days before. Billingsley was a convicted sex offender who was released from prison in October 2022, in part, because of diminution credits.
“He was too dangerous to be on the streets of Baltimore, but had been given early release due to dim credits. This tragic consequence cost us our daughter's life, and Baltimore lost a prolific leader,” said LaPere.
“We have to balance rehabilitation and redemption with the superseding weight of public safety,” said bill sponsor Senator William C. Smith, a Democrat from Montgomery County, who noted that he has worked to expand diminution in the past because he believes in “redemption” and “equipping people with the skills they need to thrive when they return.”
Smith argues that the new law is essentially in the spirit as the rest of the state’s diminution law which already excludes people convicted of rape and third-degree sexual assault against minors 16 and younger. People imprisoned for a lifetime violation of sexual offender supervision are also excluded from diminution.
Baltimore City’s State’s Attorney Ivan Bates claimed that in the last decade there were 11 people charged with first degree rape release on parole, compared to 199 people released on diminution credits charged with the same crime.
“This bill sends a clear message that sentences for such heinous crimes will be fully enforced, and a convicted individual faces significant consequences for their actions that undoubtedly inflicted devastating trauma to both victims and their loved ones,” said Bates as he testified in support of the bill.
The law under consideration does not preclude people serving sentences for rape from coming before the Maryland Parole Commission, said Bates.
“The Parole Board will look at the information and look at the background and have a true understanding of that individual and what they can then give back to the community and society… But they will… no longer be arbitrarily released due solely to earning these credits without showing any real rehabilitative efforts of not reoffending.”
The bill faces opposition from the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, an agency that also filed a motion earlier this month against Bates to stop talking about Billingsley under the argument that it could affect his case.
“It is not lost on me the serious nature of these kinds of charges,” said Gabriella Ellenberger, an attorney with the public defender. “But this bill will not improve the safety of any of us in the community. All it does is increase sentence lengths. This bill is focusing on the wrong thing to fix a serious and very real problem.”
Ellenberger argued that the real way to make the public safer is to offer evidence-based sexual abuser education while the person is still incarcerated. It’s her belief that SB 1098 would actually discourage people from engaging in rehabilitative efforts.
She pointed out also that diminution credits only apply for people who are not being released on parole.
“These individuals will still be released from prison eventually, but having engaged in what programming diminution credits are earned for like staying out of trouble, but also for engaging in drug treatment, anger management, victim impact classes, education, and working important jobs in the [Department of Corrections],” said Ellenberger, arguing what many advocates in favor of diminution say– that the program encourages a safer environment both in prison and outside.
The Pava LaPere Act, or SB 1098, was not the only bill named in honor of the former EcoMap Technologies CEO to be heard during Tuesday’s hearings. Another bill supported by the Moore-Miller administration would provide startup companies $50,000 if they are founded by students, former and current, from the Baltimore metro area.
