After over a decade of attempts, an effort to reduce the amount of crimes eligible for the automatic charging of youths as adults is on track to pass in the Maryland Senate.
Chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Will Smith (D-Montgomery County) is spearheading SB0323 — known as the Youth Charging Reform Act —, but the senator had to make some compromises to get the proposal out of committee.
Smith was initially seeking to reduce the list of quantifiable crimes for automatic charging from 33 — the highest of any state in the nation — to 11, but the committee settled upon only repealing five eligible crimes.
If the bill were to become law, it would give a judge discretion over if 16 and 17 year olds should be tried as an adult for: sale or transfer of a firearm, use of a firearm in a drug crime, use of a firearm if convicted of a drug felony, first degree assault and wearing, carrying or transporting a handgun.
Republican lawmakers attempted to shrink the list of repealed crimes even further on the Senate floor Wednesday.
“I think it's important to understand that first degree assault is just short of homicide, attempted murder, those type of things are what falls under first degree assault,” Sen. William Folden (R-Frederick County) said, introducing an amendment that would put the crime back on the automatic charging list.
Smith argued under the bill, a judge would have the discretion to send a juvenile to adult court if they see fit based on the severity of the crime.
Additionally, he noted 75 percent of youth first degree assault cases that are automatically charged in adult court ultimately end up back in juvenile court.
“We're wasting tens of millions of dollars, we're ruining these youths' lives, and we are getting worse public safety outcomes,” Smith said. “You're still going to be held in the juvenile system, except you're going to have access to better services immediately. If you start off in the adult system, you can spend anywhere from three months to two years languishing without services.”
Senate Republican Whip Justin Ready (R-Carroll and Frederick Counties) introduced a separate amendment to retain use of a firearm in a drug crime and use of a firearm with a felony drug conviction for automatic charging.
Both amendments failed on near party-line votes with the majority of Democrats voting against the changes.
Ready also offered amending the bill to require that a youth who is charged in juvenile court for one of the five proposed repealed charges be required to automatically start in adult court if they commit the crime again.
“You've done this the first time, you're going to go to juvenile, but second time around, the language should say, ‘We're going to make sure that you're going to be charged as an adult,’” said Sen. Johnny Ray Salling (R-Baltimore County), speaking in support of Ready’s amendment. “Just to say, you might call that a scare tactic, but sometimes it works. And getting them to realize, in their mind, in their heart, ‘Should I do this again?’”
Smith noted current law states that once a youth is charged as an adult, they will always be charged as an adult for eligible crimes, but he and his colleagues rejected Ready’s proposed addition.
Finally, Folden introduced an amendment adding more data reporting requirements around youths that are referred to predelinquent diversion programs, an alternative to entering a youth detention center.
Smith said he would consider a separate bill with such a requirement, but Folden’s amendment was ultimately voted down.
The Maryland States Attorney’s Association (MSAA) has been the bill’s most vocal opponent, and the attorneys remain in opposition of the diluted version.
In a statement released on Monday, Baltimore City State’s Attorney and MSAA President Ivan Bates said:
“This legislation looks to overwhelm an already overburdened juvenile system, putting the interests of the accused juvenile offender ahead of the rights of the victims of their crimes. MSAA has simply requested that the legislature take their time to get it right, putting a three-year moratorium on the process while investing the necessary resources into an overburdened system, while researching best practices to ensure we have the best juvenile justice system in the country.”
Acting Secretary of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Betsy Fox Tolentino has reiterated her support for the legislation and argues her department is well-equipped to serve more juvenile cases.
Tolentino has noted multiple times that data shows roughly 85 percent of youth automatically sent to the adult justice system either have their cases dismissed or are sent back to the juvenile system, meaning she is already serving these populations without the additional resources the Youth Charging Reform Act would provide.
In addition to reducing the number of crimes eligible for auto charging, the bill was amended in committee to prohibit a child from being held in an adult correctional facility without a secure juvenile detention area.
Federal law already requires a child held in an adult facility to be separated by sight and sound from adults, and Maryland is the largest offender of this violation.
Maryland stands to lose an estimated $2 million in federal funds over the next three years because of its repeated noncompliance with this statute, and it is such an outlier that its sight and sound violations are not included in federal data points because of how much it would skew the reports.
The bill is anticipated to receive its third and final vote in the Senate by the end of the week, and its fate will then lie in the hands of the House.
House Judiciary Chair and sponsor of the House version of the bill Del. J. Sandy Bartlett (D-Anne Arundel County) said Tuesday that she would like to see the bill move in the House and is supportive of the adult detention restrictions added by the Senate.
“I like what they did with the bill. I am watching the Senate very closely. I want to see what they end up passing out,” she said.
If the House version is not amended to reflect the same changes made by the Senate before its third and final passage, a conference committee will be needed to reconcile the differences.
