ANNAPOLIS-Maryland lawmakers are once again debating whether to scale back the state’s practice of automatically placing teenage defendants in adult court if they are accused of serious crimes.
After more than a decade of deadlock on the subject, advocates for the reforms had begun to worry that the moment for rethinking automatic sentencing had passed, while Maryland’s state’s attorneys remained steadfastly opposed. However, a key Senate Democrat kept the debate alive this session by introducing a pared-down version of the proposal that maintains automatic charging as an adult for the most serious crimes.
“We’re paying more money, getting worse outcomes, and taking a longer time to get there,” said Sen. William Smith, a Democrat representing Montgomery County and the chair of the Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee.
Smith argues that even his pared-down version of the bill would spare some juvenile defendants from spending weeks or months in the adult system before their charges are dismissed or dropped. Reform advocates say that exposure increases their risk of committing a new, more serious crime in the future.
Maryland prosecutors, however, contend that lawmakers should be more skeptical of the state’s Department of Juvenile Services, which is responsible for housing and providing services to those in the juvenile justice system.
“It’s unwise to send more juveniles with more complex problems and challenges to a system that has been shrinking for the past three years,” said Wicomico County State’s Attorney Jamie Dykes, alluding to real and planned closures of juvenile detention and treatment facilities.
Now, Senate lawmakers are once again weighing whether the costs of treating some teenage defendants as adults pencil out for the public’s safety.
Smith’s bill would give Maryland’s juvenile courts default jurisdiction over teenage defendants charged with some violent crimes, allowing prosecutors to request that a case be moved to circuit court to reflect the severity of a crime. That would effectively flip the current system, wherein circuit court automatically has jurisdiction over juvenile defendants charged with certain violent crimes, and defense attorneys can request to transfer cases to juvenile court.
But the bill would leave the most serious violent crimes, including first-degree murder, in the circuit court’s jurisdiction by default. That exception is adjustment from past reform bills intended to assuage critics.
“This issue has been studied and debated throughout three governors, multiple committee chairs,” said Alice Wilkerson, executive director of Advance Maryland and a part of the coalition of advocacy groups backing the bill.
Ending automatic sentencing of juveniles as adults was that coalition’s first policy goal, she added, and years later, it remains “unfinished business.”
That coalition has seen victories on other fronts. In 2022, for instance, Maryland lawmakers voted to generally bar police from interrogating children until they have consulted an attorney.
Dayvon Love, director of public policy for the Baltimore-based think tank Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle and a vocal supporter of automatic sentencing reform, says pushback from law enforcement and prosecutors on recent criminal justice reforms, as well as critical media coverage, seemed to doom automatic sentencing reform.
“We are dealing with what I describe as a backlash,” he told the Capital News Service.
Smith’s emergence as the latest voice of automatic sentencing reform in the Senate, however, may change the reform movement’s outlook. As chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, Smith is well-positioned to negotiate a path forward for a pared-down bill.
But the policy disagreements surrounding automatic sentencing have largely not budged.
Smith underscores that most teenagers charged as adults in the state eventually see their cases transferred down to juvenile court — 79% in 2023 alone, he told his committee on Tuesday.
Awaiting that transfer, he added, “when someone’s languishing in the adult system, they get none of the services and attention that they would get in the juvenile system.” Exposing teenagers to the adult court and prison system, he added, increases their chances of committing more serious crimes in the future.
“Based on my 24 years in both juvenile and adult criminal courts, there is a drastic difference in outcomes [between adult and juvenile court] that should be the elephant in the room,” said retired Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Philip Caroom, who testified in support of the bill on Tuesday.
The additional hearings and administrative costs involved in transferring hundreds of young defendants between the adult and juvenile systems, Smith added, cost the Department of Juvenile Services roughly $12.3 million a year. “What if you have $12.3 million to reinvest into services, into oversight?” he asked.
But Sen. William Folden, a Republican representing Frederick County and a frequent critic of criminal justice reform bills on the committee, was critical of the Department of Juvenile Services’ ability to properly rehabilitate young people placed in its custody by the court system.
“DJS is a mess. DJS is a wreck. DJS has a secretary that spends money on all these shiny new ideas and documented zero of the outcomes,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s someone that can be entrusted with such an important role in molding youth.”
Catharine Rosenblatt, chief of the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office juvenile division, echoed those concerns. She told lawmakers that her office regularly sees cases transferred from adult to juvenile court on the pretense that the Department of Juvenile Services will provide secure housing or behavioral therapy, only for those services never to materialize.
“Unfortunately, what we’ve found time and time again is that the services available — they’re in name only,” she said.
But neither Rosenblatt nor any other prosecutor who spoke in opposition to the bill on Tuesday expressed enthusiasm for the services available to teenages in the adult system. Charles County Deputy State’s Attorney Karen Piper Mitchell, for instance, questioned why therapeutic services aren’t available to teenage defendants tried in adult court, even while arguing against the proposed reforms.
The Department of Juvenile Services is supportive of the proposed reforms, and its legislative director testified in support of Smith’s bill, arguing that their agency already serves the substantial share of Maryland’s teenage defendants charged as adults who eventually transfer to juvenile court.
If lawmakers do finally implement the reforms, Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger asserted that the forecasted savings on court hearings might not materialize if prosecutors opted to request transfers to adult court in most cases, as public defenders do for transfers to juvenile court in most cases.
“I understand that 80% are being transferred down [to juvenile court],” he told CNS. “If they all started in juvenile, a vast majority of the State’s Attorneys would try to waive many of them up, and I don’t believe it would approach anything near 80% that would be granted.” Nevertheless, he said, lawmakers should not assume that the costs of hearing cases in both adult and juvenile jurisdictions would disappear.
The Judicial Proceedings Committee has yet to vote on the bill.