Public defender, advocates push for Maryland to end automatic charging of youths as adults – Maryland Matters

Jabriera Handy was just 16 when she left the house one day after arguing with her grandmother about pictures hanging on the wall. When her 69-year-old grandmother suffered a fatal heart attack several hours later, Jabiera was charged with second-degree murder and first- and second-degree assault in the death.

Despite her age, the charges automatically made her an adult in the eyes of Maryland law. She was charged as an adult and said she spent 11 months in the Baltimore detention center, including at least 30 days in solitary confinement, before accepting a plea deal for involuntary manslaughter and being transferred into a juvenile system program for six to eight months.

But the stress of that time still lives with Handy, now 33, who said she still has anxiety when in large crowds because of it.

“When you are in adult prison, you are treated as an adult,” said Handy, now the mother of an 11-year-old daughter. “What we want is for every child to start in juvenile court … to give them a chance at receiving valuable services to become productive. Let’s vote to end the prosecution of youth as adults.”

Legislation to end the practice of charging youths as adults is a priority of the Office of the Public Defender, which is scheduled to outline its legislative agenda Thursday during a rally at Lawyers’ Mall in Annapolis.

It’s also among 18 recommendation scheduled to be released in a report this month by the Maryland Equitable Justice Collaborative, which Public Defender Natasha Dartigue and Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) serve as co-chairs.

According to the public defender’s office, Maryland ranked second behind Alabama in automatically sending teenagers aged 14 to 17 to adult court. The office notes that in 2022, about 12% of teenagers tried as adults were convicted.

“All 871 teens automatically charged as adults faced lengthy and expensive processes to decide if their cases would stay in adult court, with average wait times 103 days longer than those in the juvenile system,” according to the public defender. “This is inefficient and results in backlogs and wasted resources of Maryland’s courts, Department of Juvenile Services, public defenders, and prosecutors.”

The office says that ending the practice of automatically charging children as adults could free up an estimated $20 million for juvenile services to invest in community resources.

“If we are ever going to evolve into a system that is just and fair, we have to start with the basic premise of treating children as children,” Dartigue said Monday, after the collaborative’s youth justice work group event on the campus of the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center in Prince George’s County. “The practice of charging children as adults goes contrary to science, goes contrary to the data, goes contrary to the basic premise that they are children.”

But the advocates are making their pitch less than a year after lawmakers passed a juvenile justice reform bill that tightened juvenile justice, and made children as young as 10 subject to Department of Juvenile Services jurisdiction, amid fears of youth crime. Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, director of education policy and activism with the Wayfinder Foundation, remains frustrated at the passed of House Bill 814, which was signed into law in May.

“I hope they [legislators] have more courage this year than they did last year,” said Sankara-Jabar, a Montgomery County resident whose teenage son was in DJS custody for about two months after being charged with armed robbery while with other youths for allegedly attacking a pizza delivery person.

“I think we should be focusing on prevention,” she said. “Just shouldn’t be charging kids as adults [when] they’re not.”

Other priorities

The public defender’s office has three other priorities on its legislative agenda: reforming the state’s parole system to include medical and geriatric parole, funding indigent defense and making traffic stops safer.

Sen. Charles Sydnor III and Del. N. Scott Phillips, both Baltimore County Democrats, will sponsor the traffic stops legislation, which is likely to be opposed by the Maryland Sheriffs’ Association, among others.

Sydnor’s SB 292 proposes to downgrade a number of current primary violations, which allow police to pull a person over, to secondary status, which cannot be the sole reason an officer stops a driver for a nonsafety-related traffic stop. As of Wednesday evening, a House version had not been posted online.

Companion bills have been filed on medical and geriatric parole by Sen. Shelly Hettleman (D-Baltimore County) and Del. J. Sandy Bartlett (D-Anne Arundel), a bill supporters have been trying to pass since 2022. This year, SB 181 and HB 190 would apply to an incarcerated individual who is 60 years old, has served as least 15 years and is not registered as a sex offender.

For medical parole, a medical professional would have to determine if the incarcerated individual is “chronically debilitated or incapacitated” or has “a disease or condition with an end-of-life trajectory.” Certain conditions would include dementia or a severe or permanent medical or cognitive disability that prevents the person “from completing more than one activity or daily living.”

A hearing on Hettleman’s bill is set for Jan. 28 before the Judicial Proceedings Committee. As of Wednesday, no hearing had been scheduled for Bartlett’s version of the bill before the Judiciary Committee.

During a visit last week to the General Assembly, Brown said he supports the proposal for medical and geriatric parole.

The final priority for the public defender’s office deals funding for legal defense for indigents, to make sure someone who cannot afford to hire an attorney can still get one.

“We know that if we want to build stronger families and communities, we must first dismantle the barriers that keep our people trapped in cycles of disproportionate incarceration,” Chrissy M. Thornton, president and CEO of Associated Black Charities, said in a statement Monday. “You cannot claim to care about equity and justice while underfunding the very agencies that defend the most vulnerable among us.”