On the same day that Baltimore Police announced that they've arrested a 16 year old in the Edmonson Shopping center shooting from earlier this year, lawmakers were scheduled to hear testimony on a bill to end the auto-charging of children as adults.
SB93, would start all juvenile cases, no matter the charge or the crime the child is accused of, in juvenile court.
Currently, there are 33 charges where kids as young as 13, if arrested, are automatically charged as adults.
"The reason that the law is in place, and the reason that this has happened in Maryland, that we spend a disproportionate amount of mostly Black and brown children into adult prison because of the myth of super predator," said juvenile public defender Jenny Egan during the presentation of the bill Thursday afternoon, adding that "the majority of the offenses that are automatically charged as an adult were added to the code in 1994."
The bill, introduced by Baltimore City Senator Jill Carter, has been introduced in to previous sessions.
Last year, the bill didn't even come up for a vote in the Judicial Proceedings committee.
The bill finally came up to be heard around 4:30pm.
"Frankly, we need to move forward because.. this is one reason that Maryland has the worst record in the country on how it treats its children," said Sen. Carter in her introduction of the bill.
"This bill is going to bring Maryland in line with many other states," said Josh Rovner, the Director of Youth Justice for the Sentencing Project ahead of the hearing. "And what it's going to do is it will start all cases for youth in Maryland, in the juvenile courts where they belong."
"This is unapologetically a public safety bill," Rovner said in his testimony Thursday.
The bill comes from a recommendation of the Juvenile Justice Reform Council, which met, at the direction of the legislature between 2019 and 2021.
Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott Shellenberger was on the witness list to testify against the bill.
When he got to the podium, he said "these are not kids," and "these are not mistakes," bringing up specific cases in which juveniles committed serious crimes.
Proponents of the bill testified that kids could still be waived up to adult court if the prosecutors can show that the defendant should be considered an adult.
The testimony continued past 5:30pm.
