A recent hearing from the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee reignited a long-standing debate among state politicians: whether the state’s practice of automatically filtering teenage defendants who have been accused of serious crimes through the adult court should be scaled back.
State Sen. William C. Smith Jr., a Democrat representing part of Montgomery County, proposed a modified version of Senate Bill 422 during the Feb. 4 hearing. The modifications would give the state’s juvenile courts default jurisdiction, which is the automatic authority given to a court to handle certain cases, over teenage defendants charged with serious crimes.
The changes would also allow prosecutors to request that a case be moved from the juvenile court to the circuit court depending on the severity of the crime, as well as keep the stipulations of the original bill that raised the age a juvenile would be charged in adult court from 14 to 16.
Under the current system, it is essentially the exact opposite. The circuit court has default jurisdiction over juvenile defendants charged with serious crimes and defense attorneys are able to request a transition down to the juvenile court. Smith’s proposal would reverse those roles and return discretion to the juvenile court and to the prosecutors.
“The price of automatically charging youths as adults is fundamentally out of sorts for great outcomes,” Smith said during the Feb. 4 testimony. “We’re paying more money. It’s taken a longer time to dispose of cases. We’re getting worse public safety outcomes.”
However, crimes that could bring a life sentence, such as first-degree murder or sexual assault, would still be handled by the circuit court by default under Smith’s proposal. The compromise is intended to bridge the divide between supporters of the original bill and critics who worry that reducing the ability to charge juveniles as adults could undermine public safety.
The bill also states that if enacted, expenditures for the Department of Juvenile Services would decrease by $12.3 million in fiscal year 2026. Subsequent years would see even greater savings.
The committee is yet to vote on the bill. The next hearing to further address the issue has yet to be scheduled.
