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Maryland lawmakers are moving to give the state’s attorney general the authority to prosecute police officers who kill people, stripping the power from local prosecutors who have been reluctant to charge officers.
The Maryland Senate voted 27-20 on Thursday to approve a bill giving the prosecutorial authority to the Office of the Attorney General, which already investigates cases in which people are killed in encounters with police.
Sen. William C. Smith Jr., sponsor of the bill and chairman of the Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee, described the bill as an effort to improve trust in the system that holds police officers accountable for their actions. He rejected Republican suggestions that the bill was a “power grab” by the state’s new attorney general.
As part of sweeping policing reforms passed two years ago, state lawmakers created an independent division under the attorney general to investigate deaths that involve police. But they left the decision of whether to prosecute officers involved in the incidents to the local elected state’s attorneys.
Since the Office of the Attorney General Independent Investigations Division took over investigations in October 2021, not a single completed investigation has resulted in prosecutors bringing criminal charges against involved police officers.
There have been 30 investigations, and 12 are still open or were just sent to local prosecutors. In the other 18 cases, local prosecutors declined to bring any charges, according to state data. The cases include in-custody deaths, fatal vehicle chases, fatal crashes and fatal shootings.
That led lawmakers to consider revisiting the decision of just who should decide on charges.
Sen. Stephen Hershey, the Republican minority leader from the Eastern Shore, said the bill is a solution in search of a problem.
The attorney general and supporters of the bill are catering to what “the woke anti-police agenda wants more than anything, which is to prosecute law enforcement officers,” he said.
“It is shameful that we have not addressed crime in this state, and yet we are going to pass legislation that makes it easier for the state of Maryland to prosecute police officers,” Hershey said.
Elected state’s attorneys have been reluctant to give up their prosecutorial authority over these cases and nearly all of them banded together to oppose the bill, saying that local prosecutors are elected to make tough decisions and are qualified to do so.
Republican senators took up the state’s attorneys’ cause during debate on the bill this week. They argued that elected state’s attorneys are better qualified to handle serious cases and know the issues facing police and their communities.
Sen. Mary Beth Carozza, from the Eastern Shore, said stripping the authority from state’s attorneys sends a message that they can’t be trusted.
Wouldn’t the bill be “negating the will of the electorate?” she asked during debate Wednesday.
During that debate, Sen. Chris West, a Baltimore County Republican, bristled at the idea of “hotshot” lawyers from the attorney general’s office in Baltimore going out to rural counties to put local police on trial. Police and residents might be “resentful” about that, West suggested.
Smith responded that sounds more like something from a John Grisham novel, rather than reality.
West posed the same scenario to Attorney General Anthony G. Brown during a public hearing last month. He asked if Brown would be comfortable having his agency known as the chief prosecutor of police across the entire state.
“I believe that if this bill is passed, it is going to enhance public confidence in both the investigation and the prosecution of police-involved deaths,” Brown, a Democrat, responded.
“We’re going to do our job in a fair and balanced way, as we’ve done for the last two years with the investigations,” Brown continued. “We would take the identical approach to prosecutions: Where the facts and the law suggest that a prosecution is warranted, then we’ll prosecute. And if doesn’t, then we won’t. And that’s true whether it’s in Suitland, Prince George’s County, or Somerset, Eastern Shore.”
Republicans offered amendments to the bill that were all defeated earlier in the week, including one that would have allowed state’s attorneys to have the first chance to prosecute and if they decline to do so, allowing the attorney general to file charges.
Though only Republicans spoke against the bill, a handful of Democrats joined them in voting against it.
A similar version of the bill is pending in the House of Delegates. Both chambers would need to agree to the same bill before sending the measure to Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, for his consideration.
The ability to prosecute police is one of three bills pending in the General Assembly that would expand the powers of the attorney general’s office. The others would enable the attorney general to enforce civil rights laws and sue the firearms industry for contributing to the public harm of gun violence.
pamela.wood@thebaltimorebanner.com
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Pamela Wood covers Maryland politics and government. She previously reported for The Baltimore Sun, The Capital and other Maryland newspapers. A graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, she lives in northern Anne Arundel County.
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