State prosecutors are continuing to press for amendments that the Senate sponsor says are “absolutely necessary” to strengthen legislation to increase prosecution against gang members. But the House sponsor and representatives of Gov. Martin O?Malley and Attorney General DougGansler said they are willing to take half a loaf to get a bill passed this year.
“The bill as it came out of the House was not in the shape that most of us wanted,” said Del. Mary-Dulany James, D-Harford, lead sponsor in the House.
The state?s attorneys suggested four amendments to the House version that James said “are fair and reasonable and improvements to the bill.”
“The state?s attorney would prefer it not pass” without these amendments, James told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. But “sometimes you have to move the ball forward, though the bill in its House form would be our second preference.”
Sen. Nancy Jacobs, R-Harford, lead sponsor in the Senate, said the House “butchered” the bill. She said the House Judiciary Committee took out too many underlying crimes that would qualify as being part of gang activity, reduced the penalties for the offenses, and made it more difficult to prove that members individually and collectively committed a crime.
The legislation makes it an additional offense to participate in a criminal act as a member of a gang.
The state?s attorneys are asking for four small changes in the language of the bill to make it easier to prosecute gang members, particularly for crimes that occurred in the past.
“Unless we get those four amendments, the bill is worth nothing,” Jacobs said.
But O?Malley lobbyist Sean Malone said, “This state is starving for gang legislation” and it is “short-sighted” to reject the House version. Simply charging someone with engaging in gang activity may help prosecute members for the underlying crimes, Malone said.
Amy Fusting, of the Public Defender?s Office, said the bill was still “unconstitutionally vague as amended,” and is part of “the politics of crime” in which offenses and penalties are piled on top of offenses.
