Del. Emmett Burns decided to turn the other cheek and change his mind about parole for drug dealers, and Burns?s change of heart helped pass a bill that had been defeated Friday.
“I felt that everybody deserves another chance,” said Burns, a Baltimore County pastor who noted that the Bible counsels forgiveness.
The bill (HB992) would permit parole for nonviolent drug offenses that now carry mandatory minimum sentences. The legislation failed to pass the Maryland House of Delegates on Friday by three votes, but several members of the leadership were absent. With Burns?s switch, the legislation was reconsidered and got 71 votes, the bare minimum it need to be enacted.
Burns said Friday he would have a difficult time justifying a vote paroling drug dealers to members of his congregation who they have victimized. But “the arguments for it tended toward leniency and a third chance,” he said Monday night. In addition, the parole board will have the discretion to grant or deny releases.
The bill?s sponsor, Del. Curt Anderson, D-Baltimore City, said that it was more important to get drug treatment for the low-level drug dealers often given mandatory minimum sentences under Maryland?s law. He said 7 percent to 11 percent of the population, both white and black, use drugs, but 90 percent of the imprisoned dealers are African-American.
“The whites have the ability to get off drugs,” Anderson said. “They have the means.”
Del. Doyle Niemann, a Prince George?s County prosecutor, said that the current laws on drug distribution are “fundamentally unfair” and “the penalties are vastly disproportionate” to the size of the offenses. “Let?s get more drug treatment,” Niemann said.
Republicans vociferously opposed parole for drug dealers.
“I?m very much in favor of treatment,” said House Republican Leader Anthony O?Donnell, Calvert. But the bill “doesn?t talk abouttreatment. It applies only to repeat drug dealers.”
“I don?t want to see these people back on the street,” said Del. Richard Impallaria, D-Baltimore-Harford. “My drug-dealing relatives were the nicest people when they were in jail.”
Burns was “not sure of [Republican] motives. Their people are not in jail.”
“I have to balance all of this,” he said. “I?m still ambivalent.”
