(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) Democrat lawmakers in Baltimore, Maryland, proposed a bill that prohibits anyone under the age of 25 from incurring charges of first-degree murder in particular circumstances.
Democrat Delegate Charlotte Crutchfiled wrote and proposed House Bill 1180, also known, somewhat ironically, critics noted, as the “Youth Accountability and Safety Act.”
In addition to reducing the overall sentence of felony murder from a lifetime to 40 years, the bill would ease the murder charges by limiting the legal definition of the occurrence, ZeroHedge reported.
House Bill 1180 would only permit individuals under 25 years of age to sustain charges of felony murder if another felony was in progress at the time of the killing, including burglary, carjacking, rape and other sexual offenses.
Conservatives, law enforcement officials and even some Democrat delegates came out in fierce opposition to the proposal.
“It would be absolutely outrageous and result in more crime,” said law enforcement expert Maury Richards, former Chief of Police of Martinsburg, West Virginia. “Last year, with Senator Carter’s Juvenile Justice Reform Act, it really opened the floodgates. There is a crime wave of violence going on right now, but instead of the legislator debating to rescind that, we’re hung up on whether 25-year-olds should be charged with murder.”
Several officials argued that the law will lead to a spike in crime among young people, with gang leaders recruiting teens and young adults to commit more serious crimes.
“If this bill passes, you’re going to have kingpins, you’re going to have gangs use juveniles to do their dirty work,” said Delegate Susan McComas.
The main argument of the bill is that the brain is not fully developed until the age of 25, and young adults who commit heinous crimes are unable to understand the consequences of their violent actions. McComas fought against this argument, pointing out that Democrats also support gender affirming care and underage voting for children.
“Proponents of the bill say that the human brain is not fully formed in the frontal lobes until age 25,” she argued. “But yet, we’re doing other things in the general assembly, letting children vote earlier and earlier, letting them get hormone inducing drugs to change their sex.”
