State Representative Jeff Spiegelman sharply criticized the Democratic members of the House Corrections Committee for refusing to allow his bill to deny early release to the state’s most serious criminal offenders to advance.
House Bill 289 would have eliminated inmates who had been convicted of class A felonies from consideration under the state’s Compassionate Release program.
Last year, Gov. Matt Meyer signed the Richard ‘Mouse’ Smith Compassionate Release Act, allowing offenders meeting certain criteria to be released from prison before having served their full sentence.
Under the law (Title 11, § 4217), convicts can apply for a sentence reduction if they have a serious medical illness or infirmity; the inmate is at least 60 years of age and has spent at least 15 years in prison; or the inmate has served at least 25 years in prison.
Superior Court judges review the applications, weighing the convict’s crimes, whether they pose a threat to themselves, their past victims, and the public, their progress towards rehabilitation, and other factors.
In a statement opposing Rep. Spiegelman’s proposal to eliminate class A felons from Compassionate Release consideration, the ACLU of Delaware noted: “The goal of compassionate release is to ensure all people applying for sentence modification are considered individually, rather than judged simply on the classification of their offense. The ‘compassionate’ part of compassionate release seeks to bring humanity into the criminal legal system, and to consider a person as a whole rather than as the crime they committed.”
Groups opposing the bill included the Delaware NAACP State Conference of Branches, the Delaware Office of Defense Services, the League of Women Voters of Delaware, and the Progressive Democrats of Sussex County.
Rep. Spiegelman maintains that the state’s worst offenders should be kept in prison, regardless of their circumstances. He said the existing law, while embracing compassion for offenders, is less than empathetic to their victims.
“Last year, we passed a law that says, we’re going to put this prisoner away, but under an expanded set of circumstances, they may get out [at some point],” Rep. Spiegelman said. “Which means you, the victim, the victim’s family, you may be forced … to go testify once again to keep the person who hurt you behind bars…That’s not justice for the victim or the victim’s family. And that’s not justice for the state. House Bill 289 would have said that class A felons, rapists, child molesters, and murderers stay behind bars where they belong.”
On Tuesday, the six Democrats on the nine-member House Corrections Committee refused to allow the bill to advance to the House floor for consideration, effectively killing the proposal.
“I would have thought that keeping child molesters behind bars was a non-partisan issue,” Rep. Spiegelman said. “I would have thought that keeping rapists behind bars, keeping murderers behind bars, is a non-partisan issue. It is an absolute breach of the social contract between the government and the governing to say that the bill was defeated along party lines.”
