My work in the Senate has been focused on expanding economic opportunities for working families and providing second chances to people who have paid their debt to society.
Today, my colleagues in the Senate and I unanimously passed important legislation to create a fairer criminal justice system for teens who get in trouble with the law.
Senate Bill 41 would reverse the current standard used to determine whether someone is tried as an adult or a juvenile.
Right now, the courts use a suspect’s age at the date of arrest rather than someone’s age when the offense occurred.
That standard has been in place since the early 1990s when Bernard Howard was accused of selling drugs to an uncover cop when he was 17. He was tried as adult because he wasn’t arrested until two weeks after his 18th birthday.
Howard, who now uses the surname Pepukayi, went on to become deputy legal counsel to former Gov. Ruth Ann Minner, county attorney under former New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon and more recently became a Republican candidate for Delaware Attorney General.
He and others like him deserve a chance to overcome terrible mistakes made when they were teens and this legislation will ensure that they get it.
