D.C. Council Begins Update to Clarify Criminal Code

WASHINGTON -- The D.C. Council is considering an update of the city’s criminal code in a way likely to touch many of the prosecutions in Superior Court.

Last week, the Council held the first of a series of public meetings on the D.C. Criminal Code Revision Commission’s proposed rewrite.

The 325-page proposal would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences, restore jury trials for most misdemeanors and allow anyone who served 15 years in prison a right to petition the court for early release.

The D.C. Criminal Code Revision Commission’s recommendations are modeled on the American Legal Institute’s Model Penal Code. The Commission has been working on the rewrite for five years.

The D.C. Council explains the update as an effort to clarify the criminal code and to repeal unnecessary laws enacted more than a century ago. In part, it responds to a 2000 report published by Northwestern University Law School that ranked the quality of criminal codes nationwide.

The District of Columbia ranked 45th overall. Virginia was 37th and Maryland was 49th. The scale rated issues such as whether the punishments matched the crimes, whether the code clearly described offenses and whether they represented the full range of misbehaviors that could result in convictions.

In one example, the report criticized the District of Columbia and Maryland for failing to balance all factors that determine the severity of an arson offense.

“Maryland has a maximum punishment of five years imprisonment for committing arson on anything other than a dwelling or other structure but a punishment of up to ten years imprisonment for threatening to commit arson on a structure,” the report says. “The District of Columbia punishes arson committed on one's own property with intent either to defraud or injure more severely than any other type of arson.”

Some District of Columbia criminal offenses that date to 1901 refer to stables and steamboats.

For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: [email protected] or phone: 202-479-7240.