DOVER – A piece of unfinished business will likely be on the agenda early when the 146th General Assembly gets to work this January.
Last year, an effort to revise Delaware’s drug laws failed to reach the finish line. As DFM News reported in June, HB 443, which would streamline Delaware’s drug laws and bring them in line with other criminal laws in the state, passed the House of Representatives. The bill failed to get through the Senate, never reaching the floor for debate and a vote.
The House sponsor of last year’s bill, State Representative Melanie George (D- Bear/Newark), plans to reintroduce it in January. Senate Majority Leader Patricia Blevins (D-Elsmere) said she will back the bill in the Senate. Blevins held a Senate hearing on the proposed law Wednesday in Dover.
The bill is likely to remain the same as the one introduced last year (click here for DFM News coverage of what the bill proposes) and was crafted with input from an unusual array of interests, including the Department of Justice, the Public Defender’s office, various police agencies around the state, and advocacy groups such as Stand Up for What’s Right and Just, or SURJ.
“This proposal simplifies and clarifies our drug laws,” Public Defender Brendan O’Neill said at Wednesday’s Senate hearing. “We hope and think it will give all the criminal justice constituencies a clearer picture of what’s going on with our drug laws.”
Representatives of the State Police and Delaware State Police Chiefs Association at a hearing Wednesday said they would again support the bill.
State Representative George maintains the proposed legislation allows judges discretion. It also gives drug users the opportunity to get treatment and remain in society, while it removes drug dealers from public life. “We want to spend money imprisoning people who need to be behind bars,” George said, after a Senate hearing Wednesday.
One aspect of the bill discussed at length during the Senate hearing involved returning convicted drug offenders’ right to drive sooner, if the bill passes. The proposed law would reduce the mandatory loss of driver’s licenses from two years for misdemeanors and three years for felonies to 12 and 24 months. Discussion during the hearing indicated that lawmakers might be willing to reduce that amount of time even further.
“I think we take too many damn people’s drivers license away for doing something that had nothing to do with (driving),” State Senator (D-Varlano) Anthony DeLuca said. DeLuca argued the repercussions for taking away driver’s licenses are far reaching. People who can’t drive have difficulty landing jobs, and when their license is reinstated they find that they are in the high risk pool for insurance. “Their insurance goes from a $1,000 a year to $5,000 a year,” he said. “The people can’t afford to get their license back.” This leads to more people driving without a license and without insurance. And when they get pulled over, the circle of criminal charges continues, he said.
“It’s the general opinion of everyone that long suspension of driver’s license are counter-productive,” State Prosecutor Richard Andrews said. “They don’t deter drug dealing or drug use and make it difficult for people to get back into society.” Delaware’s driver’s license suspension policies for drug related crimes is the harshest in the nation, said Andrews.
DeLuca favors people losing their drivers license only when the vehicle was involved in committing the crime. “If the crimes are interlaced (driving and the crime) than the driver’s license is fair game,” he said.
Andrews pointed out federal law requires that people convicted of drug related crimes lose their license for six months, but added that governors can opt out of that requirement. To date 23 states have opted out of the requirement. To do so, legislatures have to adopt a resolution and send it to the governor who then sends it to the Secretary of Transportation.
State Representative George suggested this is a move that the legislature might want to take. “We can write a resolution,” she said.
“It’s a door we need to fix,” said DeLuca.
DeLuca went on to say that there are a number of areas where the State’s criminal code uses the suspension of one’s driver’s license, as a punishment. In many instances the crimes people commit have nothing to do with driving – like failing to pay child support.
DeLuca and George said that the issue of suspending a driver’s license speaks to a larger issue of how or why licenses are suspended. George said she would like to set up a Senate and House Committee to evaluate the benefits of suspending licenses in non-driving related offenses.
