Fact check: Did Maryland Sen. Jamie Raskin vote against banning juvenile life without parole?

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• ABOUT FACT CHECK

February 25, 2016
By Karen Shanton

Nine Democratic candidates are vying for the open U.S. House seat in Maryland's 8th Congressional District this year.

One of those candidates, Will Jawando, criticized another, Maryland Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery County), at a candidate forum on February 6. Responding to a question about police and judicial accountability, Jawando said, “We need to elect different leaders who represent our community, who understand these issues… I’m disappointed in Senator Raskin for voting against a bill last session that would have prevented juveniles from serving life sentences.”

Raskin didn’t address Jawando’s charge during the forum but, in an interview with Bethesda Magazine, he described it as “a half-hearted effort to pick a fight—he swung and he missed.”

Did Jawando miss the mark? We looked into it and found that his claim about Raskin’s vote is accurate. Raskin voted against a 2015 proposal to prohibit life without parole for defendants who were under the age of 18 when the offense was committed. However, Jawando criticized Raskin for not representing the community or understanding the issues at stake in the proposal. Therefore, we need to investigate why Raskin voted against the measure.

Background

The vote at issue was on an amendment to Senate Bill 849. Senate Bill 849 was introduced by Maryland Sen. Robert Cassilly (R-Harford County) to correct a purported drafting error in the 2013 bill that repealed Maryland’s death penalty.

Prior to repeal of the death penalty, Maryland law held that only a jury (not a judge) could hand down a death sentence. If a jury either rejected a death sentence or could not reach consensus, jurors were instructed to consider a sentence of life without parole or life. When drafting the bill to repeal the death penalty, the authors failed to strike language related to jury consideration of life without parole. The oversight left an apparent conflict in the law between that language and a provision that judges could conduct sentencing in life without parole cases.

According to testimony by Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, the General Assembly never intended to require a jury hearing to sentence a defendant to life without parole. Shellenberger’s account was confirmed during the hearing by Raskin, who was the floor leader for the 2013 repeal of the death penalty. Senate Bill 849 would have eliminated the language related to jury hearings for life without parole.

During the floor debate on Senate Bill 849, Maryland Sen. Delores Kelley (D-Baltimore County) proposed an amendment that would have added a provision to the law prohibiting life without parole for defendants who were under the age of 18 at the time the offense was committed. It is this amendment that Jawando referenced at the candidate forum on February 6.

Raskin’s vote on the Kelley amendment

Kelley’s amendment was defeated by a vote of 21-26. Raskin is on record as one of the 26 senators who voted against it.

Raskin’s reasons for voting against the Kelley amendment

Raskin told Ballotpedia that he voted against Kelley’s amendment because Senate Bill 849 was not the proper legislative vehicle for a ban on juvenile life without parole. In his view, such a ban was not germane to the bill, which was intended only as a technical fix for the death penalty repeal statute. He also told Ballotpedia that he did not think there had yet been sufficient analysis of the complexities of the ban, such as its effect on judicial discretion, when the amendment was offered.

Audio recordings of the Maryland Senate confirm that Raskin considered Senate Bill 849 the wrong vehicle for Kelley’s proposal. During floor debate on the amendment, he said, “I don’t think that this legislation is the proper vehicle [for Kelley’s proposal] and those of us who were fighting for the repeal of the death penalty I think have an obligation to correct the mistake that was made, the technical mistake that was made when we did it.”

Raskin encouraged future consideration of Kelley’s proposal, saying that it “raises a profoundly important policy point and it is advanced with the utmost sincerity and seriousness and I take it very seriously and I think it’s something that this Senate, this body, has got to address seriously because of questions about the development of neurology and brain consciousness and awareness and all of those things.” But he did not endorse Kelley’s proposed ban, voicing support only for a narrower version that applied to mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles. He expressed reservations about limiting judicial discretion in juvenile life sentencing.

Raskin has since come out in favor of an outright ban on sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Kelley reintroduced her proposal as a standalone bill, Senate Bill 259, on January 22 and Raskin signed on as a cosponsor. He told Ballotpedia that his decision to support the full proposal was the result of research into adolescent brain formation and critical judgment that he conducted in preparation for cosponsoring the new bill. Senate Bill 259 died in committee on February 18 but Raskin is on record as disagreeing with the committee’s unfavorable report.

Conclusion

On February 6, Jawando said that Raskin voted last year against a ban on sentencing juveniles to life without parole. We found that claim to be accurate. Raskin did vote against a 2015 amendment to prohibit juvenile life without parole. However, his objections to the amendment were that the bill to which it was offered was not the proper legislative vehicle for the proposal and the proposal required more careful consideration in light of its impact on judicial discretion. He signed on to a standalone version of the proposal on January 22.

Launched in October 2015 and active through October 2018, Fact Check by Ballotpedia examined claims made by elected officials, political appointees, and political candidates at the federal, state, and local levels. We evaluated claims made by politicians of all backgrounds and affiliations, subjecting them to the same objective and neutral examination process. As of 2025, Ballotpedia staff periodically review these articles to revaluate and reaffirm our conclusions. Please email us with questions, comments, or concerns about these articles. To learn more about fact-checking, click here.

Sources and Notes

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