Rep. Gerald L. Brady

This bill increases the 1-time fee from $35 to $50 for Delaware’s environmental license plates in order to increase revenue to improve the capacity of the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays and The Partnership for the Delaware Estuary to fulfill their responsibilities to the protection and restoration of Delaware’s estuaries.

United States Supreme Court case law and scientific research has changed how we think about juvenile delinquency. We know now that an adolescent’s brain is not fully developed until his/her mid-twenties which makes juveniles especially prone to making poor choices. In the landmark case of Miller v. Alabama, wherein the United States Supreme Court prohibited mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles, the Court wrote: “Children are constitutionally different from adults for sentencing purposes.” This proposed legislation would repeal and remove all minimum-mandatory sentencing schemes for juveniles adjudicated delinquent in Family Court because children are different than adults. Family Court judges and commissioners would still be able to impose a commitment to a DSCYF secure placement, but would now have the ability to exercise their judicial discretion to fashion an appropriate sentence for an individual juvenile.

This bill permits judges to utilize their discretion in determining whether a juvenile charged with possession of a firearm during commission of a felony should be transferred back to Family Court or remain in Superior Court. Prior to 2017, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony was only one of five criminal charges where judges had no discretion in determining whether a juvenile should be treated as a juvenile or an adult because the statute required a juvenile charged with these offenses to be prosecuted as an adult. House Bill 9, which was enacted last year, provided judges the discretion to determine how a juvenile should be treated for four other offenses. This is a continuation of that effort. The bill simply changes the language from ‘shall’ to ‘may’ to allow judges to weigh the possibility that a juvenile may be better served in Delaware’s Family Court system through the amenability process already enumerated in Title 10 § 1010 and § 1011. This bill also raises the age from 15 to 16.

Designating February 6, 2018 as "Ronald Reagan Day" in Delaware

Delaware’s existing Criminal Code was adopted in 1973 and was based on the Model Penal Code. Since that time, the Criminal Code has quadrupled in size and expanded to other parts of the Code without consideration to the general effects of the change on the Criminal Code’s overall structure, its terminology, or its application, creating numerous inconsistencies, redundancies, ambiguities and contradictions. In 2014, the General Assembly established the Criminal Justice Improvement Committee to review opportunities for efficiencies in the Delaware Criminal Code, including identifying: “disproportionate, redundant, outdated, duplicative, or inefficient statutes” and “crimes that should or should not constitute potential jail time”. The Criminal Justice Improvement Committee Working Group was created to accomplished the Criminal Justice Improvement Committee’s stated goals and has worked diligently for the last three years, in concert with other criminal justice stakeholders, to restore the criminal code to a clear, readable, and proportional code. The recommendations found in their Final Report are the basis for this Act and its companion bill. This Act is one of two bills that seek to bring back clarity and consistency to the Criminal Code. This Act repeals and replaces Title 11, Part I, Chapters 1 through 15 of the Delaware Criminal Code and replaces it with an improved code that is easy to understand, consolidates offenses and introduces rational and proportional sentencing structures. This Act, and its companion bill, will take effect 20 months from the date it is signed, to allow for a smooth integration of the improved code into existing structures, give public and private criminal justice stakeholders an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the improved code, and provide an opportunity to develop for the first time model jury instructions and sentencing guidelines. A Commentary, which explains how the current criminal code relates to the improved code, will be publicly available during this transition period. The 20 months will also give time to introduce technical corrections bills that will make changes to the Code necessitated by the improved code (e.g., update cross references to Title 11, Part I, found in other Titles), as well as incorporate legislative decisions passed by the 148th and 149th General Assembly that were not captured by the improved code.

This Senate Resolution designates August 4, 2018, as “Barack Obama Day” in the State of Delaware.

This House Concurrent Resolution recognizes the week of May 7 to May 14, 2018, as “Travel and Tourism Week” in Delaware.

This Act substitutes gender neutral phrases for the ones currently contained in the State Song of Delaware. The proposed changes come at the request of Donn Devine, a retired Brigadier General in the Delaware National Guard and co-author of the State Song of Delaware, who believes that this new phrasing will make the song more relevant to future generations of Delawareans.

This Act revises the crime of "unlawfully permitting a child access to a firearm," an existing class A misdemeanor under Delaware law. The offense is renamed "unsafe storage of a firearm" to place emphasis on firearm safety and proper storage. Under the revised statute, a crime is committed when a person intentionally or recklessly stores or leaves a loaded firearm where a minor or other person prohibited by law, or “unauthorized person,” can access the firearm, and the unauthorized person obtains the firearm. The unauthorized person’s use of the firearm to inflict serious physical injury or death is not an element of the offense, but is an aggravating factor. For the purposes of this offense, “stores and leaves” does not include when firearm is carried by or under the control of the owner or another lawfully-authorized user. Under this Act, the offense is a class B misdemeanor if there are no aggravating circumstances. If, however, the unauthorized person uses the firearm to commit a crime, uses the firearm to inflict serious physical injury or death upon anyone, or transfers the firearm to another unauthorized person, the offense is a class A misdemeanor. It is an affirmative defense that the person stored the firearm in a locked container, disabled it with a tamper-resistant trigger lock, or stored it in a location a reasonable person would have thought was safe from access by unauthorized persons. This Act provides an exception for firearms manufactured in or before 1899, or a replica to such firearms, if the replica is not designed or redesigned for using rimfire or conventional centerfire fixed ammunition. This Act also makes technical changes to conform existing law to the standards of the Delaware Legislative Drafting Manual.

Delaware’s existing Criminal Code was adopted in 1973 and was based on the Model Penal Code. Since that time, the Criminal Code has quadrupled in size and expanded to other parts of the Code without consideration to the general effects of the change on the Criminal Code’s overall structure, its terminology, or its application, creating numerous inconsistencies, redundancies, ambiguities and contradictions. This Act is one of two bills that seek to bring back clarity and consistency to the Criminal Code.