The Maryland General Assembly debated two criminal justice bills on Tuesday that would increase penalties for leaving loaded guns near unsupervised minors and limit the use of creative expression as evidence in court proceedings.
The Maryland Senate’s judicial proceedings committee held hearings for both pieces of legislation — the Ny’Kala Strawder Act and the PACE Act — on Tuesday.
Sen. Dalya Attar (D-Baltimore City) sponsored the Ny’Kala Strawder Act, which would add a penalty of up to five years in prison or fine for leaving a loaded gun where an unsupervised minor may have access to it.
The bill is named after Ny’Kala Strawder, a 15-year-old who was accidentally shot and killed in 2022 in Baltimore by a 9-year-old boy who was playing with his grandmother’s gun. The grandmother, April Gaskins, was later sentenced to four years in prison for reckless endangerment, The Baltimore Banner reported. Ny’Kala’s family attended the bill’s hearing Tuesday.
“We want this bill because we want to prevent future tragedies,” Attar told the committee. “We don’t want any other family to have to go through this.”
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The current penalty for leaving a loaded gun unsecured is a fine, which makes it difficult for prosecutors to charge the people responsible, Attar said during Tuesday’s committee hearing.
The bill aims to establish consequences for negligent gun owners and encourage people who have guns to keep them in secure places and away from children, Attar said during the hearing.
Legislators also discussed the PACE Act, which would clarify when creative expression, such as songs, writing and visual art, can be used as evidence in court proceedings.
The current protocol for creative expression as evidence in courts is ambiguous, according to a letter about the bill from the state’s public defender office on March 4.
The bill comes after the Maryland Supreme Court deemed rap lyrics spoken by the defendant as admissible in the 2020 murder case Montague v. State. The lyrics “bear a close nexus to the details of the alleged crime,” the court’s opinion read.
“Real life scenarios are played out through emotion and through creativity,” Sen. Johnny Mautz (R-Caroline, Dorchester, Talbot and Wicomico) said during Tuesday’s hearing. “Sometimes those creations can be used as evidence in court. “The PACE Act is set to clarify what is admissible and what is not admissible.”
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The act establishes a four-pronged test to assess whether pieces of creative expression can be admissible in court. The court must decide whether the content is intended to be literal or figurative, whether facts in the content match the allegation, whether the content is relevant to a fact that is being disputed and whether or not the evidence provides value that other pieces of evidence could not.
The bill would ensure that only pieces of creative evidence that correlate with direct facts of the case are admissible, rather than evidence with loose connections or similar themes to the crime, Lucius Outlaw III, a law professor at Howard University, told the committee.
“The problem is that rules of evidence, as currently constituted, are not sufficient to protect artistic expression, particularly rap lyrics, that are being used as evidence,” Outlaw told the committee. “There’s really no clear guidance.”
