Why juvenile justice legislation named in honor of slain Baltimore teen hasn’t passed

BALTIMORE — Gov. Wes Moore waded through hundreds of pieces of legislation and has signed over a thousand since the 2024 legislative session ended in April. But one juvenile justice bill sponsored in honor of a slain teen girl never saw ink from his ceremonial pen.

The NyKayla Strawder Memorial Act never even reached his desk.

NyKayla Strawder was 15 in 2022 when she was fatally shot on the porch outside of her West Baltimore home by a nine-year-old boy who had gained access to his grandmother’s gun.

For the second year in a row, legislation that would connect young children like the boy who shot her to diversionary and rehabilitative services failed to pass — this year because lawmakers were hard-pressed to pass a juvenile justice omnibus bill ahead of their deadline.

The NyKayla Strawder Memorial Act, or Senate Bill 2, would have required that cases in which children under 13 are alleged to have participated in an act that leads to the death of another be automatically forwarded to the Department of Juvenile Services.

DJS intake officers would have then moved forward with a Child in Need of Supervision, or CINS, petition.

CINS petitions are typically filed for children who are frequently absent from school, unable to be controlled by their guardians, a danger to themselves or others, or commit crimes that only apply to children, like underage drinking offenses.

In 2023, the legislation unanimously passed out of the Senate but stalled in the House Judiciary Committee.

This year, Sen. Jill P. Carter’s bill honoring Strawder unanimously passed out of the Senate on March 4 — more than a month until the legislature adjourned.

But the House Judiciary Committee, which held the hearing for the bill, didn’t vote it out to the floor until the last day of session, on April 8. At breakneck speed, the House pushed the legislation back over to the Senate, which neglected to give the bill final approval before their midnight deadline.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Luke Clippinger, a Democrat representing South Baltimore, said that the need to push prioritized juvenile justice legislation and a necessary amendment to Strawder’s bill slowed its progress, but that the legislation ultimately made it to the Senate in time.

Asked moments after the 2024 session adjourned what caused the bill to falter for a second time, Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said he was unaware it had passed back over to his chamber.

Carter, a Baltimore Democrat, said that Bolon Xi-Anaru, Strawder’s cousin, texted her periodically on the session’s last day, waiting for the bill to pass on to Moore, a Democrat, before time ran out.

“I was fantasizing about the Strawder family standing with the governor” when he signed their bill, Carter said.

But no such luck in 2024.

To Xi-Anaru, the politicking required to push bills forward makes him feel as though his arms are tied behind his back.

“You’ve got to play these games with the news station,” he said. “You’ve got to play these games with your representative.”

Strawder’s family had been working to reform Maryland juvenile justice law since 2022, beginning only days after NyKayla was killed Aug. 8.

According to Xi-Anaru, his family first pushed for amendments to the Juvenile Justice Reform Act that had passed months earlier. Among its many measures, that law prohibits police from charging 10- to 12-year-olds with crimes not deemed violent under Maryland statute.

Carter was the first lawmaker to respond to Strawder’s family, saying that she didn’t believe that policy needed to be amended because not enough time had passed to see if it would produce a positive effect.

“Once she spoke out, we were pretty upset,” said Xi-Anaru. “We felt that it was very clear in our case that something needed to happen — no matter what happened.”

Carter met with members of Strawder’s family, some of whom have backgrounds in public health and juvenile services, to discuss a legislative path forward for 2023. They landed on CINS, believing the young boy who killed Strawder was in desperate need of rehabilitative services that process would provide.

“All we asked was to make it mandatory,” Xi-Anaru said. “And that was the bill.”

Beyond closely monitoring the progress of their legislation, members of Strawder’s family also found themselves advocating to extract language mirroring their bill from 2024’s priority juvenile justice legislation.

As originally drafted, House Bill 814 would have similarly required that CINS petitions be filed for children under 13 alleged to have participated in an act that resulted in someone’s death.

Xi-Anaru and his aunt were at a rally for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America outside of the State House when they learned their legislation was wrapped into House Bill 814.

Xi-Anaru said he ran into Clippinger and Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith, a Democrat from Montgomery County, in the hallway that day. He reminded both of them of his bill.

“I said, ‘Don’t forget about NyKayla this year, sir,’ and Sen. Smith said ‘Condolences, again to the family,’ and ‘We’re doing all we can,’ and Luke Clippinger — I quote — said, ‘I won’t,’” said Xi-Anaru.

“It was no ill will intended at all — we understand that,” he said. “But it was a slap in the face.”

When Xi-Anaru and his family appeared in Annapolis in February for their hearing on Senate Bill 2, they requested that the mirrored language be stricken from the larger bill.

Smith told Strawder’s family during their bill hearing that the legislation bearing her name would be voted out of his committee and onto the chamber floor as it had in 2023.

In a statement a few days later, Clippinger said that legislative leadership did not intend to “offend the family in any way,” that the measure would be stripped from the overarching juvenile justice bill and that Senate Bill 2 would be considered “should it pass the Senate.”

Clippinger told The Baltimore Sun that his committee planned to pass Strawder’s bill after it pushed the juvenile justice legislation to the House floor. Additionally, he said Senate Bill 2 needed to be amended because it originally would have allowed delinquency petitions to be filed against children under 13, which misaligned with Carter’s intent according to her testimony during the bill’s hearing.

“I will say that we will certainly take it up and take it up early in session and move that bill next year,” Clippinger said in May.

Xi-Anaru and his father Daniel Jarvis — Strawder’s great-uncle — said that Clippinger has never reached out to their family.

“I’ve called his office many times over the past few years — I’ve sent at least three or four emails — and we’ve never been given the opportunity to speak to Mr. Clippinger,” Xi-Anaru said.

But the initial inclusion of their measure in the broader legislation proved that their bill “was a good bill,” he said.

Clippinger said that he deferred communications with Strawder’s family regarding the bill to Carter.

According to Xi-Anaru, his family was told passing a bill can take three to five years when they called Clippinger’s office. But he pointed to legislation named in honor of Pava LaPere, a prominent tech CEO who was killed in September, and Jaelynn Wiley, a teenager killed in her high school by a classmate in 2018.

Two bills in honor of LaPere passed in 2024. Jaelynn’s law was initially introduced in 2022, and passed in 2023.

To Xi-Anaru, who said Strawder died defending her younger brother over personal issues he had with the child who shot her, there’s a clear distinction.

“In both of these situations, it’s a different race and culture,” Xi-Anaru asserted.

“This little girl lost her life, and she lost her life standing strong — protecting her family,” he said. “Why is it that our bill keeps getting delayed and being forgotten about?”

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