DC City Council Overhauls Criminal Code, Reduces Scope & Penalty for Felony Murder

Yesterday the Washington DC City Council unanimously passed monumental piece of legislation, a 450-page bill that would completely overhaul the city’s criminal laws. The full rewrite was more than a decade in the making and spurred by the simple reality that D.C.’s criminal code was first written by Congress 120 years ago. For a bill of this magnitude, there’s some surprising consensus. Just about everyone involved says the overhaul needed to happen, and people and groups on opposite sides of the criminal justice system say they generally agree with 95% of it.

This forward-thinking piece of criminal justice reform legislation puts the District of Columbia in a position to lead efforts toward sentencing reform and models how legislative bodies can work to reduce extreme sentences.

Some reforms included in the Revised Criminal Code of 2022 (RCCA):

• Eliminating almost all mandatory minimum sentences
• Lowering the maximum sentence possible to 45 years in prison
• Expanding DC’s current second look law, which allows people who committed a crime below the age of 25 to petition for resentencing after serving 15 years, to allow judges to consider resentencing after 20 years of imprisonment for people who were older at the time of the crime
• Reducing the scope and maximum penalty for felony murder, a law that holds people liable for murder if they participated in a felony that resulted in someone’s unintentional death

The RCCA now heads to the desk of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser for her signature or veto. Asked Monday what she would do, stated she would wait and see whether any last-minute changes are made. After Bowser signs or vetoes the bill (the council could override any veto), it would next head to Capitol Hill for a 60-day congressional review period.

More reforms are certainly needed to curb extreme sentencing and racially-biased justice in DC, but the RCCA is a strong and progressive step forward after years of advocacy, research and negotiation, especially in the efforts to end all mandatory minimums, limit sentence maximums to 20 years, and fully repeal felony murder laws.

You can read the letter from The Sentencing Project supporting the RCCA here.