Lawmakers grant new powers to Maryland Attorney General’s Office

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The Maryland Attorney General’s Office is set to receive broad new powers, including the authority to prosecute police-involved deaths, under a set of bills that passed out of the General Assembly this session.

The office will also be able to investigate and sue over civil rights violations in housing, employment, public accommodations and leasing of commercial property, which was another legislative priority for Attorney General Anthony Brown when he took over the office this year.

“In seeking the privilege of becoming Maryland’s attorney general, I promised that this office would become a partner in the ongoing struggle to ensure equal rights and opportunities for all Marylanders,” said Brown, a Democrat, in a news release.

The bias legislation will allow Brown to investigate reports that private entities discriminated in violation of either federal or state law. The Attorney General’s Office can sue if the investigation finds reasonable cause to believe that discrimination has taken place.

“The new law will allow the Attorney General, for the first time in Maryland history, to join the efforts of the (U.S.) Department of Justice and the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights to protect Marylanders from bias and discrimination,” Brown’s office said in a news release.

The office also won the authority to prosecute police officers if they are found criminally at fault for having killed someone or caused an injury “likely to result in death.”

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The prosecution bill expands on powers that the General Assembly previously granted to the Attorney General’s Office. Lawmakers authorized the office to investigate police-involved deaths as part of a larger police reform package in 2021, but left prosecutorial decisions in the hands of local state’s attorneys at the time.

Under the 2021 law, the Independent Investigations Division of the Attorney General’s Office probes all police-involved fatalities in Maryland and submits reports with findings to the local state’s attorneys, but does not make recommendations about whether to prosecute officers.

The law was intended to build trust by ensuring that an independent agency, not a police officers’ colleagues, would carry out the investigation after a police-involved shooting.

Brown’s predecessor, Brian E. Frosh, launched the IID and supported efforts to give his office prosecutorial authority. Brown continued the push when he took office this year.

This year’s bill drew opposition from county prosecutors who said they were elected by their constituents to make prosecutorial decisions.

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In written testimony presented at one of the bill’s committee hearings, Howard County State’s Attorney Rich H. Gibson Jr. said “there is no merit to claims that prosecutors are unable to evaluate and hold accountable law enforcement officers within our jurisdictions. To assert that we, as the elected state’s attorneys, would be biased and either incapable or unwilling to prosecute law enforcement officers in these cases under the appropriate circumstances is not founded in any facts.”

And in a letter to Brown sent last month, Maryland State Fraternal Order of Police President Clyde Boatwright objected to granting “complete authority” in prosecuting police-involved deaths to the Attorney General’s Office.

“The Maryland State Fraternal Order of Police believes firmly in checks and balances when it comes to the criminal prosecution of any citizen, including law enforcement officers,” Boatwright wrote.

Both bills are still awaiting signatures from Democratic Gov. Wes Moore.