Biden says he will sign effort to override D.C. crime laws
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Thursday he would sign a Republican-sponsored resolution blocking new District of Columbia laws that overhaul how the nation’s capital prosecutes and punishes crime.
City officials have spent nearly two decades trying to redo Washington’s criminal laws, including redefining crimes, changing criminal justice policies and reworking how sentences should be handed down after convictions. The overhaul passed the D.C. Council late last year.
But the Republicancontrolled House has decided to wade into city matters, claiming the district’s changes will contribute to already-rising crime in Washington — the number of murders in 2021 was the highest in nearly 20 years — and make it easier for some criminals to get out of prison or evade punishment all together.
The resolution passed the House with some Democratic support and appears poised to clear the Senate on a bipartisan basis as well, perhaps as early as next week.
Biden said in a tweet that he supported statehood for D.C. “But I don’t support some of the changes D.C. Council put forward over the mayor’s objections — such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” he said. “If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. Council did — I’ll sign it.”
In doing so, the president will allow Congress to nullify the city’s laws for the first time in more
than three decades. Democrats will be abandoning a commitment to oppose the unusual rules governing the district that allow Congress to step in and the acquiescence comes despite their longtime push to grant statehood to the nation’s capital.
The GOP effort is part of a growing political backlash against Democratic-led criminal justice changes that picked up pace after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid this week for re-election as some of her Democratic challengers argued that the nation’s third-largest city needed tough-on-crime policies.
Washington’s criminal code hasn’t been updated substantially since it was first drafted in 1901. Criminal justice experts have said it is outdated, confusing and not in touch with how crimes are punished today. In the nation’s capital, like most places in the United States, Black people are disproportionately affected by the criminal laws.
The revisions passed
the D.C. Council late last year would do away with mandatory minimum sentences for many crimes and expand jury trials for lower-level charges. The changes also would reduce the maximum penalties for burglary, carjacking and robbery.
But the district is not a state, and because of that, it lacks the same rights that the 50 states have to make and amend laws. Also, district residents do not have voting members in Congress. While Congress has allowed the city’s residents some powers of “home rule,” it has retained veto powers over district government actions.
House Republicans voted 250-173 to overturn the rewrite of the criminal code.
The crime legislation, which would take effect in 2025, created some friction within the district government. In January, Mayor Muriel Bowser vetoed it, writing in a letter that she had “very significant concerns” about some of the bill’s proposals. She later proposed changes after the council overrode her veto.