74 Am. U. L. Rev. 179 (2024).

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Abstract

This Article presents a history of how the District of Columbia (D.C.) recently rewrote its criminal code—legislatively adopting the first Model Penal Code (MPC)-based comprehensive criminal code reform in the U.S. in decades—and how Congress blocked the bill in 2023, its only criminal legislation of the year. The development and fate of the legislation has national implications. Like D.C., about fifteen states have never undergone MPC-based reform and dozens of other MPC-based codes have degraded over time and need comprehensive revision. After decades of reform failures, D.C. created an independent agency solely dedicated to criminal code revision. Emphasizing public transparency and taking an integrated, data-driven approach to set liability and punishments, the agency worked closely with prosecutors, defense attorneys, and others for five years. The resulting bill, the Revised Criminal Code Act of 2022, adopted the principal features of the Model Penal Code and is the first and only comprehensive revision of the District’s substantive criminal laws since Congress enacted the D.C. Code in 1901. Legislative debate on the bill centered on a couple dozen penalty changes, misdemeanor jury trial rights, and a “second look” review of lengthy sentences while core Model Penal Code features and hundreds of other liability and penalty changes were uniformly accepted. The amended bill passed unanimously. However, District legislation is subject to Congressional disapproval, and the bill was blocked when pandemic-driven crime rates spiked, a new House Republican majority targeted the bill as part of a national tough-on-crime messaging campaign, and President Biden withdrew administration support. For now, the District’s outdated criminal code remains in place. The District’s mixed legislative success presents a singular case study for other jurisdictions on the modern possibilities and perils of comprehensive criminal code reform.

* J.D. Yale Law School; M.A. Yale University; B.A. St. John’s College. The Author served as Executive Director of the D.C. Criminal Code Reform Commission 2016-2022, the period when the District’s 2022 criminal code reform legislation was drafted. The Author particularly thanks Donald Braman, Virginia Davis, Jessie Ginsburg, Laura Hankins, Julie James, Carlton Miller, Jinwoo Park, Kathy Patterson, Michael Serota, and Patrice Sulton for assistance with aspects of this Article. Support for this Article was provided by Arnold Ventures.