Davis v. State, 255 A.3d 56 (Md. 2021)

The Maryland Supreme Court held the Circuit Court did not properly consider Petitioner Howard Davis’ amenability to treatment in any institution, facility, or available programs under Md. Code Ann., Crim. Proc. § 4-202.2(b) and remanded the case, ordering the trial court to apply the principles and conclusions regarding amenability to treatment to Howard Davis’ Case. 

The court offered the following language in support: “To determine amenability to treatment, the court needs to know what treatment is or will be available to meet the child’s needs and address the child’s problems. Presumably, the State, through DJS or other entities, would have that information as part of a waiver/transfer study, even if it is in the form of options that may depend on further evaluations and the child’s progress. The court needs to determine whether those programs would, in fact, be available to the child, for if not, as to that child, they do not exist. Evidence that there were, in fact, DJS programs that could address petitioner’s needs and problems was presented to the court in considerable detail and was not contradicted. 

With an eye both toward the welfare of the child and public safety, which, in our view are inter-related, the court needs to make an assessment of whether it is likely that the child would benefit from an available DJS program better than he or she would from anything likely to be available in the adult system and whether that would reduce the likelihood of recidivism and make the child a more productive law-abiding person. Those are quality assessments that can be based on evidence of how those programs or kinds of programs have worked with other children, from actual data or from reliable studies.”