WASHINGTON — Scores of survivors are mobilizing against a controversial D.C. Council bill that could release hundreds of violent offenders back on the street.
The Second Look Act would have a judge revisit sentences for inmates who were younger than 25 when they committed a crime. That's an expansion from a 2017 law that allows inmates who committed crimes when they were younger than 18 to ask a judge to reconsider their sentences.
The final vote on the new plan is slated for Tuesday, Dec. 15, and at this point, it looks likely to pass.
"Since she's no longer here, I have her picture hanging over the dining room table," Nardyne Jefferies said, caressing a plastic heart with a picture of her 16-year-old daughter, Brishell Jones, that she has hanging from a chandelier.
On March 30, 2010, Jefferies ran to South Capitol Street in Southeast after a phone call from Brishell's best friend that she'd been shot and killed. Three other people were murdered, and six people were wounded in a horrific mass shooting that had started with a dispute over a piece of costume jewelry.
A heartwrenching photo in the Washington Post captured Jefferies collapsed on the side of the street. Police had to hold her back when she tried to go to her murdered daughter.
"These hurt to see, especially when she was little here with me," Jefferies said, showing pictures on Zoom of her daughter when she was young.
All but one of the convicted killers was younger than 25, making them potentially eligible for release in a few years under D.C.'s expanded Second Look Act.
"I think Charles Allen's bill is irresponsible, very disrespectful and a total slap in the face," Jefferies said, referring to the bill authored by the Council's public safety chair.
Allen said the bill requires judges to put victims' voices at the heart of hearings that would allow inmates to seek early release after 15 years. Incarcerated citizens would have to have a clean record in prison and show that they had tried to better themselves. They would have to convince a judge to reduce their sentence.
"My heart goes out to Miss Jefferies," Councilmember Allen said.
Fifty-three inmates have already been freed under the current law that allows early release for crimes committed as a teenager. Allen said none of them have re-offended. One of them, Michael Plummer, has been working with D.C.'s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services to try to convince young people not to take the path he took.
"He's actively working to stop the next violence, the next gunshot that could ring across our city and take another precious life," Allen said.
A preliminary vote to expand potential release to more than 300 other inmates passed the Council unanimously.
"You're saying rapists and violent repeat offenders can go back on the street," Jefferies said. "Well, if you feel that way, then let them come into your ward, open your house and take them in."
Victim's advocate Henderson Long and other survivors are planning to rally Thursday at 4 p.m. in front of the Wilson Building, in hopes of convincing the Council to vote down the change.