1. Charging.
For all cases charged from this day forward:
a) We will adopt an office-wide presumption not to charge multiple minimum mandatory crimes when one crime accounts for the facts and circumstances of an event. Deputies will focus on limiting the number of charges in an indictment to those that most accurately reflect the misconduct and are most provable.
b) Deputies will only move to declare a defendant a habitual offender with State Prosecutor approval. We should not file a habitual offender petition unless we are seeking to go above a statutory maximum at sentencing out of concern for public safety.
c) Addiction and mental illness drive a substantial number of crimes in Delaware. We must support alternatives to criminalizing addiction and mental illness by diverting people who commit low-level crimes to evidence-based treatment programs and away from the system altogether.
d) Where critical evidence or witnesses may become unavailable if trial is delayed, a conditional guilty plea is warranted. d) We must never impose a zero-tolerance condition upon a person seeking drug, alcohol or mental health treatment, because the path to rehabilitation is never linear. Where there is sufficient evidence to charge, Deputies will utilize discretion to divert more people from the criminal justice system, when it is safe to do so, based upon their need for addiction services and/or mental health treatment. Absent extraordinary circumstances, Deputies should not require an admission of guilt as a prerequisite to entry into court- run diversion programs.
e) We will continue to encourage alternatives to prosecution for misdemeanor possession of marijuana or paraphernalia charges related to marijuana possession. We will encourage police agencies to expand the use of civil citations of marijuana possession in lieu of criminal arrest.
f) Unless approved by the State Prosecutor, we will not prosecute a person for simultaneously possessing a legally owned firearm and a misdemeanor amount of marijuana. Persons prohibited from owning a firearm will be charged with illegal possession of a firearm.
g) We will encourage alternatives to prosecution for Prostitution. We will be cognizant of the potential for accused sex workers to be victims of sex trafficking and always make an appropriate law enforcement referral when we suspect a defendant is a victim of human trafficking. We will also refer people charged with Prostitution to specialized treatment courts designed to assist them.
