Howard County fatality-review team urges court coordinator, better PSAs and state action on firearm enforcement

The Howard County Domestic Violence Fatality Review team presented findings to the county council, recommending a court-based coordinator, stronger public-service announcements for friends and family of victims, mandatory trauma-informed training for judges and state-level fixes to enforce firearm prohibitions in family-law orders.

Devorah Kershner, co-chair of the fatality review team and a member of the State's Attorney’s Office, said the team spent roughly two years reviewing a case that involved multiple jurisdictions and produced four recommendations aimed at preventing future domestic-violence fatalities. She said many public-service announcements currently target victims but do not give family members or friends concrete steps to help someone at risk.

Kershner identified the report’s central legal and practical gap: family-law custody orders that prohibit one or both parties from possessing firearms are not automatically routed to law enforcement the way protective orders are. “Those family law custody type orders…there's no mechanism in place,” she said, noting that in the case under review a custody order had prohibited firearms but there was no way to ensure the order was entered into a system so a firearms dealer or background check would flag it.

The team urged that the state legislature or a state policy change create a mechanism to record and enforce firearm prohibitions stemming from family-law court orders so law enforcement can act (for example, seizing registered firearms tied to a protective order). Kershner said that, in the case reviewed, the suspect who killed the victim had a registered firearm and the lack of an enforcement pathway was a significant shortcoming.

The review also recommended mandatory, not optional, training for judges on trauma and domestic violence so judicial decision-making in custody and related family-law proceedings better accounts for lethality and risk. Kershner said fatality review teams across jurisdictions see judges who currently choose from optional continuing-education topics and that domestic-violence and trauma training should be part of required curricula for judges who handle custody cases.

Council members asked whether a court-based coordinator could be added without state legislation; Kershner and other presenters said a coordinator commonly sits within the court system, not law enforcement, and could be a reassigned staffer rather than a new standalone post. The coordinator’s proposed duties include receiving documentation that court-ordered interventions (domestic-violence counseling, psychological evaluations, mandatory classes) were completed, triaging custody filings for lethality risk and routing lethality assessments to community providers.

Jordan Baker, deputy director of services at HopeWorks (the county’s domestic-violence service provider), described the lethality-assessment program used by police and shared with HopeWorks and the Department of Social Services. She said the program is evidence-based and that when people opt in, HopeWorks attempts follow-up within 24 hours and could receive assessments routed by a court coordinator to offer services and supports.

Law-enforcement speakers described how patrol officers use lethality-assessment questions to determine the dominant aggressor and whether a firearm was used in an assault; if a firearm is involved, officers may seize it and hold it for the duration of a protective order. Presenters and council members noted an ethical and legal barrier: prosecutors and criminal investigators cannot communicate ex parte with judges about family-law matters, which is why a neutral court-based coordinator could bridge information between criminal cases and family-law cases.

Kershner said the team sent its report to all local judges and to the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence for consideration at the state level. She told council members two judges had reached out to discuss the report; the team asked the council to support budgetary requests should the judicial branch request funding for a coordinator and pledged to pursue drafting state-level legislative fixes through the Maryland network.

The council asked the team to provide counts of domestic-violence fatalities for Howard County and for Maryland (2023) and requested updates on outreach to the courts and any draft legislation produced at the state level.

The presentation concluded with the council signaling support for the report’s recommendations and urging that the county and state take steps to close the identified gaps.