A group of Democrats in the legislature, led by Rep. David Sinclair (D-Bath), put forward a radical criminal justice reform bill that would override minimum sentencing guidelines, allowing judges to impose minor penalties for major crimes.

Rep. Sinclair introduced LD 268, An Act to Restore Sentencing Discretion to the Judiciary by Removing Mandatory Minimum Sentences of Incarceration, which could drastically reshape how sentencing works in Maine’s criminal justice system and allow hardened criminals to walk away with little to no punishment.

The bill, set for a public hearing in the Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety (CJPS) on February 10, introduces a new provision into existing law that would essentially override statutory mandatory minimum sentences for crimes beginning next year.

Sinclair’s bill instructs judges to use their own discretion when imposing sentences and permits them to hand down sentences that may be less than the minimums required by existing law.

“This bill provides for the exercise of judicial discretion beginning January 1, 2026 to change all mandatory terms of imprisonment for persons sentenced beginning on that date to maximum terms of imprisonment,” says Sinclair’s bill.

In addition to inserting language into the law that overrides existing requirements, the bill orders the Criminal Law Advisory Commission to provide a list of all mandatory minimum sentencing laws in the state’s legal code and deliver recommendations on how to replace those laws with maximum sentencing guidelines.

The commission will provide its findings by December 3rd, when the CJPS committee will review them and put forward legislation based on the findings.

Currently, judges are required by law to sentence anyone convicted of murder to a minimum of 25 years in prison.

If Sinclair and his three Democrat co-sponsors succeed, a judge could theoretically give a convicted murderer a month-long prison term before releasing the criminal back into the public.

The Maine Wire reached out to Sinclair, asking why he supports the removal of minimum sentencing guidelines, but he did not immediately respond.

The bill appears to be a particularly drastic example of the progressive idea of restorative justice.

That version of restorative justice is typically characterized by a belief that criminal punishments should be lenient, focusing entirely on rehabilitating prisoners while ignoring the retributive aspect of criminal justice. (Other versions of restorative justice place equivalent emphasis on the victims of crime as well as society at large).

Restorative Justice activists in Maine often hew to the more progressive interpretation and point to Leo R. Hylton as the poster boy for their movement.

Hylton is currently in prison for hacking a 10-year-old girl with a machete multiple times during a 2008 home invasion, leaving her with permanently disfiguring scars.

Since being in prison, Hylton has expressed remorse for his crimes and has earned multiple college degrees, leading some on the Left to call for his early release despite the severity of his crimes.

If Sinclair’s bill passes into law, a judge sympathetic to a more lenient restorative justice agenda could be confronted with a similarly heinous crime and impose an insignificant sentence due to alleged mitigating circumstances, regardless of the justice due to the victim.