DE HB397

Permits Superior Court to consider habitual criminal sentence modification petitions out of the standard sequence when the Attorney General consents and the Court determines it to be in the interest of justice.

Requires authorization from high-level Department of Justice officials (Attorney General, Chief Deputy Attorney General, State Prosecutor, or Chief County Prosecutors) to approve out-of-sequence petitions.

Limits out-of-sequence petition requests to Office of Defense Services leadership (Chief Defender, Chief Deputy Defender, Chief Conflicts Counsel) for represented petitioners, or to private counsel for unrepresented petitioners.

Ensures individual petitioners do not inadvertently waive their single opportunity for sentence review and maintains consistency in sentence modification sequencing decisions.