Spotlight Delaware hosted a debate Tuesday night in Wilmington for the three Democrats vying for the party’s nomination in the Sept. 15 primary election.
Incumbent Attorney General Kathy Jennings faced challengers Dwayne Bensing, the former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, and Patty Rickman, a domestic abuse survivor turned advocate and author.
Each candidate answered a dozen questions from Editor in Chief Jacob Owens around criminal prosecution, civil rights litigation and public transparency of law enforcement over the course of more than an hour of conversation.
The entire unedited conversation can be found in a podcast while the transcript that follows is lightly edited for clarity and concision.
Patty, you are not an attorney, but the state Constitution does not require you to be one, to be attorney general. Delaware has never elected an attorney general who is not a member of the state bar, though. Why should voters buck that trend, and how would you approach the role if elected?
Rickman: So thank you very much for that question, and I’ve been getting that question a lot lately. I’m a domestic violence survivor turned advocate, turned author, and now your next attorney general. And I have seen the criminal justice system from the inside out.
My abuser pled guilty twice to domestic violence related to crimes like stalking, domestic terrorism, and multiple violations of the court order. So I’ve seen where the laws that are supposed to defend and protect all Delawareans, not be adjudicated in our criminal justice system.
I do have vast litigation experience with my health care background. For 25 years, I owned a small accounts receivable company where I stood up to big insurance payers like UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross/Blue Shield, where I stood toe-to-toe when they denied claims, and they could have been adjudicated and fallen to our seniors and our veterans.
And I stood toe-to-toe with them multiple times, and I had a 96% success rating, which is the same as litigation. And why I’m running is because we need someone to stand up and say, law and order should be applied and adjudicated, and that we should make sure that all laws are enforced to protect all Delawareans. And I’m that attorney general that will do that. Thank you.
Dwayne, the attorney general represents the interest of Delaware in civil and criminal cases. You clearly have a long career in civil rights litigation, but you have never served as a prosecutor. How would you approach bridging that gap for DOJ’s criminal division oversight?
Bensing: That’s right. I certainly approach this as a civil rights attorney.
My career has been as a civil rights attorney. And the reason that I’m running is because I think that the challenges we’re facing right now as a society, not just from Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., but also the tech bro billionaire class, the so-called broligarchy, needs leadership in the office for attorney general in the Department of Justice who understands the North Star of our civil rights protections.
And those civil rights are the cornerstone of our criminal prosecution as well. Our constitutional rights to privacy, our constitutional rights from cruel and excessive force, our constitutional rights to be treated equally under the law.
And I think that what many Delawareans have experienced is that our Department of Justice is not evenly applied to our criminal matters and our civil matters. So we need a leader in that office who understands the challenges our democracy faces, that the call is coming from inside the house.
And so I’m ready to lead the Department of Justice, lead our criminal division and our civil division and our civil rights division to ensure that all of the constitutional and civil rights of our citizens are enforced, enforced with vigilance, because we’ve got to protect democracy right here in the first state.
Kathy, you have served as attorney general for nearly eight years now. Delaware has rarely seen the role held for more than two terms in its modern history. Why do you want a third term and why should voters entrust you to it?
Jennings: I grew up in this city to a single mom. My father left me before I was born and my mother was penniless. We moved in with my grandparents and I was raised in a very loving family, but we had very little in the way of material goods. So I grew up thinking, you know what, we need to help everyone achieve the American dream. My mom became a nurse. She was the first college graduate in our family. My grandma made it to eighth grade and that was it. But my mom was a real model for me. I have her wedding band on tonight because she will always be my hero. She became a public health nurse and I went with her everywhere.
So it’s no surprise that I joined the attorney general’s office to help Delawareans. I joined the criminal division, second female in the criminal division. And I was lucky enough to have learned a great deal about the justice system, about trying cases.
I believe that where we are at this point in our history, in Delaware, we have had the safest years on record in terms of violent crime. There’s still more work to be done, especially with respect to gun violence. And then we have a president in the White House who has turned the Constitution and the rule of law on its head. I have sued him 60 times and he has two years left.
I will keep fighting for Delawareans, for their rights, for the money they deserve, as long as that man is in the White House. And I hope that we can then elect a Democratic president.
Kathy, you told the Joint Finance Committee last year that the Department of Justice was, “critically understaffed,” with 31 vacancies among 243 attorney positions, including many senior deputy attorney general positions. Has that situation materially improved? And what have you learned about why experienced attorneys were or are leaving?
Jennings: Retention is a national issue for public service attorneys. It always has been. And unfortunately, our deputy attorneys general can serve 10 years in the office and they still don’t make a starting salary in a private firm in this city. It’s outrageous.
And each and every year, I fight for more attorneys, more support staff. And each and every year, we fight to get them raises.
They unionized. Our office is a union shop right now. And that is a very good thing. With the union’s help, I advocated successfully with a brand new governor that we should get a substantial raise for the people in our office. What I can say is they got it. They got 20% over three years. But it is not nearly enough.
We need more and I’ll keep fighting for more. Our vacancy rate has gone down dramatically with that improvement. And I can tell you that I am so honored to work with amazing people in our office. They certainly don’t stay for the money.
Dwayne and Patty, how would you address the DOJ hiring practices to ensure the department isn’t shorthanded into the future?
Bensing: I think acceptance is the first step to recovery here. And I’m glad to hear that our attorney general is now working on this issue. But it shouldn’t have ever reached crisis levels. And it was just last year that it was a vacancy crisis.
And let me tell you, that results in taxpayer dollars going to private elite law firms, the ones that were just referenced in this city, making a lot more than I make as legal director of the ACLU of Delaware. That we’re outsourcing that work to those private law firms because we don’t have enough talent in the Delaware Department of Justice.
Our attorney general has been there for eight years. Any public interest attorney, and I’ve spent my career as a public interest attorney, could see this crisis coming down the pike. It should not have taken the unionization of our Delaware Department of Justice to be the wake-up call that we needed to increase the morale, to increase the pay.
I’ve spent my career as a public interest lawyer. I know what motivates folks. I like to joke that I’m the lowest paid lawyer in the state of Delaware. I’m not quite sure that’s true, but it’s pretty close. And so I know that what calls people to public interest is not the paycheck. It is the work that we do. And so you really need a leader who understands how to retain talent.
I grew the ACLU legal department from a department of one to a department that now has three staff attorneys, two first-year legal fellows, and a paralegal. I know how to recruit people. I know what the call to service feels like for a young generation. So I’m a professor at the Delaware Law School, and we will increase that pipeline of young talent with the work and the mission of the Department of Justice.
Rickman: I’m a lead-by-example type leader. I feel like the buck stops with me, and I totally take accountability for all of my businesses that I’ve owned.
And from what my experience is in the criminal justice system from a domestic violence survivor turned advocate is that I did not experience many, and I have to say many, employees from the Delaware Department of Justice that seemed happy. And there was a lot of retention turnover.
Just in my experience, it was between six and eight. And the feedback that I would get off the record, they’d say, ‘Off the record, Ms. Rickman, is that the policies and procedures were not followed and abided by, and that it was seemingly a catch-and-release system.’ And what I know about leadership is, if you’re not happy with what you do, if you’re not abiding by the rules and the policies and procedures as an employee, if you don’t have the leader that stands by that integrity, then you’re not going to be happy with what you do. And it’s not going to speak to us Delawareans.
I know that from my experience, and as an advocate, I’ve talked to now thousands of domestic violence survivors, sexual assault survivors, their neighbors, their friends, their family. And it’s been the same report. They’ve had the same experience with the criminal justice system. And if you’re a survivor and you’re having that as a victim, and the neighbors and the friends and the nieces and the nephews, there’s something going on.
And it starts with the leadership. And as an attorney general, that would default to me. And I intend on leading by example and having an inclusive leadership staff with me and following laws and following policies and procedures so that retention is higher, so that we don’t have the issue that has just been within the last year.
Gun violence has been a historic issue in Delaware. The state reached a recent peak in 2022 when 82 people were killed in 233 shootings. The numbers have fallen significantly since then, but 47 people still died last year in shootings as deaths had ticked up in recent years. What is one change you would make to Delaware’s approach to prosecuting gun crimes? And what evidence convinces you that that change would make Delaware safer?
Bensing: So I applaud our General Assembly for taking on this challenge. We’ve had some amazing progress in our enforcement opportunities at the Delaware Department of Justice to really stem the gun violence where it starts.
We have got to track down these illegal guns that are getting out into our community, and we need to get it at its source. And so I think that this whack-a-mole approach to gun violence that we’ve had that really lends itself to unconstitutional policing, we have stops that occur and then we seize the weapon, we need a more strategic approach that really comes from or addresses the supply side of where these weapons are coming from.
Delaware is the source of a lot of where these illegal guns are coming from in Delaware crimes for gun crimes and also regionally. And so this has been an issue that we’ve been working on for years, and it’s taken years for us to finally get the General Assembly to wake up to this crisis of gun violence.
I think Delaware is a microcosm of what we’re seeing on the national level. We brag about crime rates being low, well, that tracks perfectly with our national crime rates. I don’t think that any person at this table can take any credit for that decrease in our crime levels or the priority that needs to be placed on reining in gun violence and the gun access in our communities. But I think it starts at the source, who are the gun distributors, who are the gun sellers, who are providing the community with these illegal guns.
Rickman: So I want to start off by a name, Kadir Skinner. You know, and I find myself getting emotional just talking about him, but I feel like we have to have the ‘meet-our-Delawareans-where they-are approach.’
We cannot say that pointing the fingers as adults, as politicians, as humans, is not going to filter into our youth. It is. And I will piggyback on a little bit of what Dwayne said, because I agree with that. We need to get the illegal guns off the streets. And meeting our youth where they are, going into communities, talking to leaders, talking to the families, sitting down and having conversations.
You know, I have to be fair and just, because that’s who I am, but hearing a little bit of Kathy Jennings’ private story really got to me, because I’d never heard it before. And I appreciate her sharing that with us.
That’s how we connect as humans. That’s how we connect as individuals. And we need to go into our communities and have mentorship programs for our youth. That’s what they need. They don’t need to see the redirection as politicians. They need inclusion. They need unity. And that’s going to be my approach as your next attorney general.
Jennings: Public safety is the No. 1 issue that the attorney general is responsible for. And it’s the No. 1 issue above all else. Always has been. Always will be.
Gun violence has been an almost intractable problem for so many years. There was a time when Wilmington was known as “Murder Town.”
And it was incredibly frustrating to learn about. And so when I took office in 2019, we went to work. We are equipping our police departments with crime gun intelligence centers. Wilmington has one now, which is a huge benefit because we can trace a gun, a crime gun, back to its origin. And that makes a big difference. Every month, I sit down with the U.S. attorney, with the mayor, with the police chief, with the federal partners like ATF and others. And we track every gun arrest in our city. And we make sure that we are focused on the most violent gun offenders. That’s the No. 1 reason why someone goes to prison right now.
But, you know, Patty’s right. The answer is not just locking people up. We need to do it. We need to make our streets safer. And we have made our streets safer. But the problem is that if we’re not working on prevention, we’re not giving children the tools that they need from the very beginning of their lives, then we’re going to rinse and repeat. And so we’re heavily involved in a gun violence intervention program that, in part, is run by an employee in our office, Corie Priest. And it’s making a difference. They’re taking the most violent offenders among us, and they’re teaching them a different way.
Juvenile arrests remain substantially lower than a decade ago. But violent offense arrests have risen from their pandemic-era lows. How do you assess Delaware’s current approach to juvenile diversion? And what would you change, if anything, to reduce serious youth offending while keeping young people out of the criminal justice system when appropriate?
Rickman: I think I kind of touched on that with the last question. We need to meet our youth where they are. I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland. And my parents owned a home right outside the city.
And I remember a time where our Baltimore City police officers would play hopscotch and jump rope with our youth. And what that did is that built bridges, that planted seeds, and then mentors and priests and pastors would come into that. And then organizations like Campus Life, which is what I belonged to as a 14-year-old, it literally breathed life back into the human that I am. I would not be the candidate that I am sitting here if it wasn’t for a woman by the name of Sarah Woodlawn, who believed in me, who breathed that life back into me. Because I could have been caught up in different situations. And that’s what’s needed. We need to, you know, spend time with our youth.
If we’re not listening as leaders, and again, if we’re pointing fingers in the other direction, and constantly it’s the Democrats versus the Republicans versus the independents, and we can’t meet somewhere in the middle, then that is what our youth is ingesting. That is going to set them up for negativity. And depending on situations, they might go into a different direction. They might not have people like Sarah to breathe life back into them.
We need to open our minds and realize that there are other things that we can do as leaders who would be able to achieve that. And then there’s conversations that me, as a 53-year-old white lesbian woman, will not understand that we’ll be having in Black American and Delawarean homes. They have conversations with their young sons that I will never understand. So we need to meet our Delawareans where they are.
Jennings: This is the most important issue of our time in our state and across our nation. Our children need us. They are our future. And we need to be their future as well.
That means that we need to have a public education system that is strong and that nurtures reading. I think the most important thing a young child can learn is how to read. It will guide the rest of their lives. And I can tell you that there are really great programs in Delaware that focus on children, but there’s not enough. There’s not enough. And we need to do more.
We need to make sure that our children have the ability to grow up in a nurturing environment and to succeed. We have cut back in the criminal justice system, especially, and we have led on this effort, to make sure that children stay out of the school-to-prison pipeline. Civil citations are the norm now for a huge variety of crimes because that means a child never even needs to go to Family Court and get caught up in that system.
Once a child ends up at Ferris School, the recidivism rate is 85%. That’s outrageous. That needs to change. We should never get there. And if we can continue to nurture youth throughout their childhood, I believe we can do a whole lot better in our state and that we’ll be safer and our children will be better off.
Bensing: Well, our youth is exactly what brought me to Delaware. I was on the legal team that sued our state because of their failure to provide an adequate education to our students.
We’ve had leaders in Delaware who talk platitudes about our youth and our future, but when push comes to shove, have not made the investments that are necessary. The result of our litigation against the state, then-Gov. Carney argued there was no constitutional right to an education. The result, the independent studies showed that we are underfunding our school systems by $600 million to $1 billion each year. That is a crisis level. And to put it in comparison, Gov. Meyer called a special session when Donald Trump threatened to withhold $600 million of Delaware state funds. I don’t know why an emergency session wasn’t called when the independent report on our education funding came out.
Our education system is at crisis level, and we cannot address our juvenile justice system without addressing our education system. And it was our county executive, our counties’ executives, who ignored our property tax crisis. When Attorney General Jennings was No. 2 in the New Castle County executive’s office, they turned a blind eye to the plain letter law that we need to reevaluate our property values. That has a direct impact on the resources available for our public schools to serve those students.
And the 85% recidivism rate that you just heard, that is such a failure that we are there after this many years of the current administration that we still cannot provide alternative pathways for our youth. I’m a former middle school teacher, so this issue matters tremendously to me. And we have got to find diversion programs that actually work and that do not result in the revolving door for our school-to-prison pipeline. We need to invest in programs and schools, not school resource officers that fast-track that school-to-prison pipeline. And we need to find actual community-based interventions that work and provide the necessary resources for our youth.
Jennings: I served as second-in-command at the county for one year. During that period of time, my role in reassessment was zero.
In the past two years, Delaware State Police have announced at least 16 arrests involving people accused of their fifth, sixth, seventh, or even ninth DUI offense. Several were allegedly driving on suspended or revoked licenses. What is failing when a driver reaches that level of repeat offending? And what should Delaware do differently to prevent chronic DUI offenders from getting back behind the wheel?
Jennings: Delaware has a good record with respect to DUI enforcement. The first time someone is arrested for a DUI, the numbers are very low in Delaware. We’re among the best.
Having said that, how in the world does someone get their third, fourth, fifth DUI arrest? They get them because they’re driving. They’re not allowed to even start their car. They don’t have a license. What they do have is likely an addiction; a substance use disorder. That is exactly what these fifth, sixth, and seventh offenders have. They go to prison for a pretty long time, but when they get out, they’re still suffering from addiction, and they get behind the wheel. And when they get behind that wheel, that car becomes a deadly weapon.
I read every fatal incident report from the state police. They’re tragic. They’re horrible. Children get killed. Families get killed. And we need to make sure that the people who are killing motorists on our roadway are kept behind bars. We also need to use some of the $250 million I brought into this state for addiction treatment, because they’re not getting better without a whole lot of redirection. In the meantime, we have to keep our state safe.
Bensing: Well, one of the first issues we have here is that we have a two-tiered approach to how we enforce our DUI laws. There’s one set of rules for college presidents and state senators and children of judges, and there’s a whole other set of laws applicable to everyone else. And what we need, if we really are concerned about these DUI repeat offenders, we need to ensure that there are consequences for these actions.
But you just heard the statistics from our attorney general. We cannot incarcerate our way out of addiction. And so when we’re trying to solve an addiction problem, we need addiction-based solutions. We had the $250 million settlement funds, and we had the opioid commission that our attorney general was the co-chair of.
A lot of communities are asking, where do those funds go? It is a shame that we still have this kind of crisis level for addiction-related criminal behavior, because I’ll tell you, it costs a lot more to send someone to jail than it does to send them to Yale. We need to figure out a way that we get folks out of this recidivism, this cycle of addiction. And the program, our Department of Corrections, isn’t correcting any of this addiction problem. It’s just opening their revolving door for people to come right back in. So you have to set the standard high, enforce it evenly, and then ensure that you have programs that help lift people out of this crisis.
Rickman: I don’t know about you guys, but I’m exhausted with opening up Facebook or social media, seeing the pictures and images of DUIs of five and six. My youngest daughter, Destiny, just turned 19, and what happens – as it relates to DUI arrests affects and impacts all Delawareans – as a mom, it’s destabilizing and scary and traumatizing to know that Delaware has such a high rate.
In 2025, it’s 2,977 arrests. And from the experience from the Delaware State Police’s perspective, it’s not that the arrests aren’t being made. It’s that we are known as the catch-and-release criminal justice system.
Both of my brothers suffered from the disease of addiction. And my brother, Jack, was arrested with a DUI, his first and his only. And in Maryland, he lost his license for two years. And Maryland made it so difficult that, thank God, he never was able to get it back.
What is happening in Delaware? This is a safety issue. This is a human issue. We all shouldn’t be scared and nervous as Delawareans worried that we’re going to be hurt when we’re driving to, you know, a grocery store. Because we can’t do what we need to do as leaders. We cannot hold people accountable. There’s a delineation between the disease of addiction and holding someone accountable for multiple DUIs. Both can be true. It’s my “and” approach.
One of the most prevalent issues around Delaware this past year has been how to address increasing homelessness. Local governments have increasingly sought DOJ guidance on how they can address homelessness while respecting constitutional protections and responding to quality of life concerns. What should the attorney general’s role be in defining those legal boundaries? And where should the DOJ stay out?
Bensing: So this is really my attorney general race origin story, because as legal director of the ACLU, I had to sue our attorney general to stop enforcing unconstitutional laws that criminalize poverty, that criminalize our unhoused.
For me, this is very deeply personal. Like our attorney general, actually, I was raised by my grandmother as a result of a car accident that my mother had on her way making the nightly deposit for her boss. And while the millionaire boss went on vacation, my family lost our mobile home and we ended up sleeping in sleeping bags in my grandma’s living room. And it wasn’t until I was an adult and a lawyer that I realized some agency laws probably applied there to that millionaire boss. But also that I was definitionally unhoused. And so this is a personal issue.
Just like we can’t criminalize our way out of addiction, we cannot criminalize our way out of poverty. I had the opportunity to tour some of the facilities at Friendship House just a couple of weeks ago. And the programs and resources that they’re providing to the under-resourced communities here in Wilmington and throughout New Castle County are phenomenal. We cannot address our homeless issue with the Department of Justice.
It must be addressed as a community of neighbors. And I’ll tell you what, if I had been attorney general when Mayor Carney decided to do that sweep right here in Wilmington, I would have sued him under Delaware’s Constitution protection against cruel punishment. Because while the Supreme Court might say that’s OK under Grants Pass, Delaware’s Constitution prohibits cruel punishment. And the homeless sweep that happened here in Wilmington was cruel. Full stop.
Rickman: I echo a lot of what Dwayne said, and this is near and dear to my heart. I’m from Baltimore. As I stated, my father did not have a legal degree, but he was an engineer for Bethlehem Steel, where he worked for the majority of his career. And when they did layoffs, my father was laid off, and we were just a few paychecks away from being homeless. And my mother took up child care to help save and sustain our family.
So I am acutely aware of what this could do to a family. I believe that most of us Delawareans are one or two paychecks away from this catastrophic event of being homeless. And I also want to share something else. There is a pastor by the name of Jill, and she, I don’t remember the name of the church, and I apologize on her behalf, but she is right now filing a lawsuit against the city of Ocean City, Maryland, where she has housed, I believe it’s 50 homeless citizens in Ocean City. And I just applaud her.
That’s what we need to do as humans. We need to take care of one another. That’s what we’re here to do. This is a human issue. And as your next attorney general, I will make it one of my platforms to make sure that we remain human, and I will be a lead by example type person. And never forget where I came from.
Jennings: Well, I’ll tell you what it’s not. The presence or absence of a loitering law isn’t solving homelessness. I can tell you that.
We have a national issue. This is a public health and housing crisis. And when I talk to Friendship House, the No. 1 reason someone is homeless is because they couldn’t pay their rent, or their mortgage got foreclosed on, and they’re out on the street. There is no way on God’s green earth that those people who were living in the homeless tents, in the tents in Christina Park, should have been prosecuted. I was told, prosecute these people if they’re there after dark. That’s ridiculous. That’s not solving a problem. That’s creating another problem. So maybe we actually agree on something.
But I can tell you this, that our office has sued the federal government because Trump decided he was going to cut funding to make sure that people were housed. That would have caused hundreds of Delawareans to lose their homes under the continuum of care. And we won, just like we won 90% of our lawsuits. That’s hundreds of people who are housed. Our office mediates something probably not any of you know. Our office mediates mortgage foreclosure cases to keep people in their homes. We have saved thousands of people from becoming homeless. Those are direct things that an attorney general can do. But it is a crisis. We need to be kind. We need to be decent. And we need to be helpful.
Attorney General Jennings, you’ve sued the Trump administration more than 60 times. Some critics say that’s evidence that you’re concerned more about politics than the results, especially when it comes to multi-district litigation that may impact Delaware regardless of whether the DOJ is involved. So how do you decide which cases to join, which cases not to join, and where do you feel the appropriate role for the DOJ is when suing the federal government?
Jennings: The appropriate role for DOJ in Delaware is how the federal government’s actions are affecting Delawareans. And when it affects Delawareans in their pocketbook, we’re going to sue.
I was the chair of the Democratic Attorney General Association for four years. So a lot of those years were under Trump. What I can tell you is he keeps threatening to cut off our funding over and over and over again for unlawful reasons. And we keep suing him. And, yes, we’ve sued him 60 times. And we’ve saved the state $1 billion in federal funding that is still coming into Delaware because of those lawsuits.
I am so proud of the work that our attorneys in the office have done. They’re proud of their work. It’s amazing. Joining a lawsuit is a lot of work. We have led on lawsuits over funding. And we have joined lawsuits. But that means we have to be able to show that Delawareans would be harmed. And I think $1 billion is a heck of a lot of your taxpayer money that’s still coming in as a result of those lawsuits.
I will never stop fighting for Delawareans. One of the most important lawsuits we filed was the suit against Trump’s tariffs. He imposed these tariffs. You know what tariffs are? They’re a tax on consumers. That’s all they are. It’s your groceries. It’s gas. It’s food. It’s cars. It’s everything you pay for. We went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and we won. So we tried it again with Trump 2.0’s tariffs, and we won. And we will continue to fight this battle for you.
Bensing: I agree with the framework there, but I really want to pull back the curtains. I think our attorney general acts like she’s the Elena Delle Donne of the attorneys general. Not one of those cases have been filed in the State of Delaware. Not one. These are all group projects.
I watched the attorney general’s campaign ad this weekend and it’s her entire narrative for reelection. I mastered signing my name in elementary school. I will join those cases. The Delaware attorney general will sign on to these multi-state litigation.
What we need is to get real about what we’re taking credit for and the actual impact and work that we’re doing within the state of Delaware. Our attorney general wasn’t there when other attorneys general were suing Elon Musk when he was destroying our federal government under DOGE. Our attorney general wasn’t there when Sam Altman wanted to convert OpenAI from a nonprofit to a for-profit. Our attorney general wasn’t there to investigate all the Epstein anonymous LLCs that are operating and using the Delaware franchise. She wasn’t there when Donald Trump was cashing out on the inaugural committee with his LLCs that use the Delaware franchise.
So really, we need to clean up our own backyard. If we’re going to talk the talk about fighting Trump, we need an attorney general who knows how to walk the walk and fight the fight. I’m at the ACLU. So as many cases as the Democratic attorneys general have brought, and I applaud them for their work, there are about twice as many that have been brought by the national ACLU. So if we’re taking credit for group projects, I’d like to sign my name on those briefs.
Jennings: That’s just flat out false, Dwayne, and you know it. It is flat out false. We have been the leader. The reason none of these lawsuits have been filed in the state of Delaware is because we have the Third Circuit of Appeals, and not one Democratic attorney general in the country wants to be in front of the Third Circuit, which just said assault weapons bans are unconstitutional, for God’s sakes.
So that’s a tactical decision that is made by all of the Democratic attorneys general. I am proud of these lawsuits. These lawsuits matter. The lawsuit that we filed on day two of Trump’s administration to preserve birthright citizenship under the Constitution of the United States, under the 14th Amendment, yeah, that matters.
Rickman: So, first and foremost, I am not a fan of Donald Trump. I have not really said that publicly, but there you have it.
But 60 lawsuits? When our Delawareans are suffering, when we’re talking about homelessness, when we’re talking about our youth incarceration, when we’re talking about violence, when we’re talking about whether the public can pay for their gas or electric? Because I know it’s like tripled in the last year. How about we worry about Delaware?
I’m not saying that we can’t file lawsuits, but can we share the responsibility? Can we worry about Delaware primarily and then get into Donald Trump? How about, with all due respect, Kathy, how about you answer when your constituents email you? I’ve been waiting for four years and three months for a response from you. Worry about what’s going on in Delaware primarily, not what’s going on in Washington, D.C.
I believe that some of her lawsuits are legitimate. I will hand her that. I will say that I agree with some of them. But for the love of God, could we worry about Delaware? Like, we need to focus on Delawareans. We need to make sure that we have safety and our kids are being looked after. And we’re not pointing the fingers because that’s the political partisan issue to do. How about we meet in the middle? How about we stop pointing the finger at one man and start looking at our own backyard like what Dwayne said? I agree with him. That would be my approach. I am a lead by example type person. What you see is what you get. There will be no surprises with my administration. I am not saying that I wouldn’t file a lawsuit against Donald Trump, but I will definitely say that my Delawareans will be taken care of primarily.
The Trump administration has taken a hardline approach to immigration enforcement, which has often come into conflict with Delaware leaders’ efforts to support undocumented residents. When federal immigration enforcement conflicts with Delaware policies or requests for state-held information, what legal standards should the attorney general use to decide when Delaware cooperates, when it refuses, and when it challenges the federal government in court?
Rickman: Now, this is something that’s near and dear to my heart. My youngest daughter that my ex-wife and I adopted from Guatemala is brown-skinned and we had to have a talk with her about a year and a half ago. I would say that she has to go everywhere with her passport because we were worried that she was going to be pulled over and searched.
So, as your next attorney general, I’m going to make sure that’s an “and” approach. That we make sure that we have legal documentation, but there will be no time that anybody in my state, and no Delawareans, are going to fear that they’re going to be dragged out of their houses in front of their children. That will not happen under my leadership.
Both things can exist. And I believe that no one in the state of Delaware and beyond should ever fear these things happening, should ever worry about those things. That would never happen under my watch. Just watching as certain things were televised, and our youth is watching these things as they’re unfolding. Can you imagine what they feel? Especially our Latino and Hispanic communities in other states where it’s propagated.
I’m not good with names. I’m dyslexic. But there was a young woman that was killed right on camera. Those things would not happen under my administration.
Jennings: ICE, as we know it right now, is a bunch of stormtroopers that have descended upon cities across our country. Now they have shock gloves. I mean, it’s outrageous. And we can’t cooperate with an organization that is that evil, that separates parents and children, that ships off a domestic violence victim to a detention center in Louisiana in the middle of the night. We fought successfully to get her back. But, you know, that should never happen in this country.
What’s happening is outrageous. That’s why I fought to make sure that the police in our state were being policed in our state for Delawareans and not cooperating with ICE. That should not happen. And now we have a law that says it will not happen.
I also fought against the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the federal government’s subpoena for Department of Labor records that were based on the origin of those business owners and that were clearly designed to get at Latino and other business owners. We fought for almost a year to make sure those records weren’t produced. We didn’t win in court, but you know what? That was a fight worth fighting.
And we will continue to fight against ICE. If they do anything to break the law in Delaware, I will be there.
Bensing: Well, let’s start where our attorney general just ended. The first step is called a motion to quash. And that’s what the Department of Justice failed to do. And our chief judge reprimanded our Department of Justice and said, “This was not your best day.” We can’t afford not to have our best day in federal court against the Trump administration, particularly when one of the most vulnerable communities is under attack.
That’s the record of the attorney general. That’s the one case: Donald Trump v. Kathy Jennings. We lost. We should not have lost that case. This 287g agreement issue is really important because it’s about public trust. It’s about whether our vulnerable communities can relay information to their local police departments. And the ACLU, as soon as Donald Trump was elected, advocated.
The reason that we have that bill is because the ACLU actually discovered that our local police departments were working with federal ICE agents. And we said, ‘Whoa, you’ve got to stop this. This is undermining the public trust in our local police departments.’ Fortunately, our General Assembly responded quickly. But we were raising these flags early on.
We cannot be caught flat-footed with any of the attacks on our immigrant community. There is a national group called the Federation Against Federal Overreach. Larry Krasner, the district attorney in Philadelphia, is a part of that group, FAFO. You get it? And we need to join that. We need to join that federation because if any federal agent violates state law, we need to ensure that our attorney general is there to enforce state law that protects our communities.
Also, I just want to underscore, because we talk a lot about Trump, but what we’re not talking about are the other threats against our society. And that’s this broligarchy class. And we have employers here in Delaware that are taking advantage of our immigrant community, that are taking advantage of those that are vulnerable in our workplaces and consumers. We need to prosecute those that are violating and the fraudsters that are violating the rights of our immigrant communities right here in Delaware.
Delaware has long debated transparency reforms around law enforcement and the Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights, including in 2023, when reforms didn’t quite go as far as some advocates had hoped. One of the biggest omissions from that debate was opening police disciplinary files to the public under the Freedom of Information Act. Should those records be open to the public? And if so, what information, if any, should remain confidential?
Bensing: Absolutely those records should be open to the public. Our police officers are public servants. The News Journal just published last week our top 10 paid folks. Seven of the top 10 are law enforcement officers. That’s your taxpayer dollars. We must, as taxpayers, be able to hold our police officers accountable.
Our attorney general is fighting to keep their names concealed. I had to go to the Delaware Supreme Court to have the Delaware State Police issue the names of our Delaware State Police officers. Now, that should offend everyone in here. We should not have a secret police force, especially when we have the kind of authoritarianism happening at the national level.
Our attorney general has broad jurisdiction to enforce our Freedom of Information Act. And time and again, whether it’s to sue to find out how much of our taxpayer dollars are paying elite law firms here in Wilmington to represent the state, whether it’s Rep. Bryan Shupe’s FOIA request to find out how much our Delaware Department of Justice is actually spending to fight Trump, those records time and again get denied. Those requests get denied time and again by our attorney general.
The LEOBOR is about the personnel records, but our Department of Justice investigates our criminal activities. And so we have to be as transparent as possible. It’s not enough that we’re the first state to have body-worn cameras. Why was that law passed without any policies in place to describe to Delawareans when and how that information will be released so that we can hold bad actors accountable, including when that is our police officers? I have a deep commitment to transparency. I don’t believe we should just trust our government. I think that they should show their work. And so as leader of the Department of Justice, I will ensure that our state agencies show their work.
Rickman: Absolutely. Government trust, public safety, and government transparency should be paramount. And it will be paramount under my leadership.
I believe it was 2023 when Gov. Carney passed the transparency law. And that was about the body cam footage. I myself, as a domestic violence survivor turned advocate, filed a FOIA request when I was the victim. And I was denied. And every single victim that I talked to that has gone through the same process has been denied. Those are questions that need answers.
It shouldn’t be about who you know. It shouldn’t be about if your uncle is a Superior Court judge in the state of Delaware or who you’re affiliated with or what political figure you know to get you out of trouble. It’s about government transparency. There should be policies and procedures. There should be transparency.
I’m the leader that’s going to make sure of that, because the buck stops with me. If there is a law that’s enacted that states that body cam footage should be available, then if a victim of a crime requests that body cam footage, they should be able to access it. I’m not sure why that is. Those are questions that need to be answered. And we as Delawareans, we the people, we the people decide. Not the politicians, not who you know, we the people.
Jennings: I was part of the reforms that took place with the legislature. I was the head of the Use of Force Task Force and we made substantial changes to LEOBOR. Founded instances of serious misconduct are open to the public. And that’s by law. That’s because I worked for it.
I am the reason there is a body-worn camera on every officer in the state, because I fought for that. And as the General Assembly convenes again, I’m going to fight to have a law passed that requires every police department to publicly make available body-worn camera footage. We have 47 police departments in this state, and there are probably that many policies. That is wrong, and it should be uniform. The police should be required to release body-worn camera footage to the public. We’re going to work on that in the next General Assembly.
The recent police-related killing of Kadir Skinner has raised questions of whether the public deserves more access to officer-worn body camera footage. Attorney General Jennings pushed to release the footage even ahead of a determination of whether the incident should lead to charges. When police use deadly force, should officer body camera footage generally be released before the DOJ completes its criminal investigation? And what circumstances would justify withholding it?
Jennings: I think it’s important to look at what the laws are out there. Colorado has an outstanding law on public release of body-worn camera footage. There is a delay of anywhere between two weeks and I think 30 days, I could be wrong on that, before it should be released because it can influence how a witness ends up perceiving the events.
Not intentionally, but it can influence a witness who has to really talk about what that witness knows, not what they saw on the body-worn camera footage. So that’s important. And that takes probably a couple of weeks.
But yes, I believe that body-worn camera footage should be shown to the public.That’s the reason we got the law.
Bensing: Yes, it should be. It should be revealed. These are public records. You are paying for these body-worn cameras.
And I’m surprised to hear the attorney general say what she just said, because her office has issued opinions saying that body-worn cameras are not public records that ought to be accessible to the public. So I’m glad to hear it, and they should be. And I don’t believe that the body-worn camera footage law should have ever been implemented without the policies in place for how we were going to make sure that that footage is accessible to the public.
It makes you wonder, what’s the purpose? And the purpose has been to defend law enforcement officers’ actions. It has been to delay investigations of the investigations of excessive force that result in fatalities. Not one of those police officers have been held criminally accountable. And oftentimes, those investigations take not months, but years before the public has access to that full investigative file.
These are important matters that undermine public trust. If our communities don’t believe that the police officers who are sworn to protect and serve them are actually going to protect and serve them, if they don’t believe that the Department of Justice will be independent, when you have an attorney general who campaigned as the “top cop,” it’s very difficult for our community to then turn to that attorney general to investigate police abuse, to investigate police excessive force, and to investigate police fatalities.
I’m not beholden to any police department or the status quo in any way whatsoever. I was actually in court against the Wilmington Police Department the same day that Kadir Skinner was shot and killed. So we need an independent attorney general who will hold our officers accountable when they step out of the line of their duty. Thank you.
Jennings: I have prosecuted police officers when they violate their oath to serve the public and break the law 15 times. That’s more than any other attorney general in the history of our state. And I don’t hesitate to prosecute when someone breaks the law.
But speaking of dropping bombs, Mr. Bensing, you’ve never prosecuted a single case, not one, not one in the history of your profession. And so I have to say, it’s really hard to hear you talk about, we do this wrong, we do that wrong, you’re going to drop bombs.
I’ve been there. I’ve done that. I’ve prosecuted domestic violence cases. I have prosecuted rape cases. I have prosecuted murder cases. And I have prosecuted Delaware’s only serial killer. You have not once.
Bensing: Well, it is the Department of Justice, not the Department of Prosecution. I know that our constitutional rights are what underpin our entire fabric of our society. I’ve brought plenty more civil rights cases than our attorney general ever has.
The question is, do we have the leadership and the independent oversight to lead this office forward? And she’ll talk about those 15 prosecutions of police officers, but the truth of the matter is over 20 civilians are dead because of a police officer shooting. And not one of those cases has resulted in criminal charges being brought by our Delaware Department of Justice. That undermines trust, particularly when it takes years for those investigations to complete. It looks like a cover-up.
Rickman: Well, I wouldn’t be the leader that I will be if I didn’t say it should be a case-by-case basis. There should be a full investigation. But I also agree that public trust, we have to meet people where we are and there are large communities that are feeling like they are invisible to the criminal justice system.
And why wouldn’t they? If there hasn’t been any formal accountability, like to speak to what Dwayne just said, then why wouldn’t communities feel invisible? Why wouldn’t they feel like we need answers? We need to be protected.
Kadir Skinner, he’s no longer with us. His parents will never see his smile again. And we need accountability for that if that turns out to be, from an investigation standpoint, what it directs to. That’s what the attorney general is supposed to do. It shouldn’t be about how much money you have or what lawyer you can afford or what community you’re from or who you know. It should be about law and order, justice, criminal justice. That’s what attorney generals are supposed to do.
The DOJ has been criticized in recent months for not disclosing certain charges, including against public officials charged with misdemeanors or in the case of at least one sex abuse case when concerns for the victim were raised. What should trigger a public announcement by the Department of Justice when someone is criminally charged? And should the standard differ for misdemeanors, public officials, or cases involving particularly sensitive victims?
Rickman: So this is a difficult question for me to answer, and it’s only because there have been so many political figures that have gotten away with things that they should have never gotten away with.
I don’t typically name people out loud, but Mr. John Atkins. He’s getting ready to go through, he’s campaigning for a race but he’s a domestic violence offender. He’s been convicted. I believe he had gotten a DUI.
What is happening in Delaware? How is this so common? Why do we have politicians protecting domestic violence abusers? Why is that a thing? And it’s not a one-time thing. If you pay attention, if you do your research, you’ll find that this is very prevalent in our state. It’s disturbing. It should not happen.
Across the board, domestic violence is a non-partisan issue. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. If you commit a violent act, you should be held accountable. I don’t care if you’re a politician. Again, I don’t care if your uncle is a Superior Court judge.
Under my leadership, that will not exist. Full stop. And I’m not sure I understand why it’s happening at such an alarming rate. I’m used to politicians like Barbara Mikulski. She was who she said she was. She stood for all Marylanders. I’m not sure what’s happening here in the state of Delaware. So as your next attorney general, I will prosecute and make sure that I hold accountable politicians, police officers, whomever you are.
Jennings: I think there are rare occasions.
There are occasions, when a victim is so traumatized and has already been through the process once. For example, in another state where the offender receives seven years in prison, but cannot go through it again a second time in the state of Delaware where if the case is publicized, everyone around this victim will know who she is. I’m going to side with the victim each and every time. And that’s my own belief.
I side with the prosecutors who tried to prosecute that case. You can’t prosecute a case if you don’t have the evidence. And if a victim is completely unwilling and too hurt to come forward, that’s our system. And we have to understand that victims come first.
So for me, it matters a great deal. There’s also a law that just got passed, by the way, that I’m not sure, Jake, you might be a fan of, which is that there will be no announcements of felony indictments unless there is a clear public safety reason. So even though a victim may be named, you can’t name the defendant and you can’t publicly announce that indictment. That will set transparency back a long way.
Bensing: Whatever the policy is, it needs to be evenly applied. And we need to know what the rules of the road are in our Department of Justice. What records will be transparently provided to the public on what timeframe?
And it should not depend who that defendant is. It should not be that those who are politically connected have one set of rule books and then everybody else has another. And I think far too often what has been uncovered is that there are inconsistencies.
Living in Wilmington, I get Nixle reports on a regular basis. And it has the mugshot and the name and age of the person who’s been arrested for a crime. And we still, to this day, six weeks later, don’t know the name of the person who shot Kadir Skinner. So there’s a different rulebook depending on who the defendant is, who the person who has engaged in criminal activity.
We just have to have the same rules for everyone. I think that there are sensitive matters and I think that there are ways to redact the names of victims and still keep our dedication to transparency of those who have violated our laws and violated our public trust.
We’re going to go to closing statements. I’m going to start with Attorney General Kathy Jennings and work our way down the table. And Patty, if you want to take an extra 60 seconds for not getting rebuttals tonight, please feel free to do so.
Jennings: I want to thank Jacob Owens and Spotlight Delaware for arranging this debate. Debates really are the foundation of our democracy and I am so proud of all of you for showing up tonight because you took time out of your busy schedules to participate in democracy. So thank you.
I’ve said countless times before that I’m not really interested in criticizing other Democrats. I am interested in helping Delawareans. We have seen the six safest years this state has seen since records began in terms of violent crime in our state. That takes a lot of work and it really matters.
I’m running again because I want to continue that work. I know what works, I know what doesn’t, and we’re making substantial progress in our state and I want to keep doing that. I also know that we have a president who is completely out of control. He is destroying our democracy, he ignores the Constitution and as long as I am your attorney general, I’m going to keep fighting him because it’s a fight we must win as we go forward.
Bensing: Well, I will also fight Donald Trump as your attorney general. Unfortunately, we have two more years, but there will be life after Donald Trump and what we need is a leader who’s ready to bring Delaware forward to address the challenges that our democracy faces right now, not just from Donald Trump, but for the two years of the next attorney general’s administration of fighting to ensure that we are committed to our democracy right here.
I think the challenges we’re facing not just from Donald Trump but the broligarchy, the Elon Musk, the Sam Altmans of the world, these challenges are unprecedented and the decisions our attorney general has made show us that the old playbook does not work to address today’s problems.
We need to pass the torch to a new generation of leadership that understands the threats that our democracy faces. I’ve had an entire career as a civil rights lawyer. This is exactly the fight of my professional career. And so I’m ready to lead the Department of Justice. I’m ready to lead the broad jurisdiction that this office has, not just criminal safety issues but also our civil enforcement issues and our civil rights protections; to be an independent attorney general that holds our government agencies accountable so that those who take the oath of office are serving you and making sure that civil rights is the fundamental North Star of the Delaware Department of Justice.
Rickman: Thank you so much for all the Delawareans that are here tonight, for Spotlight Delaware and for everybody that’s listening online. I really appreciate you, I will stand, protect and fight for all Delawareans.
What’s interesting to me is that we have such a push and redirection. We’re like pointing at the Wizard of Oz behind the screen. We’re saying that that person is the evil dictator and yes, he very well may be, but there’s so many other evil people out in the world. To Kathy’s point, she mentioned I don’t want to spend time addressing anything with Democrats. We need to. As an attorney general we need to make sure that even our Democrats are upholding laws or upholding the Constitution or abiding by their own ethics, which some of them are not.
We need to be holding them accountable just as much as we are holding Donald Trump accountable. And I know that’s the first time I mentioned his name tonight but there you have it. That’s what I will be as attorney general.
I am a lead-by-example-type person. I’m a domestic violence survivor turned advocate author and now your next attorney general. I want to meet with my Delawareans. I want to hear from you. I want to hear what you would like to see as your next attorney general. It’s “We, the people.” Our Constitution was created by that premise. We the people decide democracy. And I think I don’t want to speak for anybody but I think that I’ve heard it from so many victims, so many neighbors, so many brothers and sisters: we’re exhausted.
Do you guys feel safe? I know I don’t. I don’t feel safe. I’m a stalking victim and I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel safe with the number of DUIs in the state of Delaware. I don’t feel safe when we’re allowing some part of people that know politicians to get away with things that other people most of us are not able to get away with. I do not feel safe when there’s two sets of rules. Why is that? We need to speak to that. And as your next attorney general, I will.
