With minutes to go before Maryland lawmakers were slated to return home for the year, Amanda Rodriguez felt hopeful as a bill to outlaw prosecuting a child for prostitution finally reached the Senate floor.

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       It was 11:29 p.m. and Rodriguez, a force behind the measure for years who runs a nonprofit group that works with Baltimore-area child sex-trafficking victims, thought she and others would soon be celebrating.

       Instead, a Republican senator asked questions about why the conference committee did not agree to the bill passed by the Senate. Sen. Susan C. Lee (D-Montgomery) attempted to answer, but appeared to have trouble finding documents on her desk. She deferred to Judicial Proceedings Chairman William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery).

       Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City), watching the clock and the list of other bills — including fixes to police reform and a gun-crime bill — that still needed to be considered, interjected to let the senators know time was running out and a resolution needed to come quickly — or not at all.

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       The legislation, which was modeled after laws in Tennessee and Minnesota, was designed to ensure that exploited children who might commit crimes at the direction of their traffickers are not treated as criminals, advocates said. According to the University of Maryland SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors, 110 minors, some younger than 15, were arrested for prostitution and commercialized vice in Maryland between 2010 and 2020.

       Smith said the bill was amended in conference committee to create a “safe harbor” for prostitution, preventing prosecutors from charging a sex-trafficking victim with that crime. The committee struck a compromise between the Senate, which added an “affirmative defense” to the bill, and the House, which sought to shield a sex-trafficking victim from prostitution and other nonviolent charges that result from being trafficked.

       Sen. Stephen S. Hershey Jr. (R-Queen Anne’s) wondered why the affirmative defense was removed and why the Senate appeared to be moving closer to the House’s proposal. The Senate’s version was approved after a long debate in committee about whether it was appropriate to offer immunity to one set of young people who might be victims of trauma.

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       Before Hershey could ask another question, Ferguson interrupted: “Is there a request to [delay] the bill for five minutes?” Hershey said yes.

       It was 11:35 p.m. Rodriguez said she knew the battle was over.

       “On sine die, that was a death sentence,” she said, referring to the final day of the 90-day session.

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       She went from cheering as Del. David Moon (D-Montgomery) ran into the State House with the signed paper copy of the amendments to being devastated as the measure did not get a vote. Also in Moon’s hands were agreements on revisions to police reform and a gun-crime bill. They were taken up in the Senate after the delay on safe harbor and ultimately passed the House in the last minute of session.

       “Timing became the issue,” Moon said of the safe harbor bill. “Harsh decisions have to be made on allocating floor time.”

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       Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore City), the bill’s sponsor, said the prosecution of sex-trafficking victims is a “real stain” on Maryland’s code.

       “That doesn’t speak well for us and our posture in our advocacy in helping victims escape their situation and thrive,” she said.

       The legislation passed the House in March with a vote of 126 to 5.

       It ran into trouble on Friday, during a voting session in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Smith raised a hypothetical situation about someone who is trafficked getting arrested.

       “So you have one of the qualifying offenses, it’s a direct result of trafficking, and then you commit another qualifying offense, let’s say you do something else, you carjack someone and that becomes part of the case and so that gets sucked in, even though it’s not a qualifying offense,” he said to his colleagues. “The way that it’s drafted, it’s opening the door” for that charge to get dismissed.

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       Smith added the amendment for affirmative defense to the bill, which requires people being prosecuted to prove why they should not be punished for breaking the law.

       Advocates said they were adamantly opposed to the amendment. It essentially stripped the bill of its intent, to provide a safe harbor. They said other states with affirmative defense provisions are repealing them.

       Those familiar with the debate said the discussion in the Senate indicated that there is more education needed to move the bill forward. They are hopeful it will happen next year.

       “There are more children who are being sex trafficked in Maryland than anybody would want to admit,” said Melanie Shapiro, a lobbyist who worked on the bill. “It is disappointing because Maryland, in relation to the rest of the country, we’re still so far behind and we’re not going to be able to undo the harm that is going to impact any child that is currently in the system or that may have contact with the system in the next year.”