A Proven Crime Fighter

When he is not in Legislative Session, Delegate Doyle Niemann is an Assistant State's Attorney for Prince George's County, charged with prosecuting crimes that occur in the county.

Doyle joined the State's Attorney's Office in 1998, before being elected to the House and shortly after graduating from the University of Maryland School of Law.  He has handled cases in the District Court, Juvenile Court and, now in the Circuit Court.

The Only Prosecutor in the Legislature

Doyle has prosecuted more than a thousand cases – pretty much everything, he says, except homicides and serious sex offenses.  This experience has been very useful in the House of Delegates, where he is the only prosecutor in a body with many defense attorneys.   

"There is a lot of loose rhetoric and sloppy thinking when it comes to crime,"  Doyle says.   "There are those who want to apologize for the criminals and blame 'society' and there are those who want to lock everyone up and throw away the key.  Neither approach works.  We need consistent enforcement and real alternatives that give offenders a reason not to commit more crimes once they return to society."

An Expert on Code Enforcement

While in the District Court, Doyle took over the task of handling Municipal Infractions and became an expert in code enforcement and the ways in which a town or city can use its local laws to address problems.  He continues to provide training for municipal leaders on these issues.  Municipal Infraction Guide »

First Hand Experience with Juvenile Delinquents

While serving in the Juvenile Division, Doyle got involved with truancy issues.  This led to legislation to create Prince George's County's innovative Truancy Court, which works with troubled students and their parents to ensure they attend school as required.

He has also been a consistent voice for juvenile justice reform and co-chaired a legislative task force on Delinquency Prevention and Diversion.

A Leader on Prosecuting Fraud

For the last eight years, Doyle has focused on prosecuting economic and financial crimes, including identity theft, embezzlement, credit card theft, fraud and complex property related theft cases.  

He is an acknowledged expert on the Maryland theft laws and regularly trains new attorneys and others on financial crime prosecution.  This recently included a training for District Court Commissioners.

Doyle was a leader on a State Task Force on Identity Theft and has introduced several bills on identity theft and related crimes, including one that would make the theft of mail a separate crime.  This came in response to thousands of complaints across the state about mail being stolen to obtain personal identifying information.

Ground-Breaking Cases

Doyle has taken on a number of ground-breaking cases, many in areas that have long been ignored by law enforcement.  This includes the first prosecutions for mortgage and foreclosure fraud, home-builder fraud, estate fraud, and theft of wages from day laborers and others.

He is currently working on prosecutions related to pawn shops selling stolen goods and the widespread (and expensive) theft of returnable plastic containers belonging to bottlers, bakeries and dairies, as well as some complex fraud cases in which legitimate businesses were tricked with false contracts.

Foreclosure and Mortgage Fraud Unit

Doyle's experience with cases in which crooks cheated homeowners facing foreclosure out of tens of thousands of dollars in equity that they had in their homes in 2005, led him to introduce the Protection of Homeowners in Foreclosure Act (PHIFA), the nation's toughest law on foreclosure fraud.   This was in the middle of the real estate boom and before foreclosure became a household topic.

As the real estate boom collapsed and thousands more homeowners faced the prospect of foreclosure,  he was the legislative leader for even stronger foreclosure and mortgage fraud laws.  He also secured funding to create a new unit in the State's Attorney's Office to prosecute mortgage and foreclosure fraud.  This unit has been identified as a "best practices" model by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Complementary Jobs

Doyle says that his two jobs – as a Delegate and as an Assistant State's Attorney – complement each other.  "We pass a lot of laws that don't do what they are intended to do, " he says, "because my many of my colleagues don't understand how things work in the real world.  That is where being there and having real experience makes a difference.  That, after all, is what we have 'citizen-legislators' for."