Romeo and Juliet laws in Maryland.
Maryland sets consent at sixteen and writes a four-year gap element into its third- and fourth-degree offenses: for fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds, only actors at least four years older are inside the statutes. The gap is the charge.
The Maryland baseline.
The age of consent in Maryland is sixteen. For fourteen- and fifteen-year-old partners, the sexual offense statutes (Md. Code, Crim. Law §§ 3-307, 3-308) apply where the actor is at least four years older - fourth-degree sexual offense for vaginal intercourse with a fifteen-year-old by an actor four-plus years older, third-degree where the victim is fourteen and the gap is met. Below fourteen, rape in the second degree covers actors four or more years older, carrying up to twenty years - and below that structure, the child-victim provisions take over entirely.
Four years, measured to the day.
Inside the gap, Maryland leaves the pairings alone: seventeen and fourteen, eighteen and fifteen - no offense under the age-based statutes. At the line, everything changes: nineteen and fifteen is a misdemeanor fourth-degree offense (up to one year) if the gap clears four years; twenty-three and fifteen climbs the ladder. Maryland’s quirk is that its lowest tier is a misdemeanor - unusual nationally - which makes charging decisions and plea posture different here than in felony-first states. Registration still follows many convictions, and the registry - not the sentence - is usually the fight worth having.
What the exemption never covers.
Close-in-age rules govern one thing: consensual contact between peers. They do not touch positions of trust - teachers, coaches, clergy, and employers face separate statutes regardless of age gaps. They do not legalize images: explicit photos of anyone under 18 are child pornography under federal law, even a photo of yourself, even sent willingly between two teenagers. And they do not travel: crossing state lines changes the applicable law mid-trip, and federal statutes like § 2423 attach the moment travel or the internet is involved. The exemption is a shield for Maryland conduct only - and a narrow one.
If you or your child is charged in Maryland.
These cases begin with a phone extraction and an interview - and the interview is where they are usually lost. Say nothing, consent to nothing, and get counsel moving the same week: the age documentation, the messages showing what each person represented, and the relationship timeline all get assembled before the narrative hardens. Where the close-in-age rule applies, we make prosecutors confront it early - many of these cases are declinable on the math alone.
And because registration is the real, permanent penalty here, every decision - plea, trial, diversion - gets measured first against the registry. This firm defends these cases in state and federal court, and the first consultation is free and confidential.
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