Liberal spits on tortured kid's corpse to appease right-wing tabloids.
In 2019, New York State passed reforms that would exclude nonviolent crimes from cash bail. The change was driven thanks to activism sparked by the horrid case of Kalief Browder. Browder, at 16, was falsely accused of stealing a backpack. He was sent to Rikers because he refused to plead guilty to a crime he didn’t commit and his family couldn’t come up with his $3,000 bail. He spent three years there, getting beat up by bigger kids and the guards and spending months in solitary. The UN defines more than 15 days in solitary as torture.
The New Yorker wrote a profile of him after he got out. He became a cause celebre. Jay-Z hung out with him. He tried to go to college. But all he could do was pace in his small room because it reminded him of solitary. He hung himself from the airconditioning vent and his brother found his body. His mother died soon after, of a heart attack—a not uncommon occurrence after an unbearable loss.
Anyway, Democrat Kathy Hochul just completely gutted the 2019 bail reforms because she’s worried about what the right-wing rag New York Post thinks.
Hochul is doing away with the requirement that judges prescribe the least restrictive measure to ensure the defendant makes their court date—which is, after all, the reason we have bail. The change came after at least two previous rollbacks of reform. A year after it passed, Gov. Andrew Cuomo expanded the list of offenses eligible for cash bail. The second time, under Hochul, they left behind language about the “least restrictive” amount, but added a provision that would make judges consider whether the alleged crime caused serious harm to anyone.
I don’t know … that already sounds like discretion to me? And since the New York Post only goes after judges accused of leniency, there’s really no bulwark against a judge setting a high amount of cash bail if, say, they’re worried someone will murder their girlfriend if they get out.
“There's some horrific cases splashed on the front pages of newspapers where they talk about individuals where a judge and the defense lawyer said following ‘least restrictive means,’ you have to let this person out,” Hochul said at a press conference. “And some of those cases literally shocked the conscience. You cannot believe they let the person out. And they said, ‘My hands are tied, I have to follow the least restrictive means.’ So it was important to remove that to give the judges the clarity. Don't fall back on that but look at other factors in determining whether or not the person should be remanded or whether or not they should be let out on recognizance or with bail.”
Criminal justice advocates and writers seized on Hochul’s language about “horrific cases splashed on the front page of newspapers” as evidence she’s being guided by right-wing propaganda rather than public safety. But I’d go further. What horrific cases is she even talking about?
The governor’s office on Friday pointed to a pair of recent incidents — including the choking death of a 15-year-old and an attempted murder — in which the judge cited the “least restrictive” standard in permitting the pretrial release of defendants. The coming bill is likely to include new language asking judges to instead consider the “kind or degree of control or restriction necessary” to get defendants to return to court.
The choking death of the 15-year-old year old is absolutely tragic. It appears to have been accidental—but let’s wait and see until the suspect gets his due process! But more importantly, I’d say choking a kid to death constitutes “caused serious harm to anyone” a provision covered under the previous rollback of reform. It seems her office should know that, since she instituted the change.
The second case that’s cited is literally based on a shameless piece of New York Post propaganda, about a judge putting a 16-year-old on an ankle monitor and sharp curfew—the story cites multiple law enforcement sources that say that technically an ankle monitor isn’t a full proof way to make defendants go to their trial dates. Yes, I bet this 16 year old is headed to Cuba to avoid extradition as we speak.
A while back we went through a handful of cases where Eric Adams and the tabloids (and mindlessly, the New York Times) blamed bail reform in the immediate aftermath of crimes. In every case, there was more to the story.
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