NY Dems pretending judges they picked are ‘racist’ to protect bail reformBy Post Editorial Board
April 3, 2022
Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie strongly oppose giving judges more discretion to order bail or jail for defendants they deem dangerous, on the grounds that New York judges are racists. And that claim is even more ridiculous than it seems.
The evidence is clear: Bail reform allows a good number of recidivist felony offenders to re-offend— with more than half of violent offenders who get to walk committing new crimes.
State Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, a registered Democrat, believes judges should have the “discretion to consider the critically important factor of whether or not a defendant poses a credible risk of danger” to others.
Yet lawmakers in Albany just don’t want to give jurists that discretion, no matter how horrible the facts of the crime or the accused’s criminal history.
State Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan) says, “ ‘Dangerousness’ standards allow for arbitrary and racist judicial decision-making.” Assemblywoman Latrice Walker (D-B’klyn) even accused Mayor Eric Adams of “adopting the rhetoric” of anti-black racists in his calls to give judges more discretion to set bail in certain instances.
What makes all this truly bizarre is that local parties play a huge role in picking who gets to be a judge in the first place, tapping candidates for trial courts. In most of the city, you’ll never become a judge without the backing of the county Democratic committee.
That’s right: The Democrats who control the Legislature are claiming that the Democrats who run most local committees are soft on racism, producing a hopelessly biased court system. (And they never, ever talk about how their “anti-racist” distrust of the judges their own cronies choose means more crime victims, themselves overwhelmingly black or Hispanic.)
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2022/04/03/ny-dems-will-go-to-any-measure-to-defend-botched-bail-reform/
