Public Advocate Jumaane Williams ꩲand other backers of New York’s criminal-justice reforms want to pretend that fixing its flaws means fully restoring cas⛄h bail. Don’t buy it for a minute.
At a pro-reform eveღnt last week with Williams, Akeem Browder — whose teen brother, Kalief, spent three years in jail awaiting✨ trial before being freed and committing suicide two years later — insisted the reforms “came too late to help Kalief.”
Added Darryl Herring of VOCAL-NY, who s൩pent 18 mont𝔉hs at Rikers: “Wealth should not determine one’s freedom.”
That’s true — but wealth was never really a big factor: A defendant’s finances generally figured in the bail amount. And bail bonds required defendants to c🦩ome up with only a fraction of what judge𓆉s set.
Beꦇsides, Kalief Browder was actually held not for lack of funds but because he was arrested while on probation from a previous case.
Yet that’s all mostly beside the point, because fixing the reform’s dangerous flaws isn’t about restoring cash🅰 bail for everyone who became eligible.
We’re not calling for that; nor are most of💞 the many district attorn🗹eys, judges and law-enforcement folks who demand changes.
No, fixing the law is about ensuring public safety. Period.
Lawmakers need to give judges discretion to keep people accused of serious crimes locked up based on their threat to the community — especially if they’𓄧re not going to demand a cash ꦍdeposit (i.e., bail) to deter them from committing new crimes and to ensure they return for trial. Bail, after all, has a public-safety dimension, even if it’s mostly meant to prevent the accused from fleeing.
Albany also needs to protect witnesses — by, for example, letting prosecutors keep their identities🦂 secret until a💃bsolutely necessary. Likewise, easing the insane “discovery” requirements and deadlines that will force DAs who are unable to comply to drop cases (or be ordered to drop them) is a must.
In a passionate and rare statement from a jurist, Onondaga County C🥂ourt Judge Stephen Dougherty, a Democrat, , yes, the bail laws needed to be “tweaked,” but the 2019 changes were🅺 “like killing a mosquito with an atom bomb.”
Williams, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and other pols are in utter denial about this big picture: Until the huge holes in the 2019 reform are closed, New Yorkers’ safety 🥀will remain at grave risk.