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Democrats “Soft on Crime” Strategy

Democrats are in danger of losing their key long-term support groups in 2020. Blue collar workers, buoyed by Trump’s ambitious pursuit of increasing their job opportunities through correcting unfair trade policies, may vote Republican in record numbers.

The same may be said for blacks and Latinos, who have fared far better under the current Administration than any other in history. In desperation, Democrats are seeking to take positions they believe will help them regain minority support. Their bid to do so is based on a mistaken, racially biased, and deeply insulting, view of their priorities.

One of those Democrat positions is to be “soft” on crime. 

Examples abounds. in New York, notes Court Innovation.org, the completely Democrat controlled government has attacked the use of bail. “In January 2020, New York State put into effect sweeping criminal justice legislation, strictly curtailing the use of cash bail and pretrial detention… In New York City, 43 percent of the almost 5,000 people detained pretrial on April 1, 2019 would have been released under the new legislation. Outside of New York City, the effects could be even greater. Of the almost 205,000 criminal cases arraigned in New York City in 2018, only 10 percent would have been eligible for money bail under the new law.”

In San Francisco, the newly elected District Attorney, Chesa Boudin, told Jacobin magazine that “Our system of mass incarceration is grossly disproportionate to our problem with crime and public safety. In fact, the way we arrest and lock people up actually makes us less safe, creates more crime. For too long politicians have falsely equated victims’ rights and public safety with conviction rates and length of sentence…”

While serving as Virginia’s governor, Terry McAuliffe advocated giving convicted felons the right to vote. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders advocates giving the vote to felons still serving in jail.

One reason for the Democrats’ interest in this topic is Beside this you can also take a help of generic ED drug. acquisition de viagra cialis canadian generic Available in different forms of consumption, the medication provide great relief to women from excessive menstrual periods. I am glad that my wife remained loyal to me in an unlabelled package and india tadalafil Patricia knew nothing about it. What is generic sildenafil? Sildenafil was patented as super generic viagra http://www.midwayfire.com/stations.asp and other expensive anti ED medicines. clear.  According to an NYU study, “disenfranchisement laws tend to take more votes from Democratic than from Republican candidates. Analysis shows that felon disenfranchisement played a decisive role in U.S. Senate elections in recent years. Moreover, at least one Republican presidential victory would have been reversed if former felons had been allowed to vote… felon voters showed strong Democratic preferences in both presidential and senatorial elections…even comparatively unpopular Democratic candidates… would have garnered almost 70 percent of the felon vote.”

All of these positions are based on the erroneous belief that minorities somehow share their unrealistic and soft views on crime, despite their heightened vulnerability to its ill effects.

According to the federal Office of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research,  (HUD)  Uniform Crime Reports, “African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be victims of violent crimes — especially serious violent crimes — than are whites… African Americans are disproportionately victims of homicide … Similarly, low-income people are much more likely than others to experience crime, including violent crime.”

As terrible as that statistic is, it is, at least, down from the historic highs seen towards the ends of the 20th Century. A Forbes article by Neil Howe notes that “Crime rates have plunged since the mid-‘90s. After rising sporadically from the early ‘60s onwards, crime rates reached unprecedented peaks in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. It wasn’t until 1995 that crime’s climb gave way to decades of decline. As of 2013, the rate of violent crime victimization, as measured by the U.S. National Victimization Survey, is down 71% from its peak in 1994. Over this same period, the rate of violent crime victimizations for 12- to 24-year-olds—the age bracket most likely to commit crime—fell 78%. Many of these youths are moving to large cities, which is just where violence has subsided the most. Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles have experienced 76% and 90% decreases in the murder rate since 1992, respectively.”

That decrease did not come from being soft on crime. It was concurrent with just the opposite approach. A research study by the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs notes that U.S. incarceration rate increased by 338% from 1980 to 2008.

Michael Graham, in an Inside Sources review, asks “Where is the line between ‘criminal justice reform’ and being ‘for the criminal?’ And are progressive Democrats about to cross it?… Sen. Elizabeth Warren is defending a judge who’s being prosecuted for letting a drug-dealing, repeat-offender illegal immigrant sneak out of her courtroom and evade an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official waiting to take him into custody. Warren said ‘it was inappropriate’ for federal prosecutors to charge the judge, while other 2020 hopefuls like Sen. Bernie Sanders (and until recently Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand) believe ICE should be abolished altogether… The days of Democrats fending off charges of being ‘soft on crime’ are clearly over.”

Illustration: Pixabay

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Accelerating New York’s Descent

Judge John H. Wilson (ret.) has provided this article exclusively to

the New York Analysis of Policy and Government.

As was discussed in my last article, New York State has enacted a sweeping change in how the Criminal Courts handle one of their most basic functions – whether or not bail is set when a defendant is under arrest for a crime.  Under the new rules, the Courts are required to consider the release of most defendants, with the least restrictive conditions applied to their release terms.

This had led to some truly ludicrous proposals for ensuring that the accused return to court, including New York City Mayor DeBlasio’s plan to give free Mets tickets, gift cards and free movie passes to criminal defendants in an effort to convince them to return to court.  

But there is another criminal justice reform scheduled to take effect in the new year – one that has caused prosecutors in New York State to sweat even more than the changes to the bail statute.

In any criminal prosecution, the defendant is entitled to “discovery” – that is, information regarding the evidence the prosecutor intends to use against the defendant. This would include police reports, witness statements, photographs, laboratory reports – essentially anything that could be used against a defendant at trial.

 A prosecutor is also obligated to turn over to the defense any materials that may tend to exculpate a defendant, such as a statement from a witness who cannot identify the defendant as the perpetrator of the crime, or a police report that indicates someone else may have been suspected of committing the crime.

In the past, the issue has been the timing of these disclosures to the defense.  Under New York Criminal Procedure Law Section 240.20, disclosure of the prosecutor’s evidence was made “upon a demand to produce by a defendant.”  The prosecutor could then seek a protective order from the Court for materials they believed should not be turned over to the defense, or that required redaction of information that may endanger a witness (such as removing the name of the informant from an application for a search warrant).  If the prosecutor failed to turn information over to the defense, the defendant could seek a court order under CPL Sec. 240.40, and ultimately, seek that the non disclosed information be excluded from use at trial.  

 These rules led to an elaborate game of hide and seek between prosecutors and police officers on one side, and defendants and their attorneys on the other.  After the initial request for disclosure was made by the defense, often the prosecutor asked the Court for additional time to produce the requested materials, or produced what information they had minutes before an evidentiary hearing was scheduled to begin.

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More than once, a prosecutor has withheld materials that were favorable to the defense until AFTER the trial, claiming that these materials had been “recently discovered” or “lost in the file.”  In 2005, for instance, Noura Jackson was convicted of murder in Tennessee.  Yet, evidence that could have discredited a key witness against Jackson was withheld from the defendant by the prosecutor, leading to the reversal of her conviction in 2014, after Ms Jackson had spent more than 10 years behind bars.  

   In my own experience, I have seen instances of prosecutors playing fast and loose with the discovery rules.  When I sat as a trial judge in Bronx Criminal Court, I sanctioned a prosecutor for withholding evidence. 

  Under New York State’s discovery reform, prosecutors will no longer have the ability to disclose materials relevant to a criminal case at their own leisure.  Instead, NY State Senate Bill S1716, which is due to take effect January 1, 2020, requires that “the prosecution shall perform its initial discovery obligations…as soon as practicable but not later than fifteen calendar days after the defendant’s arraignment…”   A defendant no longer needs to file a request for discovery – instead, the burden is on the prosecutor to provide their evidence within 15 days of the beginning of the case.

 Naturally, New York state prosecutors have pushed back against the new law.  “without additional staffers and upgraded technology, the reforms would face a series of internal hurdles, district attorneys warned the Senate Codes Committee during a seven-hour public hearing in Manhattan. The increased pressure could inadvertently cost prosecutors cases, and, if material is not properly reviewed and redacted, witnesses and other parties could be put in danger, they said.” 

But Governor Cuomo and the Legislature are standing fast, and will not even agree to the additional funding prosecutors have requested to implement the changes.  

  My own experience informs my opinion in this matter.  When working as the Chief Prosecutor for a Native American reservation’s tribal court in North Dakota, I provided police reports, photographs and whatever evidence I had available to the defense prior to the arraignment of the defendant.  Preparing these documents took up much of my morning, particularly on Monday, when there were no court sessions on the weekend.  By providing these materials in advance, however, a defendant had the ability to fairly assess the case against him or her, and decide whether or not to plead guilty in an informed manner.  In the majority of cases, the defendant took a sentence at the arraignment, knowing there was more than sufficient evidence to convict them.

I am sure there are readers who will feel that a defendant doesn’t need this information – he or she knows whether or not they’re guilty.  As attractive as this reasoning sounds, this theory stands our justice system on its head.  A defendant is always presumed to be innocent, until actually found guilty or enters a guilty plea.  Under this principal, the defendant has the right to know what evidence the prosecutor has available, so that the defendant may make an intelligent, knowing, and informed decision on whether or not they wish to waive their rights, and receive a sentence.  

 For once, the NY State legislature has the right idea – and prosecutors have no one but themselves to blame for these changes.

Illustration: Pixabay