As is well known, there is a significant uptick in New York City crime. A newly-elected mayor intends to employ his personal brand as a former police officer to put a large dent in it. Good on him!
In doing so, however, Mayor Eric Adams may be met with two considerable obstacles—maybe somewhat immovable forces. First, New York state’s bail reform law diminishes the ability of an arraigning judge to set cash bail when he determines that although the arrested defendant may not necessarily pose a risk of flight he poses a potential danger to the community which, in the judge’s view, mandates his pre-trial detention in the interest of public safety. Yet the judge’s hands are currently tied behind his back (and it’s unclear whether Governor Hochul actually wants to see the knot loosened). Second, in New York County in particular, the newly-elected District Attorney has very publicly created for his assistants certain charging ground rules and guilty plea policies that the tabloids and, presumably at least some judges, may view as simply too soft on crime. On this score too, in most instances the sitting judge’s hands will be tied. Judges aren’t typically unopinionated members of society. Thus far, however, there hasn’t been a particularly loud hue and cry from them. An occasional judge has mentioned from the bench, sometimes to the perceptible thrill of the tabloids, that he would have wanted to detain the defendant before him, but it comes up against, to the public’s disappointment, the lenient bail law. Or the judge would have preferred to throw the key away, but the DA’s office has declined to bring a higher charge. We have actually read in the newspaper during the past month a judge saying, maybe bemoaning his own lack of agency, to a defendant before him: “Today is your lucky day.”
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