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In two outrageous acts of junk justice, Judge Leticia Ramirez let out a person allegedly caught in The Bronx with a rifle and 500 rounds of ammo on the identical day she set $5,000 bail for a homicide suspect. Count it as contemporary proof that New York wants not simply higher legal guidelines, however higher jurists.
Bronx prosecutors requested that accused rifleman Matthew Velardo be held on $50,000 bail, however Ramirez freed him. She additionally declined to remand accused killer Vernon Gowdy — who has 15 prior arrests in addition to a jail stint within the Nineties — to Rikers, as a substitute setting a low bail.
Ramirez, a civil court docket decide presiding in Bronx felony court docket, was hit with an ethics reprimand in 2017 for utilizing her place to attempt to get her son — a convicted assassin — out of state jail. She had additionally abused her place to assist a buddy preventing a playing cost by writing the decide in that case.
Her defenders say she was merely obeying the state’s no-bail regulation. “With the latest criminal-justice-reform legal guidelines a decide should contemplate the least restrictive type of bail to make sure the defendants return,” stated Lucian Chalfen, a spokesperson for the state Office of Court Administration — a day earlier than Gov. Kathy Hochul insisted the legal guidelines have now been mounted.
Indeed, setting a excessive bail for Velardo and Gowdy appears inside Ramirez’s discretion, nevertheless restricted. Why is she even on the bench?
Well, Manhattan voters elected Ramirez to a second 10-year Civil Court time period in November 2020. But the system typically makes use of Civil Court jurists to assist out in Criminal Court, even in different boroughs.
Of course, it’s sometimes a County Committee that chooses judicial candidates, and the Democratic alternative is a shoo-in in a lot of the metropolis. Which means the identical Democrats who move no-bail and Raise the Age legal guidelines in Albany have a giant hand in choosing jurists like Ramirez.
And, no, it’s not simply her: Last April, The Post found {that a} Bronx gangbanger who was lower free by one decide solely to allegedly murder an innocent man months later was let out as soon as extra by a unique decide.
Hochul means that it’ll solely take some “persevering with education schemes” to get judges “to do their jobs” and begin jailing extra perps. In reality, Ramirez and others are all too more likely to cover behind the “least restrictive circumstances” mandate till the regulation is additional clarified.
Again, it’s New York’s Democrats who’ve given us the complete “let ’em free” system, with dangerous legal guidelines and dangerous judges (and a few terrible district attorneys, too). Voters’ greatest hope for change is to ship these Democrats a transparent message by voting towards all of them this November.
