NY judges to get even more leeway on bail laws in unexpected deal
State judges are about to get even more leeway in restricting criminal defendants before trial thanks to an unexpected budget compromise revealed Tuesday.
Gov. Kathy Hochul previously publicly proposed nixing the current measure that requires judges to put the “least restrictive” conditions on criminal defendants in bail-eligible cases.
The new agreement will now also free judges’ hands in the same way even for non-bail-eligible crimes.
That means that while such defendants still can’t be held on bail, judges get more leeway to impose a variety of conditions on them such as requiring electronic monitoring or drug treatment.
“What we’re looking to give the courts is more autonomy in deciding the conditions and the kinds of real control that is necessary to return someone to court,” Hochul said at a Capitol press conference Tuesday.
“This was what was not happening – we weren’t having people being sent to programs that would help them rehabilitate,” she said. “And what we’ve opened it up as [is] for the ability for a judge to look at the entirety of the picture of the individual,” Hochul said.
According to the legislative language, judges will now be able to “consider the kind and degree of control or restriction necessary to reasonably assure the [defendants] return to court.”
Jurists still won’t be allowed to consider jailing a criminal defendant based on how much they believe he or she is a danger to society, which progressives consider a major victory.
State lawmakers are expected to approve the revamped bail proposal in budget votes set to finish by early Wednesday.
Albany Democrats set off a firestorm in 2019 when they made so-called bail reforms that they said would help reduce the state’s overwhelming jail population.
Critics have said the changes only serve criminals, dumping them back on the street to continue their reigns of terror.
Hochul, who only narrowly won re-election, pitched a revamp earlier this year to nix the “least restrictive” measure for serious crimes only.
“Let’s leave the law where it is for low-level [non-bail-eligible] offenses,” she said Feb. 1 while unveiling her draft budget.
It’s not clear why state Democratic leaders — who have majorities in both houses — agreed to take her proposal one step further and expand it to non-eligible bail offenses.
But Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) seemed to suggest Tuesday that progressives were able to swallow the move a lot easier knowing the “dangerous” standard would not be enacted in New York — the only state to not have it.
“I think that’s why we got to where we were,” Heastie told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) said, “If this was a need to clarify for judges, that they have more discretion, so be it. The clarification is there.”
Hochul said last week that her push to overhaul the law was partly in response to high-profile cases where courts failed to impose bail.
One such case involved a Bronx judge who freed a man with a long rap sheet without bail — despite prosecutors’ pleas to jail him before trial — after the suspect allegedly fatally strangled his stepson.
“There’s some horrific cases – splashed on the front pages of newspapers – where defense lawyers [told judges], ‘Follow the “least restrictive,” that means you have to let this person out.’ And some of those cases literally shocked the conscious,” Hochul said Thursday, after announcing a “conceptual” budget deal nearly a month past the state’s April 1 deadline.
The governor had held up budget talks for weeks while holding out for concessions on issues such as bail from Heastie and Stewart-Cousins.
Republicans have characterized the Democratic governor’s efforts as a positive step against rising crime – but still far from the big leap they want toward a judicial system where judges would have much more latitude to handle criminal defendants.
“We want a judge’s discretion to keep someone incarcerated if they’re a danger to the community. Other states have that. We think it’s a totally appropriate, common sense solution,” Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay (D-Fulton) told The Post on Tuesday.
Assemblyman Michael Tannousis (R-Staten Island) added, “Our push is for judicial discretion, because everything in the criminal justice system is a case-by-case basis.
“That’s why these bail reform laws are so dangerous because a judge is the one that sees the defendant, reads about the defendant’s background, knows about the case, has an [assistant district attorney] in front of him to be able to question them about the case, and the judge can make an informed decision based on the facts of the case presented to them,” said Tannousis, who previously served as an ADA in the Bronx and Staten Island.
But securing any changes to controversial limits on cash bail did not come easy for Hochul, who also had to battle fellow Democrats on other touchy topics, too, such as expanding charter schools in the Big Apple and an affordable-housing plan she ended up abandoning after suburban resistance.
