Headline-chasing Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s vanity project of a trial against former president Donald Trump comes at a high cost for New Yorkers.
The time and expense Bragg has devoted to the flimsy-as-a-cobweb Trump charges are indefensible given how many dangerous crimes go unprosecuted.
Criminals roam the streets with little fear of facing jail time.
Manhattan’s crime clearance rate is an abysmal 29.8%.
In 2023, NYC’s 109,303 prosecuted arrests resulted in an imprisonment rate of less than 7%.
While Trump is going to trial and faces six to eight weeks of “embarrassing evidence,” most New York criminal cases summarily plea bargained.
Out of 18,478 cases, 15,053 were plea bargained.
In 2023 in NYC, 12,151 criminal filings (10,924 indictments and 1,227 SCIs) resulted in 10,722 guilty pleas, a guilty plea rate of 88%.
Such unbridled plea bargaining “severely weakens the integrity of the justice system,” says a new report from the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
On the rare occasions that they are convicted, New York’s dangerous criminals are set free time and again.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Tim Rosenberger is a legal fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Adapted from City Journal online.
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