New York state’s legislative assault on the law-abiding continues.
The Assembly is headed back to Albany for a short special session, in part to pass a Senate-cleared bill to make it vastly easier for crooks to get their convictions overturned.
That’s including in cases where a prior vacate effort got denied on the merits, and where the defendant simply chose not to try for an overturn at the time of conviction.
It even allows for possible repeated vacate efforts though the facts haven’t changed at all.
This pro-crime move comes wrapped in the usual Orwellian language: the “Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act.”
New York law already holds numerous paths to getting a bad conviction vacated, such as on grounds of police or prosecutorial misconduct, an incompetent defense attorney or the belated emergence of new evidence — including DNA exonerations.
So the bleeding-heart name is just cover for yet another move in the progressives’ drive to dismantle every keystone of our criminal-justice system in favor of “junk justice.”
Consider: By limiting qualified immunity, Gotham leftists have hamstrung cops’ ability to do their jobs, hanging the threat of a lawsuit over their every move.
Statewide, they’ve paralyzed prosecutors with burdensome, pointless discovery requirements.
Progs have largely demolished judges’ ability to set bail, even for truly dangerous defendants.
Via “Less Is More,” they ensured that vicious thugs on parole can break the law and still stay out of jail.
They all-but-abolished criminal penalties for anyone under 18, leading to a tragic rise in teen gun violence.
With this month’s Clean Slate Act, they’ve ensured that criminals will have their crimes automatically hidden from the public.
Now they want to give lawbreakers the right to seek early release on the flimsiest of pretexts, ending any finality in our legal system — and safety among the citizenry.
Plus, these proceedings will burn up precious court time and prosecutorial resources, in a system already badly overburdened.
Why not hold off on this stuff until crime’s back down to where it was before the “reform” wave started?
It’s looking ever less like progressives just don’t care about feeding a rise in crime, and more like that’s the point.
