Darcel’s Dubious 180

Boy, was that a fast reversal by Bronx DA Darcel Clark: A week after talking of going to the US Supreme Court to overturn a crazy ruling by New York’s top court, she dropped that idea and instead proposed an even crazier “solution.”

The state Court of Appeals created a new right for class-B misdemeanor defendants who aren’t US citizens: Unlike everyone else, they can now demand a jury trial — because they could face deportation if convicted.

Since jury trials take longer, this is a guaranteed court-clogger, as Clark warned. It also gives this special class of defendants extra leverage in plea-bargaining.

At first, Clark was outraged, noting that the ruling conflicts with precedent and has the criminal courts trying to guess the outcome of deportation cases.

But it seems the politically correct crowd got to her: She has abandoned talk of appeal, arguing instead that the Legislature should grant the same jury-trial right to everyone facing class-B misdemeanor charges.

Huh? That would clog the courts even more — potentially denying countless people their right to a speedy trial, or forcing prosecutors to be even more generous in plea-bargaining.

With state help, Bronx courts only recently resolved a huge backlog that had thousands of misdemeanor cases pending for over a year. The Court of Appeals ruling endangers that progress, and threatens similar problems across the state — and Clark’s solution would ensure nightmares.

So why did Clark flip? Most likely, her political advisers yanked her strings. After all, she only became DA thanks to the Bronx Democratic machine, which engineered the timing of then-DA Robert Johnson’s departure to avoid an open primary back in 2015.

Plainly she feared a primary challenge next year from a pro-immigrant-rights candidate. Far better to abandon principle than put her job at risk.