AG wants gun-toting criminals to get no bail
TRENTON >> In an effort to get tougher on crime and keep gun-toting criminals off the streets, New Jersey’s top cop on Wednesday directed state prosecutors to start applying for pretrial detention whenever a new defendant gets arrested for a firearms offense.
State Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino in his revised directive also commanded prosecutors to apply for pretrial detention whenever a defendant flees from a police officer and gets arrested on a second-degree eluding offense that had created a risk of death or injury to any person.
Pretrial detention is the state’s new tool to keep dangerous offenders behind bars without bail while awaiting trial. In the first three months of 2017, prosecutors on behalf of the state have filed 2,256 motions for detention seeking to keep those defendants locked up in a county jail pending final resolution of their criminal cases. Judges granted detention in 1,262 or 55.9 percent of those cases.
But there have been multiple cases of newly arrested defendants with low Public Safety Assessment or PSA scores getting charged with possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose — such as State v. Shakor Twitty in Passaic County — where prosecutors did not file motions for pretrial detention.
Those days of prosecutors failing to file detention motions against alleged guntoting criminals or against defendants who allegedly commit new criminal activity while on pretrial release are over.
Acting in his unilateral capacity, Attorney General Porrino took action on Wednesday to give prosecutors more mandatory presumptions to pursue pretrial detention. He adopted the tougher standards after consulting with law-enforcement stakeholders, community leaders and the courts. His revised directive makes key prosecutorial changes regarding detention motion protocols to rectify what has been perceived as shortcomings in the criminal justice reform era.
New Jersey on Jan. 1 implemented sweeping reforms transforming the state’s criminal justice system into a risk-assessment regime. The state now has new powers to keep certain defendants in jail without bail for up to two years while their criminal cases play out in the courts. The new system also encourages judges to impose nonmonetary conditions of release for any newly arrested defendant not deemed to be a danger to the community or flight risk. The new system has made it extremely rare for new criminal defendants to be held on monetary bails.
The Criminal Justice Reform Act has been championed by certain advocates, including Porrino, but critics such as the New Jersey Fraternal Order of Police have called the law flawed, with state FOP recording secretary and legislative chairman James E. Ford last month writing a letter to Porrino “seeking to correct the law’s flaws and to strengthen those parts of the law that are not being followed.”
“It is a proven fact that since its enactment law enforcement has encountered a more difficult time in attempting to keep New Jersey’s communities safe,” Ford wrote in his letter to Porrino about the bail reform law.
Local defense attorney John Furlong earlier this month said New Jersey’s previous criminal justice system had flaws but suggested that “bail reform has made a bad system worse at greater expense to the taxpayer and at greater threat to public safety.”
“Bail reform is working,” Porrino said Wednesday in a statement, “as evidenced by the more than 1,200 dangerous criminals detained without bail in the first quarter of 2017 — criminals who under the old system might have paid their way out of jail and continued to threaten the community, victims and witnesses. With these revisions to our directive, we’re making sure that detention will be sought more frequently for certain categories of offenders, including recidivist offenders, those who commit gun crimes, sex offenders, and criminals with a history of threatening police and the public with their violent or reckless acts.”
Elie Honig, director of the state’s Division of Criminal Justice, in a statement on Wednesday said, “These revisions to our law enforcement directive reflect a renewed confidence that our new system enables us to protect the public by detaining the most dangerous offenders, while avoiding the costs, both fiscal and social, of warehousing indigent non-violent offenders in jail pending trial.”
Last month, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office sent a letter to the New Jersey Administrative Office of the Courts requesting certain changes to the PSA and the decision-making framework employed by the state Judiciary’s Pretrial Services Program. The Attorney General’s Office wants to increase the chances of a judge imposing detention in cases where a defendant is charged with a gun crime, eluding police in a vehicle with risk of death or injury, or any new crime committed while on pretrial release, probation or parole.
The judiciary as of Wednesday has not agreed to implement the changes proposed by the AG’s Office — changes that would make it more likely for a judge to sign a detention order regarding certain defendants — but the AG’s Office says it “is continuing to work with the courts regarding such goals.”