Gotham’s ‘guiltiest’ boroughs
How DAs rate in trial convictions
If you’re charged with a felony in New York City, there is only a 1 percent chance you’ll go on trial. And if you do, you’ll want to be in The Bronx and not Staten Island.
Bronx prosecutors scored convictions in 49 percent of felony trials between January 2015 and May 2017 — far behind the overall city rate of 67 percent, according to a Post review of state data.
The number came as no surprise to Stephanie Saldana-Sanchez, who watched in horror in March 2016 as the man accused of killing her 21-year-old son, Fabian Gonzalez, was found not guilty by a judge at a Bronx bench trial.
“Wow. I feel like the whole system has failed,” she told The Post, still grieving the loss of the Air Force veteran, who was fatally struck when a reputed gangbanger allegedly opened fire on a stoop in Westchester Square in 2012.
Felony defendants fared far worse in Staten Island, where they were convicted at an 85 percent clip. Still, only a fraction of accused felons there made it to trial — 41 cases out of 7,713 arrests.
Citywide, only 1.2 percent — or 2,262 — of the 195,657 adults ar- rested for felonies saw their cases resolved by a judge or jury.
That’s a shame, said one policing expert, since detectives would be better at locking down cases if more of their arrests made it to a courtroom.
“There would be better witnesses, better evidence collection and a better long view of the case,” said Eugene O’ Donnell, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and ex-NYPD cop.
“If 99 percent of the cases you investigate never go to trial, you don’t know the quality of your cases . . . I know many a detective who came back licking his wounds after he was humiliated in court. Only after you’ve actually been on trial do you get a sense of the gaps, and the things to look for.” The Post review also showed:
57 percent of accused felons took plea bargains, before or during trials. Manhattan prosecutors were most likely to make a deal, with a rate of 66 percent. Brooklyn and The Bronx were tied for the lowest rate, at 52 percent.
31 percent of all felony cases get dismissed. Brooklyn had the highest rate of dismissal, at 39 percent, while Manhattan had the lowest, 26 percent.
In 8 percent of felony cases, city prosecutors declined to bring charges after an arrest. The Bronx District Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the most cases, at 15 percent, while Manhattan prosecutors declined the least, 4 percent.
The Bronx DA’s office said it does not measure success solely on its conviction rate at trial.
“We strive to obtain the best outcome for the victims and the people of The Bronx in every case, and often a plea is the better route to take instead of going to trial,” it said in a statement.
Saldana-Sanchez, meanwhile, is still outraged by the acquittal of reputed Crips member Jordan Agosto in the May 2012 slaying of her son, who was in town visiting family on the Memorial Day weekend.
She believes authorities, who initially mistook Gonzalez for a gangster, could have worked harder to secure a conviction.
“I think it was a ‘rush, rush’ because they thought my son was a gang member,” said Saldana-Sanchez, 45, who works at a government base in Alabama. “They didn’t know he was a veteran. They didn’t know what was at stake.”