Horowitz: Judge applies critical race theory to release career gang member from gun felony charges



A leftist federal judge in Manhattan evidently thinks there aren't enough ways to turn gun felons loose onto the streets. She has now applied critical race theory to add another way to release alleged gun felons; namely, by disqualifying grand jury indictments because not enough jury members were black, therefore rendering the jury pool inherently racist toward black suspects.

Abolishing the police is only a minor part of the public safety problem responsible for reversing two decades of miraculously low crime in New York City. Left-wing judges are abolishing all criminal justice deterrent. On Monday, District Judge Analisa Torres of the Southern District of New York dismissed a gun felony indictment of William Scott on the grounds that he was tried in a part of the district that did not have enough non-whites on the grand jury, according to the New York Post.

"Defendant has produced clear statistical evidence of underrepresentation of Black and Latinx individuals in the pool from which his grand jury was drawn, and a jury selection process that was susceptible to abuse," Torres wrote. She was extremely meticulous, using census data and the latest nomenclature to describe Latinos, but provided zero facts to support the conclusion that the indictment from last June was tainted in any way. She ruled that this particular grand jury scheme did not use "inactive voters," which she found "decreased the percentage of Black individuals on the Master Wheel by 0.34 percentage points, and the percentage of Latinx individuals by 0.43 percentage points."

In reality, so long as there is not a shred of bias on this particular case, there is no constitutional right to a computer-generated census that perfectly reflects every demographic permutation in the broader population. As the Supreme Court said in Holland v. Illinois, (1990), "Defendants are not entitled to a jury of any particular composition" and there is "no requirement that petit juries actually chosen must mirror the community and reflect the various distinctive groups in the population." If that's true for a trial jury, it most certainly is true for a grand jury. While this is a federal case, many states don't even require grand juries to bring indictments for state felonies; the prosecutor presents them alone. Are we going to say that only a black prosecutor can indict a black suspect?

Judges like Torres like to have it both ways — demand special rules for COVID but then violate those rules. In this case, Scott was charged in White Plains on felony possession of ammunition instead of in Manhattan because of the COVID restrictions. The entire judicial system has been upended because of COVID restrictions, much like individual rights of innocent citizens, which resulted in the release of so many violent criminals. Yet when it comes to convening a grand jury on this case in a different part of the same judicial district, suddenly Torres believes the defendant's Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights were violated.

It's funny how nobody seemed concerned about 50% of the jurors in the Chauvin trial being non-white, even though the makeup of Hennepin County is 74% white, or about the blatant examples of bias from the jurors. One of the jurors even attended a Black Lives Matter event. Also, in the White Plains case, this was merely a grand jury for the indictment, not the trial. Prosecutors believed that a delay in the case would endanger public safety, but this phantom right to a racially diverse grand jury was able to trump COVID logistics while unambiguous civil rights of peaceful citizens were swatted down in nearly every court case on the altar of public health safety.

Scott, 43, is a reputed member of the Bloods gang, and this federal gun charge stems from a shooting he is alleged to have been involved in last June. Scott was caught illegally possessing ammunition near the scene where the victim was shot in the leg twice. Court records show Scott had at least 25 prior arrests dating back to the 1990s, including busts for attempted murder on a failed shooting, assault, theft, weapons possession, and drug charges. This is the profile of the sort of individuals terrorizing the streets.

Here is a list of the charges I've been able to find from Scott's criminal record.

If you want to know why there is so much gun violence on the streets, it's because gun criminals are being released by leftist judges like Torres. In many ways, these judges are more culpable than even the street rioters deterring police from doing their jobs. Judges like Torres have taken critical race theory and enshrined it into law itself.

Incidentally, Torres is the same judge who ruled that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy is unconstitutional. This is the policy that is widely credited with turning around the city. Studies have shown that the termination of stop-and-frisk led to the catastrophic rise in shootings in Chicago since 2016. Undoubtedly, New York has followed a similar trajectory.

Before crime spirals to a breaking point, there is a need to create a private cause of action for victims of crime to sue judges who release criminals who have a clear proclivity to reoffend. Perhaps that will help remove critical race theory from the courtroom, an exponentially greater threat than even in the classroom.

Horowitz: Republicans should trap Biden with legislation instituting tough sentencing on gun felons



Democrats are terrified that they are now trapped between their radical Twitter/woke base that doesn't believe in incarceration and the general public (including many Democrat voters) who want violent criminals locked up. Crime is one of the most potent political issues, and the GOP of the early 1990s would have annihilated the Democrats on this issue by forcing them to oppose tougher sentences in what would become a political bloodbath akin to Hannibal trapping the Romans at the Battle of Cannae. However, if Republicans don't kick their own addiction to the Koch-funded de-incarceration agenda, they will allow Biden to tactically retreat from the morass.

Sensing peril ahead with skyrocketing crime in almost every large and mid-sized city, Biden announced a major anti-crime agenda on Wednesday. Except, for the first time in history, the agenda had nothing to do with locking up criminals.

To combat gun violence and violent crime, we’re going to: - Stem the flow of firearms - Advance community polic… https://t.co/npTcYCibpt

— President Biden (@POTUS) 1624486982.0

Notice what is absent from his agenda? Any proposal to lock up the thousands of gun felons who continuously terrorize the streets and are released despite violating their parole by illegally possessing a gun. The New York Times observes how Biden and the Democrats are realizing that defunding the police is a losing issue, which is why Biden is backing off the war on cops while simultaneously trying to direct the angst against criminals into the black hole of gun control.

Republicans, for their part, continue to talk about the need to fund the police. But they don't realize that Democrats have no problem throwing more funding at everything under the sun, including the police. Under current policies, there's no value to funding the police if everyone they arrest will be turned loose by leftist judges and, in some places, even the prosecutors. Which is why, rather than simply focusing on the cheap talking point of funding the police, thereby allowing Biden to co-opt the issue, Republicans should renounce their own support for de-incarceration and force Biden to take a stand on the issue of locking up gun felons.

Republicans should introduce legislation in Congress with the following goals:

  • Increase mandatory sentencing for gun felons: If guns are so bad that we need red flag laws against those never convicted of a crime, why not increase sentencing on those convicted of assaulting people with a gun or possessing a gun after having been convicted of a violent felony?
  • Actually make the mandatory minimums mandatory: Homicide in this country plummeted by over 60 percent precisely over the same period that gun ownership soared. Why? Thanks to Reagan's Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA), we actually deterred violent criminals with stiff mandatory sentencing. Yet for all the hand-wringing over "draconian" mandatory sentences, they were only mandatory from 1987 to 2005. Following the Booker decision of the Supreme Court, they have been merely advisory. This has created a huge amount of disparity in the system, and in recent years, the lack of mandatory sentencing has decreased the successes of the Reagan-era laws. Take bad guys who use guns (or other weapons) off the streets, not guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.
  • Fix court loophole allowing violent felons back on the streets: Six years ago, in Johnson v. U.S, the Supreme Court ruled that the "crime of violence" provision in theACCA is unconstitutionally vague. That has allowed thousands of the worst career gun felons and other violent individuals to get out of jail early or escape reasonable sentencing to begin with. In 2019, in S. v. Davis, Justice Gorsuch joined with the four liberals in expanding the assault on the ACCA, this time by saying that 924(c)(3), the statute that prohibits using or carrying a firearm during a federal "crime of violence," is unconstitutional and therefore vetoed out of existence. Now, armed robbers pointing short-barreled shotguns at store clerks avoid tougher sentencing at the same time liberals claim they want to "do something!" about gun violence. Just this past month, the Supreme Court punched another loophole the size of a truck through the ACCA (in Borden v. United States), allowing those already convicted of three violent felonies to escape the 15-year mandatory if subsequently convicted a fourth time for reckless assault and reckless homicide. Kavanaugh, in his dissent, warned that this opinion will result in "serial violent felons who unlawfully possess firearms" who would "otherwise [be] subject to ACCA" leaving prison "much earlier than Congress dictated, or avoid ACCA altogether." Whether one agrees with these court opinions or not, why would a Congress supposedly concerned about gun violence not want to fix these statutory loopholes created by the courts?
  • Limit bail for those charged with gun crimes: So many of the gun crimes in this country are committed by repeat gun felons out on bail pending their next trial. Rather than abolishing bail, how about raising the thresholds for releasing those with prior gun convictions?

Moreover, Republicans in control of every red state should push similar laws at a state level. Recently, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson suggested that violent crime is going to skyrocket and get worse. "There's nothing," said Jackson, "that's going to bring this down in the near future." Nonsense. Ohio's crime problem is being driven by gun felons, particularly juveniles. Getting tough both on gun felons and juveniles would reverse the homicide and carjacking rates very quickly. It's with policies supported by Mayor Jackson and other leftists that crime will increase indefinitely.

In addition, GOP governors should do the following:

  • Create a searchable database of all violent crime cases where the public can search the disposition of the case by judge, prosecutor, and crime category to see who is being let out on bail and who is being granted light sentences. Biden called on states to use COVID funding to fight crime, so they can use those funds to create such a database.
  • Convene a commission for victims of crime to audit all the ways violent criminals escape justice and how those loopholes can be plugged.
  • Pass anti-gang legislation creating tough mandatories on juveniles committing crimes in furtherance of gang activity and making it easier to prosecute them across county lines. Most gun violence stems from gang violence. To attack the gun and ignore the gang is like spitting in the wind.

We all know why crime is increasing. According to this Vera report, theU.S. prison population dropped by over 240,000 persons, a little more than 17%, from 2019 to the spring of 2021. That comes after several years of prior declines in most states. The federal prison population, which is largely composed of hardened career criminals, has dropped 29% since 2013. And this is while the general population is growing.

Let's face it, the reason so many Republicans refuse to push tougher sentencing is because they are scared of "locking up more black folks." But the reality is that, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as of 2019, the combined state and federal prison imprisonment rate was the lowest it's been since 1995. What's more, the imprisonment rate of black residents was the lowest rate in 30 years, since 1989. And that was all before the insane drop precipitated by COVID policies that led to a 17% decline overall in incarceration since after the study period of the BJS report.

No wonder we are experiencing record crime levels. Are we going to celebrate releasing black criminals (among others) or keeping law-abiding black citizens safe like we did in the 1990s?

Just consider the results of this mass prison release, along with the war on cops. In Milwaukee, from 2014 to 2020, 79% of all murder victims were black. Last year, Milwaukee broke the record for homicide, and this year it is on pace for another record. Guess what? So far this year, 91% of all homicide victims were black! That means almost all the excess homicide victims, crimes that were driven by the obsession with keeping black criminals out of prison, were black.

In Philadelphia, the number of murders has increased by 78% from 2015 to 2020. Meanwhile, the jail population has decreased by 43%. Again, we can either celebrate that black criminals are out of jail or we can lament how black residents, increasingly young children, are being gunned down in record numbers. Homicides in 2021 are already outpacing the record set last year. So far, 85% of all homicide victims were black, even though black people compose less than 45% of the city's total population.

At this point, the only thing gun control will accomplish is preventing law-abiding citizens from defending themselves against the gun felons these politicians release. Ultimately, the question Democrats need to be asked is: Do they truly hate guns more than they love keeping gun felons out of prison? Unfortunately, with Republicans signing on to "criminal justice reform" since crime started going up in 2015, Democrats have never felt compelled to answer that question.

Horowitz: How about ‘red flagging’ those who have ALREADY committed gun crimes?



Here's a simple proposition a sane and dedicated Republican Party would promote among all its candidates next year: locking up every convicted violent gun felon in America. Doing so would end not only nearly all gun crimes, but most other violent crimes as well. Yet, in the world we live in today, leftists are promoting "red flag" laws to take away guns from people without criminal records and without due process while refusing to incarcerate repeat violent felons who either illegally possess guns or commit violence with guns, thus ignoring the ultimate red flags.

Fourteen-year-old Jupiter Paulsen was skateboarding to her mother's home last Friday in what most would consider a safe part of Fargo, North Dakota, when she was suddenly and randomly attacked for 25 minutes. She was allegedly stabbed to death 25 times by 23-year-old Arthur Prince Kollie. The suspect claims to have been high on meth during the attack.

To state the obvious, this wasn't Kollie's first brush with violent crime. According to court records, Kollie was on probation for a 2017 conviction for assault on a peace officer. Yet he violated his probation in one of the worst ways imaginable. He was arrested last December 18 for illegally possessing a firearm as a felon, discharging the firearm within city limits, and possession of drugs.

Now, in a sane world of gun control – where politicians seem so concerned about target pistol braces of those engaged in sports and target practice – they would treat felony possession and discharge of a firearm during probation as a cardinal sin leading to 10-20 years in prison, right? In fact, just a month before the grisly June 4 attack on the girl, Kollie was sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation and just 27 days in jail, which he had already served.

In other words, had we constructed a criminal justice system focused on locking up violent gun felons, Kollie would have been behind bars and Jupiter Paulsen would still have most of her life ahead of her. But now that we focus on the gun while letting out the gun felon, Kollie was able to end her life at 14 years with a knife! The Kollie case plays out in every major city every single day – where gun felons are released to please the idols of the de-incarceration agenda, and they then proceed to murder using any other weapon or their bare hands. It's the ultimate proof that criminals, especially gun felons, kill, not guns.

Every day, I see numerous stories of high-profile murders and heinous crimes, and almost every one of them is committed by a known felon who was not fully punished for gun crimes. Whether it's refusing to sentence gun felons to their maximum prison time, refusing to re-incarcerate those who violate their parole with felony possession, or releasing those who commit crimes with guns on no or low bail, the very leftists who push gun control on law-abiding citizens are the ones releasing the ultimate red flags back on the streets.

These are just the stories I've seen over the past two days:

  • Bronx gang member Alberto Ramirez was arrested on his third gun felony earlier this year after he had a history of being involved in shootings. Even on the third charge, he was only initially held on $75,000 bail. Then, on March 2, acting Supreme Court Justice Denis Boyle lowered the amount to $10,000 cash or $25,000 bond. Fast-forward to this past Monday, and Ramirez is accused of randomly shooting into a crowd during a turf war (in what is called "spinning the block") and killing Eric Velasquez, a father of two.
  • Everyone in Minnesota has heard of George Floyd and Daunte Wright, but nobody has heard of 28-year-old Todd Lorne Banks Jr. who was found dead in Rochester, allegedly shot by two gun felons, Derrick Timothy Days and Nautica Delshaun Cox. Days was released from prison in December 2020 after serving a federal prison sentence for being a felon in possession of a firearm and was placed on worthless supervised release for another three years. Cox, who had a history of armed robbery and assault, was convicted of felony possession of a gun last September, but was placed on probation.
  • Another Minnesota homicide victim who will never obtain George Floyd-level acclaim is 14-year-old Demaris Hobbs-Ekdahl. He was gunned down at a graduation party in suburban Maplewood, and police believe his stepfather, Keith Dawson, started the drive-by shooting that led to his death. It turns out that Dawson had 36 prior convictions, including, you guessed it, a drive-by shooting and several felony possessions.
  • And speaking of Daunte Wright, the political elites are crying over his accidental killing by cops at a traffic stop, but let's not forget that he was a gun felon who should have been locked up. Not only was he previously arrested for choking and robbing a woman at gun point, but this week a second family filed a civil lawsuit against his estate for carjacking. Another lawsuit alleges that Wright shot a teenager in 2019, leaving him permanently disabled.
  • Tony Hampton, a career Chicago criminal, was arrested on May 1 for felony possession, but was released without any bail despite his record. Just three days later he was arrested for robbing a phone store. He posted just $10,000 bond and was released, only to rob another phone store three weeks later! This is the story of Chicago.
  • Last weekend, 6-year-old Coby Daniel went to retrieve his bike, which was parked in front of his neighbor's home in Washtenaw County, Michigan. That neighbor, Ryan Le-Nguyen, allegedly charged at the boy with a sledgehammer, and when he couldn't catch him, shot the boy in the arm, missing his heart by about an inch. That sounds like a pretty bad gun crime, right? Well, a judge released him on just $10,000 cash bond, where he can now go back and threaten the boy who will testify against him.
  • Isaiah G. "Zeek" Gardenhire has racked up a 20-year criminal history in central Michigan, which includes multiple assaults, home invasion, and felony possession of firearms. After being released from prison for his last sentence in October 2020, he was arrested again last month for criminal sexual conduct with a child under 13. How much do you think bail should be set for such a criminal? $1 million? $2 million? Well, he was released on May 27 after posting just $7,500 cash bond. Just one week later, Gardenhire allegedly went on a 40-hour crime spree in Mt. Pleasant that includes killing 13-year-old girl Adre Dembowske, taking hostages, carjacking, robbing people, and sexually assaulting two women, one of whom was a stranger to him. Nobody can say we didn't see this one coming. Adre Dembowske is just another name that will never be known to the public whose memory will fall into the ash heap of "criminal justice reform."

I can go on and on, because these stories are essentially what is driving all sorts of violence, including gun violence, in every major city every day. Philadelphia police are averaging over nine gun arrests per day! But almost all of them result in parole, not meaningful jail time, especially if the perpetrator is a juvenile.

You might be wondering by now – isn't possession of firearms considered a felony under federal law? Why then is the Department of Justice not aggressively prosecuting gun felons in cities like Chicago, instead leaving them to local prosecutors and judges to release on parole? The answer is that the feds have no interest in pursuing people who actually harm others with guns because they don't want to add to the prison population. The federal prison population is down 30% over the past eight years, even as the general population grows, and the Biden administration wants to keep it that way.

Imagine if the DOJ worked with every city prosecutor to take the gun felons off the streets through federal prosecutions. They'd prevent most violent crime, not just gun crime. Chicago's justice system has released 534 people charged as felons in possession of a weapon and 569 individuals who have been accused of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon all on ankle monitors. Where are the federal prosecutors taking them off the streets? If they are really concerned about red flags with guns, they'd go after the people who are so obviously red, their hands are dripping with blood in plain sight.