State Senate Deputy Majority Chief Michael Gianaris argued Pedro Hernandez's tried homicide case has nothing to do with bail reform.
Erik McGregor/LightRocket by way of Getty Pictures
State Senate Deputy Majority Chief Michael Gianaris doubled down on his bid to finish money bail and refused to stroll again his tone-deaf take on Pedro Hernandez, the darling of bail reformers who was arrested this week on an attempted-murder warrant.
In seven years, Hernandez, 22, has at the least 13 arrests, together with three gun expenses and two armed theft expenses, in response to data.
He was arrested Monday and charged with tried homicide for an Aug. 28 taking pictures outdoors St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Hernandez is suspected of firing a single shot into an occupied purple Mercedes Benz after shedding money and a gold chain in a three-card monte recreation, authorities mentioned. Nobody was hit.
In July 2017, Gianaris (D-Queens) tweeted he was “reissuing” his name for an finish to money bail and that Hernandez was “the most recent instance of a system that discriminates on the premise of wealth.”
Hernandez spent greater than a yr on Rikers Island after refusing to take a no-jail plea deal for a 2015 Bronx taking pictures. He couldn’t make the $250,000 bail, or the later decreased $100,000 bail, so he remained locked up.
The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Basis bailed him out in 2017 and turned him right into a trigger celebre for woke crusaders. The fees had been ultimately dropped — after his alleged sufferer recanted his identification and one other witness stopped cooperating.
However even after the profession felony was charged with tried homicide this week, Gianaris nonetheless pleaded his case.
“Attempting to attach an tried homicide case to bail reform exposes the demagoguery of these scaring individuals to attain political factors,” Gianaris mentioned to The Submit.
“If [Hernandez] is discovered responsible of the present expenses, he ought to completely be punished accordingly,” Gianaris conceded.
Critics disagreed.
“If anybody is a demagogue, it’s the Senator,” mentioned Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at John Jay Faculty of Prison Justice in Manhattan. “As an alternative of interesting to the rational argument that one thing is flawed, he continues to gaslight the individuals of New York state.”
At Tuesday’s arraignment on the tried homicide case, Manhattan Prison Courtroom decide Michael Gaffey opted to jail Hernandez with out bail as a result of his prior arrests.
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