Since the Nixon era begat the “modern ‘get tough’
movement” — to use the Sentencing Project’s term — the criminal
justice system has been rough on people.
A new Sentencing Project study says
the US rate of incarceration in 2002 hit “a record high” of 702
inmates per hundred thousand population. Russia took second place, with 628 per
hundred thousand. Germany was way down the list, at 91 per hundred thousand. But crime in the US has been going down, with an uptick during the recession. And only a quarter of the decline, says the Project, may have come from harsh incarceration
policies.
Yet the public’s fear of crime stays high. Police and prosecutors are today’s media darlings. (Hasta la vista, Perry Mason for the defense.) Toughness, not
fairness, makes the mass audience — and potential voters — happy.
The Monroe County
District Attorney race is the local Ground Zero for this phenomenon.
Two major-party candidates are in
this race. Republican-Conservative Ann Marie Taddeo, who was a local Family
Court judge for more than a decade, and an assistant Monroe County DA before
that; and current assistant DA Mike Green, a Democrat who’s also running on his
own Crime Prevention Party line. (Also, retired Rochester police officer and
writer Ralph Boryszewski is running as an independent write-in. The run, says a
campaign ad, is part of an effort “to strike a blow at the stranglehold
that lawyers presently hold over the three branches of our government.”)
In a campaign handout, Mike Green
says he’s “successfully prosecuted some of this county’s toughest
criminals.” One of Green’s TV ads starts with a boast that the candidate
helped send a murderer to death row. And — grafting a human touch onto the
toughness — Green’s literature says he’s “known throughout the community
as a passionate advocate for victims of crimes.”
“I’ve made a career of
prosecuting violent felons… and putting some of them away for long periods of
time,” says Green, in person. He tempers the point, however, drawing
distinctions between levels of threat to the community, as with the drug trade.
“I think people bringing 10 kilos of cocaine onto our streets deserve
harsh punishment,” he says. “We’ve found that [even] the marijuana
trade can be every bit as violent as the cocaine trade. Our focus right now
needs to be on the violence.”
On the demand side, Green says he
favors alternatives to incarceration — like Drug Court, where an offender’s
addiction can be addressed.
The Taddeo campaign did not return
our calls for comment. But Taddeo’s campaign literature talks tough in several
respects.
For example, one brochure, noting
that “crime devastates victims and destroys neighborhoods,” promises the
candidate will “provide the experience, honesty, and toughness necessary
to protect victims and families.” The brochure highlights an endorsement
by Rochester Police Locust Club President Ron Evangelista, who often takes the
hard line on policing issues.
Taddeo’s acceptance of the
Conservative endorsement is indicative, too. The Conservative Party of New York
State’s 2003 Legislative Program calls for ending parole “for all convicted felons,” and for mandatory
sentencing of those convicted “of a third independent felony” to life
without parole. The party wants bail denied to accused violent felons, and it
supports legislation to allow those who have committed multiple misdemeanors to
be prosecuted as felons. There’s also a demand that juveniles be tried as
adults in cases of “heinous crimes.”
The persona in Taddeo’s ads seems
at odds with her observed demeanor on the bench. In 1998, the Fund for Modern
Courts, working through Church Women United’s Task Force on Courts, issued Monroe County Court Monitors: Report on the
Family Court. Taddeo, said one monitor, “creates a comfortable
atmosphere” in her courtroom and “[exhibits] competence and authority
while remaining compassionate.” Monitors found Taddeo “bored and
uninterested” during one proceeding and “a bit indifferent to the parties
involved” in another.
In her campaign
brochure, Taddeo offers a brisk “Six Point Plan”: “improve
the conviction rate,” “reduce the murder rate,” “stop
career criminals,” and so forth.
One of the six items has provoked
special controversy. While calling for “a new ‘Tough on Crime’ strategy,'”
she proposed the creation of “Neighborhood Protection Zones” on
certain “crime-ridden streets.” (That descriptive phrase obviously
indicts low-income neighborhoods in the city of Rochester. But in a September
news release, Taddeo says the strategy could be extended to “important
community retail, commercial, and entertainment corridors — the malls,
Frontier Field, or the East End, for example.”)
Under the proposal, persons
committing crimes within the zones (misdemeanors as well as felonies) would
face more aggressive prosecution, says a Taddeo news release. Moreover, it
says, “the criminals responsible will not be offered plea bargain
opportunities.” The plan would be overseen by “a broad-based
community review committee” including neighborhood residents, community
leaders, police, and public officials.” Locust Club President Evangelista
is quoted as supporting the “innovative concept.”
Critics, too, are weighing in.
Scott Forsyth, counsel for the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union,
says the Protection Zones could lead to “two systems of justice: One for
people in a [targeted] neighborhood and one for people outside.” The
problem is reminiscent, he says, of what happened when Rochester police made
selective stops and wrote-up masses of “field information forms” a
few years back. “If you’re a minority,” he says, “it looks like
and smells like racial profiling.” He acknowledges that patterns of crime
and complaints influence all of this, too.
Forsyth doesn’t recall other
jurisdictions where Protection Zones are contemplated or in use. But he says
that US Attorney General John Ashcroft has proposed to limit plea bargains at
the federal level — and has elicited criticism for it.
“My instinct is, [the concept]
is constitutional,” says Mike Green. But he adds it could “violate
civil rights” in some cases. “It’s going to be discriminatory in the
way it plays out,” he says. It could appear, he says, to trivialize crimes
committed outside the zones, while harming offenders without prior records
within the zones. “In my mind, that’s not justice,” he says. The DA’s
responsibility, he says, “is to make appropriate decisions based on the
facts of the case.”
Well over to the right,
writer-broadcaster Bob Lonsberry has voiced harsh criticism of the proposal. In
a September 16 website column, Lonsberry says he’s “all in favor of
getting tough.” But Taddeo’s proposal, he says, “would spit in the face”
of the concept of equal protection. “It would punish one set of criminals
more than another, and protect one set of victims less than another.”
According to Lonsberry, “the
worst thing” about Taddeo’s proposal is that by making punishment
potentially lighter outside the zones, it “would drive crime into the
relatively quiet Republican suburbs where her voters reside.”
A numbers game is
in play, too.
One of Taddeo’s TV ads looks at the
Monroe County DA’s conviction rates in recent years. The camera pans over a
data table of county conviction rates, focusing on the number 46 percent. The
implication — reinforced by a voiceover — is that Green and his colleagues
are letting half of all serious perps walk.
           Taddeo’s
arithmetic is “clearly misleading,” counters Green. His office, he
says, actually has had a 95 percent conviction rate over the past two years —
and points to recent New York State Felony Processing reports as confirmation.
He says, too, that he secured 15 convictions in 16 homicide cases tried in
2001, and 29 convictions in 30 cases the following year.
Green explains that to determine a
true conviction rate, one has to consider only those “cases where someone
[in the DA’s office] has looked at the case and decided it could go ahead;
every felony case that comes in the door is not a good case.” And there
are variables. Sometimes, he says, people lie to the police to incriminate
someone. “The job of the DA’s office is not to rubberstamp whatever comes
in the door,” he says.
There are philosophical gulfs
between Taddeo and Green, too.
           Take their
approach to capital punishment.
           Taddeo is
an enthusiastic supporter. “I support the death penalty and fully believe
that it’s a justifiable punishment for those who coldly and callously kill
innocent victims,” she declares in a July news release. “As district
attorney, I will seek capital punishment in every case where it is applicable
and where it does not conflict with the wishes of the victim’s family.”
She says, too, that she would use the death penalty specifically “to
address Rochester’s high murder rate.”
           Green makes
no philosophical declaration. “It’s the law of the state, and I have no
problem enforcing the law,” he says. He adds he’s conferred 13 times with
boss Howard Relin about potential capital cases. In 10 of those cases, Green
says, “We came to the conclusion that the right thing to do was seek life
without parole.”
He does think the death penalty
should be available for the “worst cases,” as with serial killer
Arthur Shawcross.
The death penalty “is not
something that should be taken lightly,” Green says. “It’s something
that should not be used for political purposes.”
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2003.
