(OUTSIDE VOICES) Glenn Greenwald, Ben Spielberg, May 19, 2021 |
On Tuesday, May 18, Philadelphia voters will choose between reelecting Larry Krasner as their District Attorney or replacing Krasner with Carlos Vega, a career “tough-on-crime” prosecutor who Krasner fired when Krasner first took office back in 2018. This election has national as well as local implications given that Krasner, a lifelong defense attorney, is probably the highest-profile and arguably the boldest of the progressive District Attorneys elected around the country in recent years. Krasner’s record includes declining to prosecute people for marijuana possession, removing the death penalty from consideration, sharply scaling back the use of cash bail, limiting the length of prison, parole, and probation sentences prosecutors seek, and exonerating people who previous prosecutors had wrongfully convicted and imprisoned.
That’s why it was so disappointing to read a dishonest attack on Krasner in the Outside Voices section of Glenn Greenwald’s Substack two days before the election. Greenwald called this hit job, written by Ralph Cipriano, “an important piece of journalism that will enable readers to form their own views in a more informed and less propagandized manner.” In reality, Cipriano’s piece is standard-issue tough-on-crime propaganda that will leave readers severely misinformed.
Some of what Cipriano writes is just plain false. He contends, for example, that Krasner has “uniformly applied [bail and sentencing] policies across the board to all crimes and to all accused criminals,” but Krasner has actually drawn criticism from social justice advocates – myself included – for failing to remove cash bail for all crimes. Cipriano’s claim about sentencing is similarly false. In fact, the section of an early Krasner policy memo that discusses sentencing literally begins by enumerating a list of crimes to which the policy Cipriano is complaining about does not apply: “Homicides, Violent Crimes, Sexual Assault Crimes, Felon in Possession of a Weapon (6105), and Economic Crimes with a loss of $50,000 dollars or more or cases involving attacks on the integrity of the judicial process.” The memo also makes clear that individual prosecutors can seek longer sentences than generally recommended if they believe the specific circumstances of a case warrant it – they just need “supervisory approval,” which may need to come from Krasner himself when a particularly harsh sentence is on the table. The reason for this policy, as Krasner explains, is that prosecutors often overcharge defendants in order to enhance their negotiating position in a potential plea deal. Krasner would prefer not to “coerce defendants” and to instead “proceed with charges that are supported by the facts of the case, period.”
Source: https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/with-larry-krasner-facing-re-election?