CAREER CRIMINALS AND GANG LORDS RELEASED FROM PRISON THANKS TO FIRST STEP ACT
Daniel Horowitz points to an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times showing that judges are signing off on the release of gang leaders and other notorious criminals. They are doing so pursuant to the First Step Act, the bipartisan, pro-criminal sentencing act that Donald Trump supported and signed into law.
Local prosecutors reportedly are at wits’ end over this development, as they should be. Chicago has been plagued by a surge in violent crime. Over the July 4 weekend, 22 people were killed and 90 wounded in the city. A 20-year-old college student was killed by a stray bullet that smashed through a window while he was sitting on a train.
How can violent criminals obtain release under the First Step which, its advocates assured us, would apply to drug felons, not violent ones? The answer stems to a large extent from the fact that drug charges are the tip of the iceberg for many violent felons.
Horowitz points to the case of Gustavo Colon:
Colon was sentenced to life in federal prison 21 years ago for running a multimillion-dollar narcotics operation. While that is certainly not a low-level drug charge, some might believe that life in prison is too harsh for any drug crime. But that’s not really why he was given life in prison; the drug laws were just used as prosecutorial tools.
As WGN-TV reports, Colon served 25 years in state prison for the 1971 murder of Glenn Burr when he was a teen gang member. He was also accused of putting a gun to a girl’s head during the gang attack, but the gun failed to fire. . . .
While he was in state prison, the feds saw that Colon had risen to the rank of “corona” in the violent Latin Kings and was calling all the hits and murders from behind bars. Of course, he only served 25 years after being sentenced to 30-60 years, and the feds realized in 1997 that they must do something to keep him off the streets. So they convicted him on 20 counts of running a drug operation, and he was sentenced to life.
Thanks to the First Step Act, Colon is eligible to file a petition for his release. We don’t yet know whether the court will order Colon’s release. But we do from the Chicago Sun-Times analysis that judges are releasing major criminals and gang leaders.
We also know from our experience in the 1960s and 1970s that liberal judges are prone to do that. It was for this reason that members of both parties supported tough sentencing legislation. And it was that legislation that helped reduce violent crime dramatically.
For some reason, many Republicans, including Donald Trump, forgot this history or chose to ignore it. Perhaps the horrific spike in violent crime in cities throughout America will bring Republicans to their senses.
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