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Equity Through Incompetence: Is Soros-Funded DA Krasner’s Office Losing Cases … Or Throwing Them?

By Steve Sailer

07/09/2022

Team Soros has come up with a brilliant plan for reducing racial inequities in how many blacks go to jail for crimes: prosecutorial ineptitude.

As Jane Austen would [not] have said if she lived in Philadelphia today:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a black man in possession of an illegal handgun is an aspiring rapper turning his life around and must be in want of a dismissal of all criminal charges against him.

From Big Trial:

… Coach Krasner’s Team Of Losers

When he first took office back in January 2018, [Soros-funded leftist Philadelphia D.A. Larry] Krasner’s first official act was to fire 31 senior prosecutors, while declaring, “The coach get [sic] to pick the team.”

The new Philly D.A., a career criminal defense lawyer who had never prosecuted a traffic stop, replaced the most senior prosecutors in his office with a combination of social justice warriors, former public defenders and woke progressives fresh out of law school.

It could be argued that if Larry Krasner thinks you’re a prosecutor, it’s proof positive that you’re not. His track record as a coach for hiring talent is certainly suspect. And so are the dismal results from his office.

Over a four-year period, Krasner personally recruited and hired 181 lawyers fresh out of law school. But as of Nov. 3, 2021, 61 of those hires, or 33.7%, had already quit the D.A.’s office. Another 37, or 17.1%, flunked the bar exam.

As a result, in Larry Krasner’s D.A. office, it’s amateur hour. As veteran criminal defense lawyer Chuck Peruto told Big Trial last February, “I haven’t lost a jury trial since Larry Krasner took office.”

Peruto, who ran against Krasner as a Republican last November and lost big time, said that he had tried a dozen cases since Krasner took office, including two murder trials, and won them all.

“This is a joke,” Peruto said about the level of competence in Krasner’s D.A.’s office. “You don’t even get the thrill of victory that you used to get if you win, because if you don’t win, you stink.”

How To Win A Rape Case

One of the experienced prosecutors fired by D.A. Krasner was Carlos Vega, the first Latino homicide prosecutor in the state who, during a 30-year career, prosecuted more than 500 murder cases, winning all but 14. Vega took a dim view of assigning a novice to prosecute a rape case. …

The D.A.’s own Data Dashboard shows how inept the D.A.’s office is at obtaining guilty verdicts under Krasner.

According to the D.A.’s own stats, the percentage of guilty verdicts won at trial have gone from 17% of all criminal cases in 2014 under former D.A. Seth Williams, all the way down to just 2% of all criminal cases prosecuted last year under D.A. Krasner.

Meanwhile, the percentage of criminal cases withdrawn or dismissed by the D.A.’s office has gone from 28% in 2014 under former D.A. Seth Williams all the way up to 67% last year under D.A. Krasner.

That’s more than two-thirds of all the criminal cases filed by the D.A.’s office that are either withdrawn or dismissed!

Keep in mind that the junior prosecutors in the D.A.’s office last year under Krasner handled just half the criminal caseload formerly handled by Seth Williams’ prosecutors in 2014.

That’s because Krasner has decriminalized prostitution, drug possession and retail theft under $500. …

In 2014, under Seth Williams, the D.A.’s office charged a total of 43,228 cases. But by 2021 under D.A. Krasner, the total of all cases charged by the D.A.’s office had fallen all the way down to 22,867 cases, a decrease of 47%.

During that same eight-year period, the conviction rate in the D.A.’s office has fallen from 50.7% under Seth Williams in 2014 all the way down to 22.6% last year under D.A. Krasner.

It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.

[Comment at Unz.com]

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