The Bronx is saddled with a far-left district attorney named Darcel Clark (D), and the woke prosecutor is responsible for a shocking record of squandered convictions and outright dismissals.
The New York Post reported that Clark has had the “worst conviction and dismissal rates” for almost every major category of crime in the nation’s largest city over the past five years. Her office has also turned down an astonishing number of murder cases over the same period.
Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark turned down more attempted murder and sex-assault arrests over the last five years than every other prosecutor in the city combined, according to data from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.
The Bronx DA was only able to secure…
— Crime in NYC (@CrimeInNYC) April 29, 2023
According to data from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, Clark has refused to prosecute at least 101 attempted murder charges in the last five years. For comparison, DAs in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island have refused 80 such cases total in that time.
The Democrat was elected to her position in 2016 and is up for reelection this year.
That effort should be interesting considering she is widely known for low conviction rates for such heinous crimes as first- and second-degree murder along with attempted murder.
It is highly unlikely that her campaign for reelection will not highlight these numbers. Clark’s office has secured guilty verdicts for just 60% of murder arrests. That compares unfavorably with 62% in Brooklyn, 66% for both Queens and Staten Island, and 76% for Manhattan.
Attempted murder convictions are even more of an abject failure for Clark and her team of prosecutors.
The DA whose job it is to secure guilty verdicts has only succeeded in 39% of attempted murder arrests in the Bronx since 2018 that have thus far been closed. That rate is far below Brooklyn’s 54%, the 61% rate for Manhattan and Queens, and 65% for Staten Island.
The Post interviewed criminal defense attorney Todd Spodek, who said he’d had many cases dismissed in Bronx County and not one on the actual merits of the case. Instead, they dissipated due to what can be described as a comedy of errors.
For example, some cases were dismissed because prosecutors did not file certificates of compliance on time. Others fell by the wayside due to uncooperative witnesses and other factors.
As Spodek related, “It’s never one thing. It’s always a lot of things combined.”
A spokesperson for Clark’s office, Patrice O’Shaughnessy, said that they dismiss cases or decline prosecutions when there is insufficient evidence. Witness cooperation and new evidence were also cited as reasons that arrests do not regularly result in convictions.
