Serial Bank Robber Held Up As Peril of Bail Law
He left the bank that day, Jan. 10, with about $1,000.
Less than four hours earlier, the man, Gerod
Woodberry, had been released from custody under a new state law that
abolished bail for most nonviolent offenses, federal prosecutors said.
He had been charged with stealing or attempting to steal from four other
New York City banks.
“I can’t believe they let me out,” he told a detective as he gathered his belongings, according to a federal complaint.
By 5:35 that night, he was at the Chase Bank
on Flatbush Avenue pocketing the $1,000, prosecutors said. The Brooklyn
heist was the fifth time in 12 days that he had either robbed or
attempted to rob a bank, prosecutors said. Four days after the Brooklyn
robbery, he struck a sixth time, authorities said.
Some law enforcement officials are pointing to the
sequence of events involving Woodberry, 42, as the latest example of
the risk inherent in the new state bail law, which took effect on New
Year’s Day. Woodberry’s case was shifted to federal court Friday after
he turned himself in to police in Manhattan.
New Jersey, California, Illinois and other
states have limited the use of bail. But New York is one of the few
states to abolish bail for many crimes without also giving state judges
the discretion to consider whether a person poses a threat to public
safety in deciding whether to hold them.
Even before the law took effect, district
attorneys, judges, county legislators and law enforcement officials had
warned that it could put dangerous criminals back on the street.
“No sound, rational and fair criminal
justice system requires the pretrial release of criminal defendants who
demonstrate such determination to continuously commit serious crimes,”
Richard P. Donoghue, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New
York, said in a statement Friday.
He added, “Preventing judges from considering
the danger a charged defendant poses to the public when making a
pretrial confinement decision defies common sense and endangers all New
Yorkers.”
Woodberry, who is from Walterboro, South
Carolina, appeared in handcuffs Sunday in federal court, and was ordered
held pending a bail hearing. If convicted of bank robbery, a federal
crime, he faces 20 years in prison.
His lawyer, Samuel I. Jacobson, said the
argument that Woodberry’s initial release was an example of flaws in the
new law was not only unfounded, but also constituted “egregious ethical
violations” by federal prosecutors that were grounds for the case to be
dismissed.
“The United States attorney has said that no
sane or rational system would release Mr. Woodberry, but that’s not the
question,” Jacobson, of the Federal Defenders of New York, said in a
statement after court.
“The question is whether a sane or rational
system locks people presumed innocent in cages simply because they are
too poor to post bail.”
Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of
Brooklyn Defender Services, said that under the newly adopted law, if
Woodberry had been rearrested on a state felony charge related to bank
robbery, the judge would have had full authority to set bail to keep him
in custody.
“The assertion that bail cannot be set is a
lie,” Schreibersdorf said in an interview. “They’re going out of their
way to interpret it in a way to scare the public.”
Woodberry is accused of a six-bank crime spree
that began on Dec. 30. All six incidents involved passing notes to
tellers at Chase or Citibank branches, and none involved a weapon.
New York Police Department officers arrested
Woodberry on Jan. 8 after they said tellers picked him out of a lineup,
and he was released without bail two days later.
Woodberry had been living with a friend in
Brooklyn for the past six months. He had been convicted five times for
strong-arm robbery in South Carolina, including one charge that resulted
in a 15-year prison sentence, federal prosecutors said.
Woodberry’s lawyer said the 15-year sentence included seven years of time already served and eight years of probation.
“I don’t know how he was convicted in South
Carolina in 2018 and he’s in Brooklyn in 2019,” Jack Dennehy, an
assistant U.S. attorney, told the judge.
(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)
State Sen. Michael Gianaris of Queens, a
Democrat and a longtime champion of ending cash bail in New York, said
that given the nonviolent nature of the charges, Woodberry might have
been released from custody even if the new law had never been adopted.
“There is a tremendous amount of manipulation
and demagoguery going on by those who don’t want to see the days of mass
incarceration come to an end,” Gianaris said.
“There is at best a misunderstanding, and at worst an intentional misrepresentation, of what the new law requires.”
(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)
Woodberry’s arrest is the latest of several
recent cases that critics of the bail reform statute have said
illustrated a dangerous loophole in state law.
On Jan. 10, a homeless man was released
without bail after being charged with striking two women in unprovoked
attacks in Manhattan. On Long Island, opponents of the new law have
cited a case involving a man charged Jan. 12 with a fatal drunken
driving crash who had been released from custody two days earlier.
Newsday has reported, however, that the judge in that case released the
man because paperwork linked to a plea agreement had not been finalized.
Khalil Cumberbatch, of New Yorkers United for
Justice, said most people charged with crimes and freed without bail
peacefully await their day in court.
“There have always been, and will always be,
cases and events that can be exploited to scare people about new
legislation and criminal justice reform generally,” Cumberbatch said.
“However, for every exception like this, there
are thousands of defendants who are at home awaiting their day in
court, abiding by the law and participating in the pretrial process,
instead of in jail while their employment, housing and families’ welfare
hangs in the balance.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .
Serial Bank Robber Held Up As Peril of Bail Law
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