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Leslie Crocker Snyder for DA!

Jill

If you live in New York, get your ass out and vote for Leslie Crocker Snyder! I’ve been a big fan of this woman, ever since she came and spoke to College Democrats at NYU. She’s dynamic. She was the first woman ever to try homicide cases at the Manhattan DA’s office, and fought her way into that unit . When she first asked her boss if she could transfer to homicide, he turned her down. When she asked again, he said he’d consider it, under one condition — that she got her husband’s permission.

She didn’t, but made it into the unit anyway. She founded and let the Sex Crimes Prosecution Bureau, and co-authored New York’s rape shield laws. She has spent decades trying to reform the racist and misguided Rockefeller Drug Laws. She’s a huge supporter of rehabiliation programs for non-violent offenders, and an advocate of community courts and instituting local legal resources in a variety of languages, to give as many disempowered people as possible access to the legal system.

Her one flaw is that she is technically in support of the death penalty. But when she spoke at NYU, a friend of mine asked her about her position, which she clarified, saying that she only supports the death penalty in the most extreme cases — for example, a terrorist who manages to blow up a building and kill hundreds of people, or a mass murderer. I still don’t agree, but the fact is that the death penalty isn’t really an issue in New York. Oh, and my anti-death-penalty friend who asked the question was so impressed with her that he now works for her campaign.

Even The New York Times has endorsed her. So get out and support Leslie!

7 thoughts on Leslie Crocker Snyder for DA!

  1. I have to say her support of the death penalty doesn’t mean a whole lot unless she also plans to run for governor. Obviously, if they resinstated the statute that would be different…

  4. Jill, among those of us with criminal defense experience, she’s a more controversial figure. I was going to write something yesterday, and I got busy with other things. Then, this morning, I read this comment on TalkLeft’s comment board (FWIW, Jeralyn Merrit is against her on capital punishment grounds):

    Posted by NY Defender at August 30, 2005 10:40 AM
    I am a public defense attorney in New York City at the appellate level.

    My office has worked on many cases in which Crocker Snyder presided. To put it bluntly, she was the worst of the worst when it came to judges.
    She was not simply pro-prosecution. She was actively hostile to the defense and showed utter contempt for defendants. In one case that I worked on in which I raised a judicial misconduct claim, she GAVE ADVICE TO THE PROSECUTOR DURING THE TRIAL AS TO WHICH EVIDENCE SHE SHOULD SUBMIT AND WHICH THEORIES TO PURSUE. Never seen anything like it. Crocker Snyder also rehabilitated the prosecutor’s witnesses during the defense cross-examination. Ridiculous stuff.

    She also inevitably imposed the maximum sentence on almost all of our clients, even the drug defendants for whom she supposedly has so much sympathy. Indeed, our experience contradicts her public statements in which she said that she only imposed the maximum sentences on violent criminals. Not true at all.

    I have met her at a legal event and we had a nice conversation. She seems like a nice person. However, she was a horrible judge. Even the appellate court (which has a reversal rate in criminal defense cases in New York County of less than 2%) does not like her, and has criticized her in the past. See People v. Claudio, 10 A.D.3d 531 (1st Dept. 2004); People v. Goldman, 9 A.D.3d 283 (1st Dept. 2004); People v. Ingram, 2 A.D.3d 211 (2003); People v. De Los Angeles, 270 A.D.2d 196 (1st Dept. 2000); People v. Walker, 250 A.D.2d 371 (1st Dept. 1998).

    Her pro-death penalty position is simply another reason to find her a bad candidate. She would make a terrible DA for New York City.

    Please don’t read this as an endorsement of Morgenthau. I don’t care for him much either, even though I know that he is for the most part a kind and decent person. But his recent over-prosecution of peaceful political protestors left a horrible taste in my mouth.

    For people like me, there is a choice between two bad candidates here in New York City. Pretty depressing.

    My feelings are more nuanced. This lawyer’s comments about her as a judge match the conventional wisdom among defense lawyers I knew. I think she lacks judicial temperment and I don’t think she belongs on a bench.

    But she might belong in the DA’s office. I’m not sure if she’s a grandstanding, crusading, mission-from-god prosecutor or not, but even as a judge, she was a prosecutor. I often used to say that I couldn’t wait until she ran for DA because I’d rather have her prosecuting cases from there than from the bench. Now I’m not so sure. Either the DA’s office is the best place for her, or it’s the worst.

  5. I’m not in New York, but I just heard her interviewed on WNYC, and I have to say that she bugged. I don’t understand why she denies being pro-death-penalty. She supports the death penalty for heinous crimes when there’s overwhelming evidence. How, exactly, is this different from the mainstream pro-death-penalty position? I don’t support the death penalty. I also don’t support being disingenuous about whether one supports the death penalty.

    And I do care about candidates’ stance on the death penalty, even if it’s not on the books. It speaks to judgement. I don’t want to be represented by people who think it’s ok for the state to kill people in cold blood. It makes me wonder what other horrific and evil things they think the state should do.

  6. Jill,

    I have a neighbor who works as an Assistant DA here in Manhattan. Yes, she has her criticisms about Morgenthau, but she is even more critical of Snyder.

    DAs working in cases that involved her as a judge hated her. Due process was just a logistical matter to her and people over at the DAs had a huge problem with her “all or nothing” way of dealing with cases. Cases won under her as a judge would be later on thrown out on technicalities. She was seen as being all about Leslie –she’d win a case, get the threats but then the DAs office had to come back and clean up the legal mess she left behind.

    I have a huge problem with christian fundamentalists activist judges. I also have a problem with the feminist ones. There ought NOT to be any activism in the judiciary. Period.

    As much as people would love to see her pyrotecnics used as a prosecutor instead of a judge, again, her past history with due process would make her a liability and a resource waster at the DAs. After hearing what DAs and lawyers who have worked with her have had to say about her, I could never support Leslie Crocker-Snyder.

  7. and , btw, i really wish i could support her and fields and moskowitz but the overall quality of the candidates running this year is, well … too transitionar: still mired in old politics while presenting new ideas. i wonder who we’ll see5 years from now. a whole new generation of politicians? hopefully.

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