We have written often about the Soros-funded campaign to elect radical prosecutors. Its success has helped undermine the criminal justice system in St. Louis, for example.
The next step for the same hard-left crowd might well be to elect radical judges. Doing so can erect a second barrier — a backup — to punishing criminals.
In Maryland, four outside challengers won election to circuit courts this month. It’s extremely rare for an incumbent circuit judge to lose in Maryland.
There’s nothing wrong with outsiders winning elections, of course. It can be healthy thing.
The key questions are always the quality of the outsiders, compared to the incumbents, and what the outsiders stand for. In Maryland, it appears from the Washington Post’s account that most, if not all, of the victorious outsiders are pro-criminal defendant and sympathetic to the BLM critique of the judicial system.
The two outsiders who won in Prince George’s County certainly fit this description. Gladys Weatherspoon is a longtime criminal defense attorney. She campaigned on the promise to push for “creative sentences” instead of incarceration. This, of course, will exacerbate America’s under-incarceration problem, which is responsible for many a bloody crime.
The other outsider, April Ademiluyi, seems cut from the same cloth. She blames the coronavirus pandemic for “spurring people to crime.” Defense attorneys in the county must already be preparing their the-virus-made-him-do-it pleas for lenient sentencing.
The Prince George’s County police department is 63 percent African-American and only 14 percent White. The interim police chief is Latino. The County Executive is African-American. So are the vast majority incumbent circuit judges.
I doubt that racism or lack of sympathy for Blacks is a problem in the Prince George’s circuit courts or its criminal justice system generally. But crime is a serious problem in Prince George’s County. Three towns in the county are considered among ten most dangerous places in Maryland.
In 2018, Prince George’s County’s violent crime rate was 218 per 100,000 residents. In neighboring Montgomery County, the number was 165. In nearby Frederick County it was 68. In Northern Virginia, Fairfax County’s violent crime rate was 81.
So far this year, there have been 83 homicides in Prince George’s County. In Montgomery County, there have been 15.
Wisely, Montgomery County voters rejected a BLM-type candidate for a circuit court judgeship. I feel sorry for those PG County voters who were equally wise, but outvoted.
