Aboushi to suggest he was a victim of injustice. They say that because he was convicted on multiple counts related to leading a violent truck hijacking ring and never claimed the conviction had been wrongful, it was misleading for Ms. Aboushi, who has never tried a criminal case, for the way she has characterized her father’s prosecution. Along with the Working Families Party, she has been endorsed by well-known local progressives including Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams, as well as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.įormer prosecutors have expressed frustration with Ms. Aboushi has said she would cut the district attorney’s office in half and decline to prosecute a number of low-level crimes. Orlins took partial credit for pushing them on the issue. She has been particularly outspoken about decriminalizing certain forms of sex work: When the district attorney’s office recently announced it would stop prosecuting prostitution, Ms. She has vowed to cut the district attorney’s office in half and said that she would decline to prosecute the vast majority of misdemeanors. Orlins’s ability to lead any potential prosecution of Mr. But legal ethicists have said that her past statements could threaten Ms. Orlins has said that she does not regret them and will evaluate evidence against the Trump family without prejudice. She blasted his supporters online, too, and in October 2016 dressed up as one of them for Halloween, complete with a red Trump campaign hat that she embellished so that it said “Make America White Again.” In August of last year, when she had already announced her campaign, she tweeted threateningly at Ivanka Trump.Īsked about her tweets, Ms. “I DETEST TRUMP!!!!!!!!” she wrote on Twitter in March of that year. Trump, then a candidate for president and now a subject of a major investigation within the district attorney’s office. Orlins began to vent that anger at Donald J. “People say you can’t be motivated by anger and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah? Watch me.’” “I’m fueled by rage at injustice,” she said in an interview. She cautioned against drawing hard rules about candidates’ past experiences, no matter what they were. Miriam Krinsky, the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, an organization that calls for shrinking the criminal-legal system and increasing transparency, accountability, and fairness, said in an interview that it had become increasingly common for those without any experience to be elected as prosecutors. Krasner’s peers around the country who are considered progressive prosecutors - Kim Foxx in Chicago, Rachael Rollins in Boston, George Gascón in Los Angeles and others - had experience charging crimes before they were elected. “This is just nonsense.”Īll three candidates have sought to claim the mantle of one of the country’s most prominent progressive prosecutors, Larry Krasner, who when he was first elected Philadelphia district attorney in 2017, had never charged anyone with a crime.īut many of Mr. “Some people want to say basically that if you’re a prosecutor you have no business here,” said Ms. Bragg, whom she has endorsed, has been a prosecutor does not mean that he is not a reformer. Zephyr Teachout, the anticorruption activist, has said that just because Mr. Some observers say that the trio’s unilateral criticism of prosecutors has been detrimental to the public’s understanding of the race. They have had a hard time distinguishing themselves from one another, and from former prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and Lucy Lang, who have also pledged to help end mass incarceration while arguing that their experience will help them enact change. The nonprosecutorial candidates in Manhattan have taken up that argument, and advanced it, adding that only a leader whose perspective is unblemished by a history of putting people behind bars can make the system less punitive and less racist.īut with a week to go in the race, the trio of candidates have lagged in the fund-raising battle and in available surveys. In cities around the country, a wave of prosecutorial candidates has won elections by pledging to do less harm to defendants who commit low-level crimes. Yet Eliza Orlins, Tahanie Aboushi and Dan Quart, three candidates running to be the next district attorney, have consistently argued that if voters want the criminal justice system to change, they should be wary of anyone who has ties to the establishment - or any experience at all as a prosecutor. The only two men who have led the Manhattan district attorney’s office over the last 45 years were scions of the establishment, leading the country’s most prominent local prosecutor’s office with a traditional emphasis on fighting crime.
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