Horowitz: NY man released after attempted rape now accused of murder

Given that most murders are committed by known, repeat violent felons, shouldn’t there be a bipartisan and relentless national “criminal justice reform” agenda to ensure these people are taken off the streets before they kill innocents?

One would think this would be the priority of criminal justice legislation even at the federal level, but instead, 100 percent of the “reforms” are oriented toward the de-incarceration agenda, even for violent repeat offenders. The latest tragic victim of these screwed-up priorities is Sandra Wilson. Sadly, no political movement will be elevated in her name the way Kim Kardashian makes celebrities out of criminals.

On Nov. 9, Blanchard Glaudin allegedly attacked a woman in her hospital bed at Nyack Hospital in Rockland County, New York. As CBS2 reports, according to the police, Glaudin “held her down by the throat and told her, ‘Shut up and do not scream. Pull down your pants.'” He allegedly choked and scratched the victim but was apprehended before he could rape her.

Who would try to rape a woman in a hospital? Well, probably the same type of person who would also murder people, which is why people like Glaudin need to be locked up. But a month after being arrested, he was released from jail in late December, despite having been assessed $100,000 bail by a judge in November.

“Bail reform” did its work in this case last Tuesday, when Glaudin allegedly charged into a Rockland County library in Spring Valley, New York, and repeatedly stabbed Sandra Wilson, the longtime library security guard. Now the victim of the November attempted rape, who remains anonymous, is speaking out to local media and demanding answers for why this man was released after she was attacked.

The family of Sandra Wilson has set up a GoFundMe to help pay for the funeral expenses.

Although attempted rape is still officially eligible for pretrial holding under New York’s new law, Glaudin appears to have been released during that last week in December when judges were frantically trying to comply with the new law to retroactively release all those exempted from bail. He missed three court dates for the attempted rape charge in January.

This makes the murder of Sandra Wilson 100 percent preventable. Even after the murder, Glaudin has only been charged with second-degree murder, which is a common occurrence in a system that is already under-charging and under-convicting violent offenders.

According to court records, Glaudin was originally at Nyack Hospital last November for mental health treatment. He was admitted again in January once he was released from jail. It’s part of a broader trend where states have stopped locking up the criminally insane in mental asylums. On the one hand, they treat them leniently because of their mental illness, but on the other hand they refuse to confine them in mental hospitals in lieu of prison. Absent a mandatory system of imprisonment or confinement in a mental hospital, these people will be free to harm others. Politicians in states like New York and California want them released on the streets to commit more crimes that they supposedly just can’t help committing. The fact that they have a mental illness is no solace to victims of crime and most certainly doesn’t make them less of a public safety concern.

In Glaudin’s case, he was evidently free enough (and lucid enough) to have lived in Florida for some time, where he had some run-ins with the law.

Every day, we see numerous cases where the most dangerous criminals known to law enforcement slip through the justice system and go on to victimize more innocent people. Yet there is no effort on the part of the politicians to push reforms that will deter and punish, or at least incapacitate, these individuals. While rehabilitation is a nice perk of incarceration if we could make that work, the most important elements are deterrence, incapacitation, and justice. But the politicians only focus on rehabilitation.

On Thursday, before a group of former prisoners, President Trump praised Jared Kushner as “the father of criminal justice reform.” During the address, in which he pushed a utopian agenda of rehabilitation, he said his administration will send a “powerful message” that “we are not going to leave you behind.”

But where is the message to people like Sandra Wilson’s relatives? Or what about the relatives of Reginald Larry, who was killed allegedly by a man who was released from jail in Houston just a month ago, after being arrested for shooting three women? Why is Jared not working “so hard,” as Trump said on Thursday, on their behalf to ensure people are not needlessly victimized by those who definitely do belong behind bars?

The lack of balance in our body politic on this issue was best captured by Michele Hanisee, president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorneys, in a recent column. “It might be trendy to highlight ex-cons and berate the justice system for its flaws, real or perceived,” lamented the veteran prosecutor fighting jailbreak policies in California. “Apparently not worthy of such treatment is the aftermath for the victims and families of those who suffered crimes such as murder, rape, robbery or child sexual abuse.”