Two convicted killers arrested for allegedly peddling drugs in Lower Manhattan were released without bail and cited in an investigation by the New York Post as “shocking examples” of what the newspaper called the state’s “disastrous soft-on-crime policies.”
Prosecuting attorneys declined to even ask the court to jail the men because of a 2019 bail reform law which prohibits judges from setting bail in drug-dealing cases unless the suspect is a “flight risk,” even though the charged individual may be dangerous, according to the Post.
In an exclusive report, the Post profiled the two convicted killers, one of whom, Carlo “Cano” Franco, complained to a reporter outside the Manhattan criminal court last month that he was forced to deal dope and crack “to support his son.”
Their criminal records as reported by the newspaper are alarming.
In 2003, then 27-year-old Franco murdered Bronx County Collision owner Dino DeSimone by shooting him in the chest during a robbery at his auto shop, netting only a Toshiba laptop.
“I felt completely empty, like someone ripped everything out from inside of me,” his widow Michele DeSimone said after the murder.
Franco served 13 years of a 17-year sentence for manslaughter and was released in 2022. His parole ended last year. On July 3, he logged his 15th arrest when he was busted for allegedly dealing heroin and crack at 10:30 in the morning near a clinic that caters to drug addicts in lower Manhattan.
The second released killer featured was Jeffery “Zay” Mackenzie, arrested on a drug dealing charge that his lawyer called a “minor offense” with “limited public interest,” according to the Post story.
Mackenzie, now 46, served a little more than two decades in prison for murdering Linda Sanders, 35, a mother of two, when he robbed a Brooklyn laundromat and shot her in the head when she tried to run from the botched holdup.
Mackenzie, on lifetime parole since his 2022 release, has since been arrested at least four times on various charges. His most recent was June 4, when he allegedly was selling rocks of crack cocaine in the Village, the Post reported.
Both men pleaded not guilty in their cases. The Post report explained the state bail law:
Since bail reform went into law in 2020, New York is the only state in the country where judges can’t take into account the criminal history or risk a defendant poses to the public when deciding whether to set cash bail or lock them up before trial.
Only a narrow list of crimes remained eligible for bail after 2020, and drug dealing wasn’t one — except in the rare cases a defendant is accused of being the ringleader of a major trafficking network.
The law is criminal justice insanity, one local community leader said.
“It doesn’t even matter if you murdered somebody,” fed-up Village resident and Washington Square Association President Trevor Sumner told the Post. “It’s a complete breakdown in anything resembling logic or common sense.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
