The assistant to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg doesn’t think that aggressive thieves should get heavy sentences. For example, he tried to get the man who killed his friend humane justice instead of jail time.
Meg Reiss, a senior assistant district attorney in Bragg, says that lawyers should argue against the common view that all prisoners are dangerous criminals.
Even though Bragg and his team are adamant, many people don’t agree with the plan to charge Trump for allegedly paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and others. People who don’t like Bragg say that she doesn’t do enough to keep New Yorkers safe, is too easy on crooks, and sets fees that are too low.
As of January 1, 2022, Bragg had Reiss take over management of the office. Reiss has worked as a lawyer in Brooklyn and Nassau County before. She was very interested in “innovative reforms in the criminal justice system,” which was something she felt deeply about.
As Chief of Social Justice for the Brooklyn DA’s office, she pushed for restorative justice, which is a way to punish criminals and help them change by talking to the people they have hurt.
In May 2021, she talked about a “extraordinary” murder case and said it “seemed right for restorative practice instead of a prison sentence.”
Reiss said that the killer was “very familiar” with the person who died in the fight that led to the death.
She said, “It’s the first time she’s met the person who is accused of killing her dad, because they’re going through a restorative practice right now.” His daughter was the only member of his family who was still alive.
Reiss said, “I think everyone comes out of it in a different way. I think it’s so hard for both sides.”
In 2017, Reiss helped start the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College.
In her professional role, she spoke at a panel called “Justice in the Trump Era,” where she argued that lawyers should dispel the public’s view that criminals are bad by nature.
She was making a point when she asked whether or not we should call people “violent” or “people who do violent things.”
“Just because someone has done something violent in the past doesn’t mean they will always be violent,” she said at a talk she gave in March 2017. This is just one reason I think it’s important to think about the words we use in the system.
Both of them have a long history of breaking the law. One has been locked up more than a hundred times, while the other just got out of jail after paying only a dollar bail.
On Tuesday, after Bragg went to court, Trump called him a “criminal.”
In a 25-minute speech at Mar-a-Lago, Trump talked about how upset he was about what was happening. He talked to his family and close friends.
Even after the judge told him that the way he was acting in court could lead to a protection order, he kept attacking his opponents in court.
During a debate, the opponent of former President Obama was called “a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and a family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.” The crowd booed.
Trump has also said that Bragg is the real bad guy because he is the one who told the news.
As he said, “The criminal is the district attorney because he illegally shared a lot of Grand Jury information,” the crowd cheered. He should go to jail or, at the very least, just hang it up.