Long Island lawmakers are pushing to make dismemberment and concealment of a human body a bail-eligible crime, following the recent discoveries of human remains in Babylon, West Babylon, and Bethpage State Park.
Four individuals were arrested following a police investigation and charged with concealment of a human corpse, but were released with GPS monitoring. They were not held on bail, as without murder charges, their crimes were not deemed bail eligible under New York State law.
“To have to explain to members of the Babylon community, my constituents, that those suspected of chopping up a human being can be arrested and just walk free is horrifying,” state Assemblyman Mike Durso (R-Massapequa Park) said. “I was not in office when dangerous bail ‘reforms’ were passed, but I will fight like hell to undo broken policies that provide criminals more protection than they provide our communities. Our police and prosecutors are expected to do their jobs in a criminal justice system where the deck is stacked against them. The case in Babylon generated headlines not only for the gruesome details involved but because it showed how obviously broken our criminal justice system is.”
The bill, proposed by Durso, State Sens. Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) and Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick (R-Valley Stream), as well as Assemblyman John McGowan (R-Rockland), would make body dismemberment and concealment of a human body a class E felony, making it both bail eligible and strengthening the use of GPS monitoring.
“Nobody with an ounce of sensibility would say it’s a good idea to let someone charged with the sickening act of human dismemberment leave jail and roam the streets,” Palumbo said. “Yet here in New York, that’s exactly the situation that the irresponsible Democrats who ostensibly lead this state have put us in due to their radical, nonsensical policies of putting criminals first. Democrats’ bail policies have already been amended three times because they were such an ill-conceived disaster, and here we are again.”
