Another New York hero faces jail — although he was – Latest News
“I don’t want to lose any more people to Palm Beach,” Gov. Hochul stated back in June. “We’ve lost enough.”
Hochul was speaking taxes then, however the a whole lot of 1000’s of New Yorkers who instructed pollsters final month they may “definitely” pack up and go away town if Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor have lots of different causes to go.
Just ask Charles Foehner, the 67-year-old retired Queens doorman who in May 2023 defended himself with deadly drive from an assailant with 15 prior arrests and a historical past of mental sickness.
Foehner survived the middle-of-the-night altercation due to his trusty revolver in what everybody accepts is a case of self-defense.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz wasn’t by means of with Foehner, nonetheless.
Although she couldn’t prosecute him for resisting his assailant, the mere reality Foehner bore firearms in New York uncovered him to prison expenses severe enough to land him in jail for up to 25 years.
Charles Foehner took a plea deal moderately than face up to 25 years in jail. Gabriella Bass
Compare that draconian end result with actuality in my state, Florida, the place firearms might be carried overtly and with out a allow and crime is at an all-time low.
Only a yr earlier than Foehner’s incident, the Supreme Court struck down New York’s century-old gun-control law, ruling it unconstitutional for requiring “proper cause” for a gun license and mandating the state undertake a new law in step with present federal gun-control rules.
That law, the Concealed Carry Improvement Act, has itself proved so restrictive that it’s confronted a number of federal-court challenges.
With his back to the wall and dealing with severe financial problem — and as lots of violent criminals with arm-long rap sheets freely stroll the streets — Foehner took a plea cut price of 4 years in jail.
Judge Toni Cimino rejected Katz’s hateful demand that Foehner report for incarceration earlier than the vacations, however prevailing legal practices will possible not enable the choose to cut back or droop the jail time period at Foehner’s formal sentencing listening to Jan. 14.
Unless Gov. Hochul acts shortly and grants clemency, Foehner’s subsequent 4 Thanksgivings and Christmases might be spent behind bars, successfully as a political prisoner of a capricious anarcho-tyranny that prizes criminals over residents.
To any sane particular person, Foehner is a hero.
Exercising his constitutional proper to bear arms, an problem with which the state has noticeably struggled, he employed them in what even Katz seems to confess was a legal act of self-defense.
As a senior citizen with no prior prison document, Foehner has by no means posed any risk to society and poses no risk to it now.
In reality, the alternative is true — society proved to be a risk to him, and he stands to endure years in jail at an superior age as its sufferer.
Foehner’s legal professional, Thomas Kenniff (left), received Daniel Penny his freedom. Brigitte Stelzer
As Foehner’s legal professional Thomas Kenniff, who efficiently defended subway hero Daniel Penny in Manhattan final yr, stated after the plea-bargain listening to, his consumer deserves a plaque, not a jail sentence.
“For too long our political leaders have coddled violent criminals at the expense of innocent New Yorkers,” Kenniff wrote me. “We have witnessed self-defense put on trial, Good Samaritans mercilessly prosecuted for protecting others, and the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding New Yorkers, like Charlie Foehner, continually trampled.”
Gun-control-loving Dems would possibly argue sending a retirement-age Queens resident to the slammer on what quantities to a vindictive technicality can be a deterrent.
But of their crime-ridden metropolis, the one factor it would deter is trustworthy people with the chutzpah to defend themselves and different New Yorkers.
Even if Hochul agrees with this flawed, self-loathing leftist argument, she ought to rightly fear about how a lot resentment outraged New Yorkers will show towards her on the polls subsequent November, when she is up for re-election.
A Manhattan Institute survey launched in late October — earlier than Foehner’s plea cut price — already confirmed Hochul shedding to upstate Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who hadn’t but even declared her candidacy. A Siena ballot taken simply earlier than Foehner’s listening to discovered solely 42% of New Yorkers would give Hochul one other time period in workplace, with 48% preferring another person.
Allowing self-defending senior residents to languish in jail for no good purpose received’t help her already-troubled case earlier than a hostile voters.
“As we head into a pivotal election year,” Kenniff continued, “I encourage common sense New Yorkers of all political persuasions to call upon Governor Hochul to exercise her clemency power to spare Mr. Foehner from the brutality of an utterly unnecessary state prison sentence.”
If Hochul doesn’t act, she might quickly discover herself a failed former governor. And of course, her nightmare of more New Yorkers relocating to the Sunshine State would possibly simply come true.
Paul du Quenoy is Palm Beach Freedom Institute president.
