The Senate failed to confirm one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees after learning that he released a criminal on bail who later went on to murder an 11-year-old child.
According to Fox News, Biden had nominated Judge Todd Edelman to serve on the U.S. District Court of Washington, D.C. He currently serves on the district’s Superior Court.
During his time on the Superior Court, Edelman presided over the case of Christian Wingfield, who was in prison awaiting trial for illegal possession of a firearm. Wingfield was released on bail and went on to be involved in the murder of 11-year-old Devon McNeal in July of 2020.
According to WUSA, in June of this year, Wingfield was sentenced to nine-and-a-half years in prison with five years of supervised release.
During the confirmation hearing, Edelman defended his decision to release Wingfield, saying that illegal gun possession was a “non-violent” offense and was not the one who fired the gun that killed McNeal.
Despite the defense, a vote to advance Edelman’s nomination to the full Senate never took place, meaning that his nomination will expire at the end of the 117th Congress.
In a statement to Fox, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee said, “A child is dead because Judge Edelman didn’t do his job, and now he wants a promotion. I cannot support a nominee who has shown such reckless disregard for his duty to keep Americans safe.”
And there lies the heart of the matter, here we have yet another case of leftist “soft-on-crime” policies doing real harm.
In this case, a man who was in jail for illegally possessing a deadly weapon was freed and went on to murder a child. The death of McNeal is a direct result of Edelman’s refusal to enforce the law.
But this is only the latest example of the damage that these policies have on society. In 2019, as part of a bail reform law, New York introduced cashless bail, which allowed thousands of dangerous criminals from prison.
One of these criminals was an axman who was rearrested shortly after being released without bail.
Meanwhile, some leftist governors recently decided to adopt another “soft-on-crime” policy by taking several of the most dangerous criminals off of death row.
Earlier this month, outgoing Oregon Gov. Kate Brown decided to grant clemency to every death row inmate in the state. The inmates spared in this act include a man who sodomized and killed a woman, a man who killed his wife and three children, and a bomber who left two police officers dead and one disfigured.
In Nevada, Gov. Steve Sisolak is considering a similar move. Under his move, the inmates spared would include a man who stabbed a 3-year-old girl to death and a man who beat a 91-year-old woman and her grandson to death.
Is this justice? These men committed heinous crimes and are getting off easy. The left says that this is the compassionate thing to do, but compassionate to who exactly? It is certainly not compassionate to the victims of these violent crimes.
Was it compassionate for Judge Edelman to allow Wingfield to walk free and murder McNeal? McNeal’s family certainly won’t find much compassion in that act.
These leftists are giving criminals the impression that there are no consequences for their actions. This will continue to a further spike in violent crime across the nation. It is time to stop these insane policies and enforce the law.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.