NYC Judge Imposes Harsh Prison Sentence on Ex-Cop for Doing His Job

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A New York City judge in the Bronx sentenced former NYPD sergeant, Erik Duran, to serve a term of 3 to 9 years in prison for killing a drug suspect fleeing from arrest on a motorbike. The ex-police officer had thrown a water cooler that hit the suspect’s arm. The suspect lost control and fell off the motorbike, causing him to suffer a fatal head injury.

The office of New York State’s leftwing, progressive Attorney General, Letitia James, was out for Mr. Duran’s hide. “The defendant knew or should have known that throwing the cooler at Mr. Duprey would either harm him or cause a collision,” a prosecutor from her office said in court. “The defendant was aware of these risks and disregarded them.”

Letitia James’ office charged Mr. Duran with manslaughter. Guy Mitchell, the presiding judge at a bench trial after Mr. Duran had waived his right to a jury trial, concluded that Mr. Duran had used unjustifiable “deadly force” and convicted the former police sergeant of manslaughter.

Judge Mitchell, who was originally appointed by former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2015, played the role of a hanging judge. He sentenced Mr. Duran to serve a jail term for a minimum of 3 years that could stretch as long as 9 years. He wanted the harsh sentence to serve as a “general deterrent” to other police officers.

Erik Duran, who served on the police force for more than a decade and had no prior criminal record, was simply doing his job – trying to arrest a bad guy. The drug suspect, Eric Duprey, was caught in August 2023 selling cocaine to an undercover police officer. Mr. Duprey had a criminal record. Instead of submitting to arrest peaceably, Mr. Duprey decided to flee, endangering pedestrians as he drove as fast as 30 mph down a sidewalk full of people.

What was the former police sergeant supposed to do? Let the suspect not only escape but potentially mow pedestrians down in the process? Mr. Duran decided to stop the suspect before he could do any further harm. Judge Mitchell’s disgraceful comment about this split-second decision was that the suspect “could have been captured another day.”

Mr. Duran did not shoot at the suspect or get into a police vehicle to chase him, which could have created more danger to innocent people. Instead, the former NYPD sergeant grabbed a handy object, the water cooler, and threw it in such a way that it hit Mr. Duprey’s arm, not his head. Duprey lost control and fell off the motorbike that he should not have been using to flee from lawful arrest in the first place. The suspect’s decision to escape arrest on a motorbike and drive it on a crowded sidewalk directly led to his own fatal injury, not the police officer who reacted to prevent an imminent danger to the public.

Erik Duran should not have been convicted of any crime in the first place. And he certainly should not have received any jail time. Judge Mitchell could have sentenced Mr. Duran, who the judge admitted had shown “remorse” at his sentencing hearing, to probation with no jail time. But the judge wanted to use former NYPD sergeant Duran as a scapegoat to send the police his politically correct, anti-police message.

Sergeants Benevolent Association President Vincent Vallelong said that the sentencing had been “one of the darkest days in the history of our profession,” and that the sentence Judge Mitchell imposed sent a “chilling message to every cop in the nation.”

Judge Mitchell used deterrence as a rationale for imposing his harsh prison sentence upon a former police officer who was doing his job to serve and protect the public. But he sent a vastly different message back in 2018 with his kid gloves treatment of a real criminal. That is when the judge sentenced a 19-year-old alleged gang member, Branlee Gonzalez, who had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and attempted assault for beating a homeless man to death, to only 9 months of prison time. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of at least 10 years. According to the New York Post, “Mitchell, then serving in Manhattan Supreme Court, had even floated the possibility of giving Gonzalez zero jail time, but changed his mind the same day The Post began covering the case.”

Three to nine years in prison for a former police officer who was trying to protect the public from a suspect fleeing on a motorbike on a busy sidewalk. Nine months for an alleged gang member who beat a homeless man to death. The enormous disparity in the outcomes of these two cases is stupefying.

Judge Mitchell committed judicial malpractice on at least these two occasions. He has shown that he does not belong on the bench.