An accused, six-time bank robber who’s become the face of all that’s wrong with New York’s new bail-reform law is now finally in jail — thanks to federal prosecutors, who have seized control of his case and done what no state judge was free to do.
Gerod Woodberry turned himself in at the Manhattan Criminal Court building on Centre Street around 4 p.m., Friday — 18 days after his alleged spree began.
“I’m Woodberry,” he told a court worker. “I’m the one that’s been robbing banks.”
The feds promptly scooped him up, arguing that Woodberry, 42, had been arrested, then quickly freed, last week after his fourth alleged heist, and then allegedly went on to rob two more banks.
And those two latest allegations weren’t expected to land him behind bars either. As a non-violent defendant under New York law — Woodberry allegedly uses notes, not a weapon, to demand cash from tellers in Brooklyn and Manhattan — state judges are barred from setting any bail for him under the new reforms that went into effect on Jan. 1.
“No sound, rational and fair criminal justice system requires the pre-trial release of criminal defendants who demonstrate such determination to continuously commit serious crimes,” Brooklyn US Attorney Richard Donoghue said in an unusually scolding release aimed directly at New York’s new restrictions on imposing bail.
Federal prosecutors will now seek to have Woodberry held without bail when he appears in court Sunday in the Jan. 10 robbery of a Chase Bank branch in Downtown Brooklyn, according to a press release announcing the criminal complaint against him.
He’s facing federal bank robbery charges, which carry a maximum 20-year sentence.
Donoghue, whose office was able to grab the case because the Brooklyn bank is federally insured, called Woodberry’s alleged 16-day robbery spree “unprecedented,” adding that “it is made all the more so by the fact that he was actually arrested and released in the midst of his crimes.”
Donoghue noted that the Brooklyn robbery “was committed less than four hours after his release … a release required under recently enacted bail reform legislation.”
And in a further stinging rebuke, Donoghue said that while state judges were previously allowed to consider the “flight risk, but not the dangerousness, posed by a charged defendant,” they no longer have even that limited amount of discretion.
“The recent reforms have made a bad situation worse by entirely excluding classes of purportedly ‘non-violent’ felonies — like the bank robberies here — from pre-trial confinement eligibility,” he said.
“Preventing judges from considering the danger a charged defendant poses to the public when making a pre-trial confinement decision defies common sense and endangers all New Yorkers.”
Donoghue also warned that “even more dramatic criminal justice proposals are under consideration in New York and across the country.”
“While we must ensure that all criminal justice systems are open to scrutiny and reform, we must also guard against the outright dismantling of criminal justice systems masquerading as criminal justice reform,” he said.
In a detention memo released by the Eastern District Friday night, Donoghue noted federal authorities — unlike state authorities — are allowed to keep Woodberry locked up because he poses a “danger to the community.”
“The defendant participated in a spree of robberies and attempted robberies of New York City banks, offenses which are — by their very nature — crimes of violence,” Donoghue wrote in the memo.
Donoghue added he’d been identified in lineups and photo arrays by four bank tellers and his demand notes all suggest the robberies were committed by the same person.
He also noted that Woodberry has a “lengthy criminal history,” including five convictions for strong-arm robberies in his native South Carolina.
Sources have told The Post that Woodberry expressed amazement after he was released without bail on Jan. 8 following his arrest in the robberies of four Chase Bank branches in Chelsea, the Upper West Side and the West Village.
“I can’t believe they let me out,” he allegedly said while retrieving his belongings from NYPD headquarters.
“What were they thinking?”
In addition to the Brooklyn heist, Woodberry is also suspected of striking Tuesday at a Citibank branch in Midtown, although he allegedly fled that bank without any loot.
Woodberry’s surrender unfolded when he walked into the courthouse looking agitated and was approached by a staffer who asked if he was OK, sources said.
Woodberry told the worker that he was looking for his lawyer and thinking about turning himself in, sources said.
The worker then escorted him to a clerk who called the NYPD, sources said.
Additional reporting by Tina Moore