Two convicted murderers released without bail after narcotics dealing arrest: ‘Insanity’

A ruthless pair of convicted killers busted for allegedly slinging drugs in broad daylight in Greenwich Village were both sprung without bail after their arrests — shocking examples of revolving door of justice spawned by Albany’s disastrous soft-on-crime policies, The Post found.

Prosecutors didn’t even bother to seek keeping either man locked up because of the state’s 2019 bail reform laws, which bar judges from setting bail in drug-dealing cases, unless the person is a flight risk — no matter how dangerous they might be.

Last week, the killers explained away their recent behavior — with one even whining to The Post that he was forced to sling dope and crack to support his son.

“One day my wife left, leaving me with my kid. I went crazy, I don’t know what happened. I took the wrong side for a little while,” Carlo “Cano” Franco said outside Manhattan Criminal Court on July 25.

In 2003, Franco, then 27, blasted beloved Bronx County Collision owner Dino DeSimone from point-blank range in the chest during a robbery at his family’s auto shop, killing him instantly. He made off with a Toshiba laptop, authorities said at the time.

“I felt completely empty, like someone ripped everything out from inside of me,” widow Michele DeSimone said at the time of wanting to join her husband in death. “I wanted to be exactly where he was.”

Franco served 13 years of a 17-year sentence for manslaughter, and was released in 2022. His parole ended last year. He tallied his 15th arrest since 1992 on July 3 when he was nabbed for dealing heroin and crack around 10:30 a.m. near Broadway and West Houston Streets, the drug infested corner near a Noho “harm reduction” clinic, exposed on Page 1 of the The Post in June.

Similarly, the alleged recent dope peddling done by killer Jeffery “Zay” Mackenzie was minimized by his lawyer as only a “minor offense” with “limited public interest” — galling locals.

Mackenzie, 46, served 21 years behind bars for murdering Linda Sanders, 35, a mother of two, with depraved indifference, when he blasted into a Brownsville laundromat and struck her in the head during a botched robbery.

Released on lifetime parole in 2022, Mackenzie has since been arrested at least four times, including on June 4 when he was allegedly caught red-handed near 6th Avenue and West 9th Street, peddling rocks of crack cocaine in mini-Ziploc bags, police said.

“It doesn’t even matter if you murdered somebody,” said fed-up Village resident and Washington Square Association President Trevor Sumner. “It’s a complete breakdown in anything resembling logic or common sense.”

When Franco was confronted by The Post outside court after a hearing this week on his drug bust, he gave a sob story.

“I only do it for him. I live with that baby by myself,” said Franco searching his phone for pictures of his young son. “I can’t leave that kid like that, I can’t go to prison.”

Franco was charged with resisting arrest, possession of brass knuckles and criminal possession of a controlled substance with the intent to sell.

Mackenzie, despite his violent past and a rap sheet before the murder that included 12 busts, including drug dealing, was released after just one night in jail while he waited for his arraignment, records show.

In Manhattan criminal court last week, he tried covering his face with a red rag and then ran away from The Post.

His public defender Heather Nicole McCarthy shrugged off the drug arrest as a “minor offense” and said she didn’t see the “public interest” in the case.

“This case is not something that is worthy of this sort of attention,” she said.

Mackenzie and Franco each pleaded not guilty.

Since bail reform went into law in 2020, New York is the only state in the country where judges can’t take into account the criminal history or risk a defendant poses to the public when deciding whether to set cash bail or lock them up before trial.

Only a narrow list of crimes remained eligible for bail after 2020, and drug dealing wasn’t one — except in the rare cases a defendant is accused of being the ringleader of a major trafficking network.

Before the reform package passed, judges had discretion and could have set high cash bails in both Franco and Mackenzie’s cases to ensure they remained behind bars before trial, experts said. The reform took away that discretionary power.

“That is insanity. Our entire pretrial release structure now defies common sense,” said Rafael Mangual, a legal policy expert at the Manhattan Institute.

In Mackenzie’s case, the June bust was his fourth in just two months – the Manhattan District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute two of prior his drug arrests this year, and the other was knocked down to a violation.

Because of that, the Department of Corrections told The Post it was not able to begin parole revocation proceedings against him to have the state Parole Board lock him up.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office simply said Mackenzie’s case was not bail eligible. The NYC Special Narcotics’ Prosecutor’s office, who’s handling Franco’s case, said the same.

“I think that’s smoke and mirrors,” said Greenwich Village resident Scott Evans. “Our community is put at risk yet again and the DA’s office does not do their job because they’re more concerned about the rights of the criminals.”

“That’s Bragg’s pattern – to release as many as possible,” slammed Maud Maron, a Soho resident who’s running against Bragg for Manhattan District Attorney in the fall. “The fact that no one in the district attorney’s office could figure out how to make sure that person stayed behind bars is absurd and laughable.”

Narcotics arrests have soared in Greenwich Village, up 68% so far this year, to 471 busts from 281 in the same period a year ago, according to NYPD data. The neighborhood’s Sixth Precinct – where both men were arrested – routinely posts on social media about catching drug dealers plying their trade in broad daylight.

But residents are fed up with seeing the same faces back on the streets because they’re not being prosecuted once they’re in court.

“We’re seeing a sense of helplessness,” said Sumner. ” It was a breaking point in terms of anger and now it’s a broken point.”