“What do we want? Clemency! When do we want it? Now!”
That was the chant outside the Manhattan office of Governor Andrew Cuomo last week as a small group of advocates addressed what they called his disappointing legacy on clemency for prisoners. They thanked him for his most recent batch of pardons and commutations, but then castigated him for showing scant mercy over his nearly 11 years in office to people behind bars, some of them saddled with life sentences handed down during the punitive era of Rockefeller drug laws that led to mass incarceration.
“We are very happy and grateful for the ten men who were granted clemency or commutation of sentence and we are happy for their families,” said Jose Saldana, a former prisoner who is now the director of Release Aging People in Prison, a non-profit that lobbies to reduce life sentences through both parole and the power of governors to grant clemency. He was referring to Cuomo’s August 17 announcement of five full pardons — a pardon essentially removes conviction — and commuted the sentences of five long-serving prisoners, which allows for early release. (The group included Richard “Lee” Chalk, whom Gothamist profiled in 2019.) Three of those sentences were connected to convictions for killings.
Then Saldana made the rhetorical turn often heard from Cuomo’s critics when discussing his overall record on the issue: “However, we are very disappointed that he did not grant more.”
On Monday night, Cuomo added a pardon and five more commutations, including commuting the sentence of David Gilbert, the Weather Underground member who was the getaway driver in the 1981 Brinks robbery that left a Brinks guard and two police officers dead. That makes 41 times that he has reduced the sentences of aging prisoners who’ve served more than a decade of their terms.
These are “individuals,” in the governor’s own description, who have demonstrated, “remorse, rehabilitation and commitment to their communities.” But relatively speaking, that’s not a bumper crop of forbearance. The governors of California, Illinois, and even red-state Kentucky have granted early release more often, particularly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic — a step Cuomo has been loath to take.
Moreover, Cuomo is leaving office with a backlog of 2,500 clemency applications filed since 2020. The sixteen clemencies he granted recently constitute less than one percent of that total.
Steve Zeidman, co-director of the criminal defense clinic at CUNY Law School, says almost 9,000 people are serving life sentences In New York — nearly a third of all prison inmates. “People who most urgently need clemency are those who are sentenced to perish behind bars,” he said, speaking last Thursday as a guest of the Brian Lehrer Show.
Zeidman criticized Cuomo for barely touching these cases. “You take an 18-year-old who's given 15-to-life, they won't see a parole board, if they live that long, until they're 68,” he said. “So that's someone who turns to clemency as the only way he can imagine living free again. But Cuomo has been reluctant to deal with it.”
New York has 114 prisoners who are 70 or older and have served at least 30 years of their sentence. Zeidman said their cases should be examined and, when appropriate, resolved though clemency or parole. Then tackle the next batch of lengthy sentences.
A caller to the show then brought up the other side of the issue. “I just want to address the victim in this, especially of people who commit murder,” he said. “Years ago, I had a cousin who was killed in a robbery attempt.” The caller went on to say his cousin had been gunned down in the prime of his life, leaving a wife and four children behind. “This family that I just described suffered in the worst way.”
It's the current of grief that flows through both sides of any clemency petition. And so, it bubbled up, in a different way, at the rally outside the governor's office as, one by one, family members of the incarcerated described what it's like to love a person serving a life sentence.
Nawanna Tucker, the wife of Curtis Tucker, who's been behind bars for 33 years, addressed the governor, “Enough is enough. We need our loved ones home. I'm asking, I'm pleading that you will use your executive power before Monday, 11:59 pm, and sign and give us a second chance with our loved ones. Thank you.”
Now, the power to grant clemency will be transferred to Kathy Hochul, the new governor of New York State. Gothamist asked her office whether she had thought about the executive’s right to show mercy.
The response: “The Lt. Governor will have more to say on this and other issues when she officially becomes Governor and gets through the transition process.”
Her term began Tuesday at midnight.
