As coronavirus positivity rates have been rising throughout New York, 1,713 of the state's 35,834 prisoners had tested positive for COVID-19 as of Friday, comprising 4.78% of the total prison population. Recent outbreaks have occurred in Wyoming, Elmira, Green Haven, Fishkill and Shawangunk correctional facilities.
Public health experts have warned that to reduce transmission of the virus, prisons should be reduced to 50 percent capacity.
So far, Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered the release of people imprisoned for low-level non-violent convictions who were within 90 days of their release, cancelled low-level parole violations, and released pregnant or postpartum women who were within 180 days of release, leading to the freedom of 3,109 New Yorkers.
One power Cuomo has used sparingly during the pandemic, and throughout his decade as governor: clemency.
Clemency can take two forms—a pardon, i.e. an expungement of a person’s criminal record, which typically happens after a prison sentence has been served; or a commutation, i.e. a shortening of a prison sentence.
California expedited the release of nearly 9,000 prisoners, and Governor Gavin Newsom issued 55 commutations (and four medical reprieves) between March and November. In April, Oklahoma’s governor commuted the sentences of 450 prisoners to decrease prison overcrowding.
In contrast, Cuomo granted two commutations in January and another three in June, a number that advocates decried as “outrageous,” particularly in the midst of a pandemic.
“Clemency, at this particular point, is an urgent necessity that is being ignored,” Steve Zeidman, co-director of the CUNY Law School’s Defenders Clinic Second Look Project, told Gothamist. “Beyond that, it’s also an opportunity.”
Zeidman and the clinic currently represent 50 people whose clemency petitions are awaiting the governor’s decision.
Bryon Russ was not in either group of commutations issued this year. Russ has already served 20 years for two robberies in which no fatalities occurred.
In 2017, Russ applied for clemency, submitting an application that spanned hundreds of pages listing his accomplishments, including program participation, role as facilitator in the prison’s Anti-Violence and Aggressive Replacement Training programs, and college credits. In 2018, he submitted an update with further accomplishments. In 2019, the couple connected with the Criminal Defense Clinic; Zeidman and his team of law students helped Russ submit a new application, including a video biography in which he apologized for his actions.
Without Cuomo’s intervention, Russ, now age 44, will not be released until 2034 when he is 73.
In September, he was transferred from Elmira—one month before the prison experienced a surge of COVID-19 cases for a cumulative total of 603—to Sing Sing Correctional Facility, which has had 48 confirmed COVID-19 cases and four deaths.
“I, like many others, am still hopeful that someone will see my efforts and invest in my release knowing my release will not result in a negative result,” Russ told Gothamist from prison. “I look forward to uplifting the community I had a hand in destroying. I look forward to putting all my rehabilitative efforts into constructive action. I look forward because there is no backwards.”
The governor’s office declined to comment on whether he will issue more commutations this year.
Russ’s wife Jolene said she carries a copy of her husband’s clemency application wherever she goes, hoping for the chance to hand it to Cuomo in person.
During the pandemic, she said she watched Cuomo’s daily press briefings, her eyes glued to the pen that he used to scribble notes to himself or to his aides. She visualized him using the pen to sign her husband’s commutation.
“The governor has the opportunity to give joy to so many families with the pen he holds in his pocket,” she said.
On Monday, Russ drove from her home near Albany to Midtown Manhattan to rally outside the governor’s office with advocates and family members with incarcerated loved ones, urging him to grant clemencies to people in prison. For the past six holiday seasons, advocates have gathered to plead with Cuomo to commute more sentences, and have mostly been ignored.
“Clemency is about mercy,” reflected Zeidman, calling the governor’s failure to grant more commutations, particularly during the pandemic, “merciless.”
Governor Andrew Cuomo gives a televised briefing in New York City on Sunday.
Alfonzo Riley-James knows firsthand about the importance of clemency. In 1988, Riley-James, then 19, and five other men drove from Brooklyn to Albany to rob a drug house. During the robbery, one of the men, Lance Sessoms, shot and killed two men in the house. Originally sentenced to 71 ½ years-to-life, Riley-James appealed and had his sentence modified to 50 years-to-life, which still made him ineligible for a parole hearing until age 69. (Parole eligibility means that he can appear before the parole board; it does not guarantee that the board will approve his release.)
During his 30 years behind bars, Riley-James worked at the prison law library and tutored others in GED prep, literacy, and math, and volunteered in a program to dissuade at-risk youth from making similar mistakes. On New Year’s Eve 2018, he learned that Cuomo had commuted his sentence; one month later, the 49-year-old walked out of prison.
Now a paralegal at the Legal Aid Society’s Wrongful Conviction Unit, Riley-James has not forgotten the men he has left behind.
“I was no anomaly,” he said. “There are others in prison who deserve a chance too, who committed offenses when they were very young, who sought to transform themselves while in prison and given the opportunity, can become contributing members of society. I don’t think people should be condemned, necessarily, for one mistake, for the worst mistake they’ve made of their lives.”
That includes his co-defendant Lance Sessoms, who, then 22, fatally shot the two men. He was sentenced to 75 years-to-life.
Like Riley-James, Sessoms has worked to change his life despite his lengthy sentence. He has earned a college degree, completed numerous prison programs, encouraged others in prison to pursue an education, and parented his three children and now his five grandchildren. “I’m different from 22 years old,” Sessoms told Gothamist in 2019. “I am trying to be consistent with my actions and my words.”
Sessoms had not initially applied for clemency. But when his daughter, Danielle Moore, read about his co-defendants’ commutations, she reached out to Zeidman’s office. Moore was four years old when Sessoms was arrested and convicted. She has vague memories of life with her father before prison, but most of her memories of him involve prison visits and bus rides. At Moore’s urging, Sessoms applied for clemency in 2019. Now, the family waits—and is starting to connect with advocates pushing Cuomo to issue more commutations.
Monday’s rally outside Cuomo’s office will be Moore's first time at a protest on her father's behalf.
“I want Cuomo to understand that our loved ones are in there,” Moore, who just turned 36, explained. “We love them and want them to come home.”
Her mother, Dorothea Sessoms, agrees. She recognizes the tragic consequences of her husband’s 1988 actions—and knows that he does as well. “He understands the seriousness of what happened,” she said. During his decades in prison, she’s seen him grow, mature and transform his life. If he were released, Dorothea said, he “could help a lot of young kids going down the same wrong path that he chose.”
